But these trips are four hours of difficult highway driving, and it's Toronto rush hour, so I'll wait until I get the word.

I may have to cancel or postpone tomorrow's Week #10 In Review. I guess you'll read it if you see it.

Today, while writing the article about Huaneng Power of China, it brought back memories.

A story you might find interesting is that back in 1987, I was contacted by someone in the federal government of Canada who said that it would be important to the country if I would have lunch with somebody at the Toronto Club. That happens to be the most ultra exclusive club in Canada and the host was to be a corporate director of one of the world's largest oil companies. Obviously I accepted.

When I arrived to the table, I was surprised this was a private two-person meeting and my host was very mysterious as to the nature of the role he was playing. He said he was asking me something that would be unacceptable for government to do, which was to meet a commercial emissary of the People's Republic of China to discuss a rather large trade deal that I could help set up with a Canadian company.

No, this wasn't the movies, and the host was a real solid individual, a member of the Toronto Club.

So just like the popular TV program about spies ("Mission Impossible"), I was handed a file folder, and basically told that "(my) mission should (I) choose to accept it" was to go to China to meet a man from Beijing in Hong Kong, and return with him to Canada if I were satisfied with his credentials. Then I was to take him to meet the senior executives of one of Canada's biggest international companies in the engineering field, and present his credentials, which they would check out.

So I left. I met the man. I was satisfied. I returned to Canada with him, and did as I was asked.

At a breakfast meeting at Toronto's King Eddy Hotel with about five senior executives of the host company (only the CEO was missing, but he was in Russia that week with the ex-Prime Minister Trudeau), the deal opportunity was presented " poorly because the Chinese man could speak only a couple words of English and there was no confidential interpreter available on demand.

The Chinese emissary turned over about four inches thick of documents in Chinese, bound with a seal of the PRC. The Canadian executives took them and said they would get back to me within hours.

The next day I was on my way with the Chinese man to visit the head of that corporation's Vancouver subsidiary who was the expert who would bid on the contract to double the size of Shanghai's electricity power plant (which had been built by Russians I was told).

Funny things happen in bizarre situations like this. One of them was that in Vancouver the company had a contracted interpreter -- because my new friend really could speak precious little English " and the interpreter tried to get chummy in a private Chinese conversation during a tea break.

After we had returned to the boardroom table, my friend whispered in my ear that we must go back to the hotel.

I figured he had to visit the washroom, so I begged the pardon of our hosts and we went to the street, at which point my friend turned distinctly hostile, saying that the interpreter had made a pass at a little side deal. Shocking, but true.

Not only did we go back to the hotel; but also we soon after left for the airport and returned immediately to Toronto, where I had to explain to the chief corporate counsel what had gone down. I was asked to sit tight, but even in her majesty's service, I wasn't going to allow this situation to go on for long.

A day or two later, my friend departed the country. The deal was dead. I was never paid a dime for my time or expenses. Who do you call in a situation like that? The Prime Minister?

I met that man from Beijing again about three years later when he was visiting Toronto. He came to my office and we met several times over the next few days. But he always spoke in what seemed to me to be riddles. He was an old man who he says was general manager of two of the big four China banks -- Agriculture Bank and one other -- many years earlier.

I called the mystery man who had got me involved in the first place, and he said he had met the man while in Lebanon at a private dinner in the home of the head of the Sunni Moslems, while they were discussing oil deals for China. He said the man was for real.

When I tried to check him out a couple years later, I was told (by someone who would know, but who could not speak English), a single word, "Died". That was final.

I tell you, one year I'm going to write a book about some of the craziest experiences I've had.

And it will include the one where Prince Buthelezi of the Zulu Nation in South Africa, in the months before he became the country's Home Minister, sent me a formal letter appointing me Senior Financial Advisor to about 9 million Zulu's.

I was asked to meet his associate, a man who became RSA Minister of Prisons, in Atlanta to seal the deal. Knowing that people would find it hard to believe, I brought along a business associate who lives in Atlanta, a man who used to work closely with Jeff Immelt at GE. He saw the formal letter with a letterhead that was made up of colorful spears.

To this day, my friend says he tells his ex-GE executive friends that I'm a "made" guy " that nobody fools around with the army of 9 million spears that protects me.

In spite of the seriousness, a lot of things get said in jest.

Sometimes truth -- and this is all true -- can be stranger than fiction.

Now I have to go deal with the reality that is my parent's situation. And that's not as much fun as telling you a day or two in advance what's going to happen in the capital markets.

BCara@BillCara.com

P.S., I am getting a lot of personal e-mail, which is nice support, and I appreciate it, but some letters seem to think I can answer privately and directly regarding investments. First off, I am not registered, and secondly I have no time. I can't do more for people than what I do in this blog.