DonkeyBlog

For the sniff of a pound

2011-06-16T15:34:00.001+10:00

Now I love a bargain just as much as any post-war immigrant, and if you throw-in a bit of flattery to boot, I'm anyone's. So with the sniff of a discount on the frigid morning wind, I found myself shivering on the shady side of the street last Saturday at 10.02, surrounded by a bunch of Greek yiayias and Italian nonnas waiting for the cheap shirt factory outlet to open its doors for the weekly octogenarian stoush between the Aegeans and the Mediterraneans, as they fight over the limited selection of excess garments for their husbands, sons, grandsons and more than likely, their great grandsons. My plan was to get in and out as quickly as I could before the garlic-laced snarls began and the elbows and walking-sticks started flying.

The bloke who runs the place is of similar ethnic stock to his elderly customers, with both the look and manner of a cruise-ship crooner. As his trade would dictate, he is always impeccably [over]dressed in a fine, tailored suit and massive cufflinks, and his thick, dark hair is bolstered above his head in one gigantic wave which, if not for the Gulf of Mexico-sized oil slick holding it in place, threatens to crash down on anyone within 6 feet like a devastating, deep-fried tsunami. His olive skin and hands look impeccably manicured, and this rather dated, visual ensemble is capped-off with a kind of forced affability which is no doubt a winner with the early-morning ladies, but not quite what a fashionably awkward, moderately hung over Donkey is after at this un-Godly hour on a Saturday morning.

Or so I thought, until this Casanova de Couture decided to redirect his charm offensive from the aggressive hoards going mole-covered-head to mole-covered-head on the other side of the store, to quiet, unassuming Donkey who was pretty certain he knew his business when it came to buying a plain, single-pastel business shirt and matching tie.

"Just these thanks", I mumbled as I unconfidently placed my items on the counter, the correct change in my hand ready to handover as I prepared my bolt for the door.

"A 43, Sir?", he queried with a friendly smile, "Sure, you've got a muscular, manly neck, but you cut a much finer figure than a 43".

Oh shit ... confrontation! What do I do now? "Ah, um ... I always wear a 43 when I have to wear a tie", I whisper lamely.

"Sure, you can if you like", he oozes, casting an appraising eye up and down, "but I think it far better to show off, not hide your fine torso. I would suggest you go with the 42, and if you have trouble with the top button, just pull it off and sew it a bit closer to the edge".

Paralysed with fear at this unexpected buoying of my chronic low self esteem, and with all of my brain's reason-centres completely flaccid, all I can hear are the words, "fine torso" being sung to me in celestial operatic crescendo. With my vocal chords strung-out like the neck of a rubber chicken, I dumbly accept the 42, hand over my cash and stumble out the door past two gnarled, elderly dwarves having a tug-of-war over a long-sleeved, paisley retro number.

Once across the threshold, as the cold air rushes my cheeks and begins to clear the cotton wool from my flattery-addled brain, I exhale my puffed-up, manly chest that had been swelling with each utterance from the salesman, and with that expulsion of gravity-defying hot air, I assume my usual, stooped slouch as the dread at what I had just done washes over me. Against all my now-returning reasoning, I was too embarrassed to go back inside to change the size as I knew I ought; I'd been conned, plain and simple. So, feeling as low and disgruntled as I always do after having bought clothes, I headed home to bury my shame under the doona.

The reason I had broken with my instincts that morning to venture out into the world to buy clothes, was that I had been invited to a very special luncheon this week with the Prime Minister of Samoa; obviously not something which happens every day, and something for which, I believe, requires just a little bit more effort in the wardrobe department than my usual shorts and thongs. Unfortunately, I allowed my usual lackadaisical, "she'll be right" approach to my work infiltrate my preparation for this luncheon, and so here I was, in the last hours before the city retail outlets shut down for a long weekend, buying an outfit for the event.

The importance of the event, and my ill-preparedness for same, makes my decision not to return to the store for the 43 all the more unforgivable. "Not to worry, Donkey. You've got plenty of time over the weekend to sort the shirt and buttons out". Of course, you're right ... but did I mention my lackadaisical, "she'll be right" attitude to everything?

At 11pm on Monday evening, literally 12 hours before I was due to shake the Samoan PM's hand, and share with him a pre-lunch sherry in the palatial reception hall of Government House, I sat with shaking hands trying to sew a button on my new shirt such that I would be able to do it up and adorn it with my new tie. No worries – all done by 11.45pm; thread broken, shirt put aside, and off to bed. Absolutely no need to check if I'd done it right.

The next morning was the usual, pre-work flurry of breakfasts, showers and cleaning Hambones' projectile porridge off the dining room wall. As I got ready to leave the house, I decided not to wear my tie on the tram, but rather preferred to leave my top button undone until I was due to head to my luncheon.

Upon reaching the office, it was all wolf-whistles and lewd remarks from my workmates who were astonished at my lack of open footwear, and I was urged to don the tie for a squiz. "Too busy!", I scoffed, and went about my work.

At about 9.30pm, I got a call from the big boss requesting a word about something else, and only then did I decide to put on my tie, and present the full ensemble.

No worries – the button did up easily, the tie slid on and I went on my way ... NOT! Now THAT would have been a shit story! What really happened, as my huge, bratwurst fingers wrestled with my collar, was that my knees started shaking, my "oh-so-buff" shirt became drenched with sweat and my already ruddy face became aflame with embarrassment and shame. What the fark was I going to do now? I was due to meet the Prime Minister of Samoa in just over an hour!

Immediately I set about trying to find a needle and thread ... but this was a modern, Australian office, not the set of Mad Men; there were no hot secretaries to be ever at the ready for any kind of crisis, with a secret stash of aftershave, freshly-ironed trousers or a sewing kit. No one had anything like that – I was totally screwed.

Forty minutes later, after having jumped on a tram to fashionable Chapel St, been swindled by possibly the only designer-label sewing shop in the Southern hemisphere, and having legged-it 1.5 kilometres back to the office, I was sitting, shirtless on a toilet seat, squinting in the dim light as I tried to thread the expensive cotton through the needle.

With the precious seconds ticking like a great, booming base drum in my ear, I fumbled again and again with the pointy implement, but finally emerged from the cubicle, ready, like a champion female weight lifter from Eastern Europe, to attempt a final clean and jerk to affix my top button.

Again and again I extended my neck, screwed-up my face, sucked-in my breath, wiped my sweaty hands ... all to no avail. It was about five millimetres too tight ... I was totally screwed; the first ever cretin to be invited to lunch with a national leader, only to be refused entry through inappropriate attire. In a final burst of desperation, my eyes burning with humiliating tears, I reached for the scissors and cut along the button-eye, extending the hole by the required five millimetres. My shame burned hotter than ever as I saw the frayed mess I had created, and with little enthusiasm, I twisted my body into one final attempt ... urgh, argh, uuurgh ... yes! It went in! It went in! Aaaargh! Noooo, it slipped out again; my sharp-scissored handy work had made the hole too big for the button. That was it. I was done for.

And just at that point, as my self esteem plummeted into the depths of dark despair, some kind of physiological, auto-pilot thing took over, and against all reasoning, I decided to give it one more go. With my body convulsing in audible sobs, I pushed, and twisted, and sucked-in air, and wrestled and again the button went in. This time, I was too scared to let go, but with the wall clock now indicating 'Time', I had no choice. Very slowly, I exhaled, and one at a time, I took my trembling hands from my neck. It stuck. Just as gently, my face turning from shameful red to oxygen-starved blue, I slowly secured my new tie, and only when all was in place and seemingly staying together did I dare breathe.

I'd done it! Off I went to Government House, and after presenting my credentials at the gate, I glided into the ornate reception hall and to the warm handshake of the Honourable Prime Minister and his entourage of Samoan Parliamentary Ministers. As the PM and I exchanged platitudes, I was again struck, as one often is after having not been around Samoans for a while, just how massive they are; big armed, big legged, big bodied and big necked. Hang-on!

And suddenly I was reminded of the difficulty that many senior government officials in Samoa, as the few amongst their countrymen who ever have occasion to wear ties, wrestle with every day. Due to the sheer impossibility of finding a shirt that could ever reach around those massive necks, every one of them gathered there that morning wore his tie at half mast, having tried in vain to secure them as high as possible, without having been able to affix their top buttons.

I'll never, ever try to save money on clothes again.*

You try getting a shirt around that neck. Pic: http://www.news.com.au

* - I have absolutely no intention of honouring this pledge.

JB. You've done it again

2011-06-02T14:43:00.000+10:00

Despite the changin' times, there are some things in life which have, at one time or another, been so much an enjoyable part of who I am, that even if I don't do them as often nowadays as I might like, they still make me feel fantastic, as soon as I embark upon them.

Case in point; I really love a visit to JB HI-FI. Sure, I might only drop-by once a year these days (instead of at least once a week, as of yore), and sure, the majority of the titles in the CD racks (not to mention some of the CD rack categories) are completely foreign to me, but still, the sense of excitement and anticipation I get when I step across the electronic sensors into that world of yellow, plastic sticky tape just gets my consumer juices going.

While I was only really ever into the CDs side of things at JB, I know there's always been something for everyone there; music DVDs, TV and movie DVDs, hi-fi systems, TVs ... and now a pretty comprehensive range of computers and i-pads – these latter items not really being my bag, but the fact that they are the bag for so many others merely adds to my enjoyment of the place.

But there's something I need to make very clear from the outset, given my observations from today's visit to JB Hi-FI. While I love/d spending hours and shit-loads of cash on the acquisition of eclectic music from their copious range of fine reggae, dub and alternative rock, and while I even occasionally wandered through their DVDs and hi-fi equipment for a bit of a poke and a giggle, I never once lost sight of the fact that everything in that store was comprised of items that I may WANT, but never constituted anything that I, nor any other member of humanity could ever honestly believe they might actually NEED.

So today, as I was wandering through and having to chase Hambones along isles that I never really knew existed (who knew JB sold turntables, or "decks" as I believe the young folk call them?), I eventually found him after a few, heart-stopping moments of lost contact, in front of a massive array of flat-screen TVs (or should that read, "...an array of massive flat screen TVs"?). As Hambones proceeded to place is grubby mitts over every one of those impossibly large, shiny screens, one couldn't help but be blown away by their amazing colours and picture clarity. To enhance this, as these places often do, they had a DVD playing on every one of the thousands of screens, flying you over Antarctica in a balance-altering helicopter one minute, or riding across the African savannah on an abdomen-jolting elephant the next.

As I struggled to pry Hambones' vegemite-smeared paws off an IMAX-sized screen before I got caught by one of the black-clad Easter Island statues which moonlight as JB security staff, I noticed that each of these amazing images were punctuated with writing over a blank screen, which on further investigation, constituted facts and messages about environmental degradation and conservation, climate change, population explosion and other determinants of the health of our dying planet, and I gotta say, it really stuck in my craw.

Here I was, surrounded by walls of massive, shiny, black, plastic, electronic devices, any one of which would probably feed a whole family for a year amongst two-thirds of the world's population; basically the epitome of consumer-driven greed and superfluous acquisition, and they were using messages of peace, conservation and global socialism to sell them. Surely someone was taking the piss? I might have thought so, if the footage between each message wasn't so brilliantly drawing my two-year old son under its spell, not to mention a number of others who may have had more years under their belts, but seemingly equivalent intellect.

I get it ... we've gone too far. While on the one hand, the screaming, talk-back radio listening mobs of Western Sydney Aussie Battlers surviving on the poverty line are leading a national outrage directed at a government which, simply because there seems to be just no other way to tackle the urgent global crisis of climate change, is threatening to "tax us within an inch of our incomes", on the other, everyone still seems to have enough disposable income to purchase a television which is so large that one needs to knock out a wall to get it into their living room. We're so sick, twisted and confused with our own wealth and greed, that even messages of reduce, recycle and reuse, punctuating breathtaking imagery of what we'll lose if we don't, actually spurs us on to consume more. Get me outta here!

You can just imagine how big the telley is! Pic: http://www.realbollywood.com

Steve McQueening

2011-05-31T21:55:00.000+10:00

I've banged-on enough about my veggie garden over the last year or so for you to get the picture that I really love getting amongst the compost and the loam; recycling my coffee grounds to prevent snails from getting into my luscious basil leaves and doing everything I can to coax my seedlings out of the earth, and to give those young 'uns the fighting chance they need to rise up from the filth to produce fine flowers and fruit.

I guess you could compare my dedication as a gardener to the kind of teacher who, in sappy movies of say 15 years ago, would see promise in the misbehaving youth and, against all advice and opinions of their colleagues, would take this student under their wing, spend all their spare time tutoring them, and then, to everyone's complete amazement, have them shine at the end-of-term maths quiz or whatever. Interestingly, the same relationship portrayed in more modern films would probably see the teacher completely vilified and possibly slapped with an investigation into inappropriate relations with a minor. But I digress; there is nothing inappropriate about the tenderness and loving caresses I give my sweet, burgeoning tomato bushes and the tender kisses and playful licks I bestow upon my zucchinis of a summer evening – absolutely nothing!

To say that I just love getting out into the garden and doing a bit of digging and sowing is true, but not entirely. It's true of the digging and sowing one does for one's summer crop, in about September or October, but it's definitely not true of May. I friggin' hate the cold. I hate the damp. And I hate going to shit-loads of effort for average winter veggies such as bloody spinach and cauliflower. So today, my plan was to get the job over with as soon as possible, and to get back inside to the warmth and the paper, pronto!

So I had a dump of dirt scheduled to arrive mid morning, and before that, I was out there, up to my ankles in the frigid filth, mixing stinking compost and rancid manure into what was left of the sodden beds. Eventually the dirt arrived and I got to the back-breaking work of carting it across the yard and into the garden, only to realise after I was halfway through the pile that I had come a cropper (once again) to my meagre skills in mathematics – I had completely fudged the primary school-level mathematics equations for measuring volume in a right-angled wooden enclosure, and had ordered twice as much soil as I needed.

This soil having been dumped by the truck on my postage-stamp lawn, I couldn't leave the remainder there, and our entire yard being only slightly bigger than the lawn (comparatively, I'd say one of those postage stamps from the former Soviet Bloc countries is a pretty apt description), I was really in trouble.

So for the rest of the day, instead of being in my toastie-warm living room with a fresh coffee and the newspaper, I was walking around in the freezing, winter shadows trying to dispose of a little dirt here and a little dirt there – I felt like all those prisoners of war in The Great Escape, trying to dispose of the contents of three tunnels in little dumps here and there, right under the noses of the Germans.

I guess everyone, like me, if imagining themselves as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany, pictures themselves as the rugged, all-American hero on the back of an Enfield, flying his way over a barbed-wire fence to freedom, rather than the short, chubby, British "Tommy" having to carry stinking dirt in his daks and divvying it out across the compound. Indeed, reality really does bite!

Let's face it, I'm probably more likely to get the role of the barbed-wire, than the rugged, all-American hero. Pic: http://www.coventrytelegraph.net

Be alert, but not alarmed

2011-05-22T15:18:00.000+10:00

My final, happily humorous observation of the Solomons during this visit relates to that Pacific-wide phenomenon which I have discussed before; the thriving, second-hand rag trade which sees Australia's fashion cast-offs becoming re-born over and over again in the cities, mountains and remote lagoons across the region.

On this visit, I had a nice little chuckle to myself when I saw a middle-aged woman wearing a t-shirt featuring a presumably un-licensed reproduction of a very sultry, short skirted and buxom-cleavaged Smurfette giving one of her male compatriots the come hither stare, beneath the caption, "Let's smurf each other's brains out".

And I also saw a tough looking teen at the market who, for all his mean, former militia-looking appearances, was sporting a Summernats 2008 t-shirt; an annual event attracting a massive gathering of NSW bogans just outside of Canberra that this Honiara bad boy was unlikely to have even heard of.

Of course there were also the usual smattering of (recently ironic) Osama Bin Laden and (never out of fashion) fluffy pink pussy cat t-shirts on this visit. But for mine, the bravest, and most alarming fashion statement came from one of the airport 'security' staff as I was checking-in for my flight home.

Despite recent, somewhat spurious financial reports espousing the economic prosperity of the Sols, the reality is that this is still a dirt-poor country. And when I was living there seven years ago, when the place was still emerging from five years of civil conflict, things were even worse. Back then, the national airline was only just limping along; its schedules being met only when there was enough fuel available to get a plane across the pond and back.

So it's not surprising that while the rest of the world had completely overhauled airport security by 13^th September 2001, it took the Sols until 2004 before the entire national air service shut down for a week, and all field-office staff were brought into Honiara (by boat!) to undergo training on the new national civil aviation security and anti-terrorism protocols.

We in the outposts eagerly awaited the return to duty of our provincial Solomon Airlines team from their training to see what the new, highly publicised security regulations would look like. Up until that point, Felix, Peter and Sam's modus operandi had been to don shorts, t-shirts and thongs, and to wander out across the muddy airstrip with a trolley once the engines were cut (although there seemed no need to wait for the propellers to have stopped), and to climb up into the cargo hatch to eject boxes and cases out the door onto the dirty ground.

Post security and anti-terrorism training, things were indeed different. Under the new regulations, Felix, Peter and Sam donned shorts, t-shirts and thongs, and wandered out across the muddy airstrip with a trolley once the engines were cut, and from the cargo hatch, threw boxes and cases out onto the ground. What was different from before? They did all this in flouro safety vests!

Over the next couple of months, the stash of Solomon Airlines safety vests at the provincial airline office dwindled as various family members required new upper-body clothing, and in the end, there were only three vests remaining, so Manager Felix was forced to keep these locked in the office after each shift.

During my recent visit, I was very glad to see that the commitment to safety, security and anti-terrorism remains as strong today as it was all those years ago. I noticed this while I was waiting to go through immigration on my way out last week. At that time, the Solomon Airlines 'security officials' were changing shifts, and the end-of-shifters were handing over their flouro safety vests to the new workers coming on-shift. I reflected as I watched this that the safety vests are indeed a necessary security item, as once removed, the individuals beneath, dressed in shorts, t-shirt and thongs, and with half-smoked fags hanging from their lips, looked much the same as any other young men in the country.

But the best thing about this little transaction of the only weapon in the Solomon Airlines' anti-terrorism armory, taking place as it did beneath a big sign warning passengers that Solomon Airlines treats terrorism very seriously, and that jokes about bombs and hijackings are a prosecutable offence, was what one of these 'security officials' was wearing underneath his bright yellow vest; a black t-shirt emblazoned front and back with the name of a band he'd probably never even heard, 'Megadeth'.

Be alert but not alarmed? I guess I should have been thankful he hadn't been wearing one of the afore-mentioned Osama Bin Laden t-shirts!

It really is amazing [read disturbing] how much of this stuff there is on the internet. Pic: http://orlandonewscenter.com/

Myths and Myth-conceptions

2011-05-07T13:38:00.001+10:00

There’ve been a few changes in Honiara since I last dropped-in, and a particularly noticeable one has been the opening and maintaining of the two pedestrian subways under the [only] main road through town. Today, these are well-maintained with clean coats of paint courtesy of the new, controversially-appointed mobile phone operator, and are gated and locked after hours to ensure they don’t become a meeting place for miscreants to gather in the dark night to drink kwaso (illegal, distilled home brew) and indulge in other ‘unsavoury’ acts.

Although I’ve not been game to enter one of these yet, I have seen others using them, which is a tremendous contrast from five years ago, when anyone reaching within ten metres of their entrance would be repelled by the smell of stagnant mud, rotting garbage and other forms of refuse, both human and organic. In some cases, this festering mess reached half-way up the stair-cases, and provided a reasonable indicator of the functionality of the Honiara Town Council at the time to maintain the city generally.

Now anyone understanding anything about the aid and development sector will appreciate that in many settings, expat aid workers rarely have much to do with the indigenous population, and never was this more so than in Honiara, circa 2004, when the population of the city doubled overnight with a foreign military and civil police force intent on returning this ‘rogue state’ back to peace and economic stability, as well as an additional handful of development workers concentrating on the re-establishment of the health and education systems.

In this high security environment, where for a foreigner to even look a local man directly in the eye was seen as a potential trigger to provoke aggressive confrontation, allegedly resulting in the foreigner’s likely maiming or even murder, it became very convenient for expatriates to adopt a mandatory policy of civil movement restricted to the air-conditioned comfort of sparkling, white, Toyata Hiluxes, and ‘as a security precaution’, to frequent only those public sites designated as ‘safe’ by security forces, such as one of a handful of cafes, bars and restaurants serving only ‘Western’ coffee, food and drinks, and whose prices were too exorbitant for local incomes.

As a result, in those days, aside form the daily, patronising engagements with national staff [as few as possible, I should note] foreigners had very little interaction with local people. Now, as you can imagine, drinking crap coffee in the only espresso outlet in town and eating spaghetti with tomato ketchup from the only ‘Italian restaurant’ will only occupy a foreigner’s complete attention for so long, and after a week or so, even the most alcohol-befuddled middle-aged male, or meticulously manicured and groomed female expatriate aid worker will eventually gaze out the window of the Toyota, and wonder aloud about some curious structure or local practice for which their own experience and upbringing (in New Zealand or Australia) can offer little explanation.

Without exception, such an utterance or question will be eagerly leapt upon by the expatriate’s colleagues or peers in order to establish the latter’s superior field credibility, and an answer to the query will be confidently provided. The questioner will then lock that piece of information away and have it ever at the ready to drop surreptitiously into the next conversation over a steaming, muddy espresso (probably at morning tea that very day) in the hope of promoting their field credibility, and at least two of these caffeine-enhanced individuals will rush back to the office to casually drop their ‘long-established awareness of local customs and practices’ into the conversation.

And by Saturday night, at someone’s exclusive, invitation-only party [attended by every expatriate in town], there will not be a soul present who doesn’t know the reason behind the curious observation from the cab of the Hilux, just a few mornings ago.

In the ‘high security’ humanitarian setting, when interactions with local people should be kept to a minimum [or preferably avoided altogether], this is how expatriates learn about local customs and practices. While one may consider that it’s as good a process as any other, the obvious flaw is the extent to which the original ‘authority’ had any factual basis for their confident explanations or, as has often been the case, they simply made them up.

It was in this setting, some seven or so years ago, that a younger, thinner and certainly more naïve Donkey uttered a query about why young men and women, clutching their babies and young children, were taking their chances to run across the busy main road and only narrowly escaping being run-down by the speeding, shining, white Toyota Hiluxes which seemed to have recently doubled the number of vehicles on the road, when there were much safer, pedestrian subways and overpasses they could be using.

My esteemed colleague riding beside me (who I later learned had only been in the Solomons for a month, and until that time had spent his entire, thirty year career working in a regional branch of an Australian bank), assured me that the reason for their lack of use was that in many indigenous Solomon Islands communities, it was inappropriate for anyone to be positioned higher than a ‘Big Man’ (an elder or chief). This, he informed me, meant that women could not cross the overpasses in case a Big Man was below, as she would have to pay compensation, and likewise, a Big Man would not use the underpasses. Further, if a Big Man wasn’t going to use them, then why would anyone else? And so, they remained unused and poorly maintained. My colleague added that these structures had been built by the World Bank ten years before, and were a prime example of the poor outcomes of foreign aid when the community is not consulted in the planning of activities (pretty rich words from this bloke, given his performance, or the lack their of, over the proceeding years, but that’s another story altogether).

Now while I have been guilty of furthering the propagation of these kinds of myths in the past, in this instance, I do not believe I shared this information more widely, however I did believe it. So I was admittedly surprised to see that since my last visit, the subways have been cleaned, painted, maintained and are being used. Is there any truth to the words of my former colleague? Who knows? But one thing’s for sure, if it is indeed true that the reason for the lack of use of the pedestrian overpasses is that a lesser-ranking individual should never be positioned higher than a Big Man, then you’d assume that it would also be taboo to take a dump above his, and considering the amount of human excrement strewn across the overpasses each morning, for mine, the ‘official’ explanations are rapidly losing credibility.

Not much [day time] traffic along here, and on investigation (rather than swallowing unsubstantiated here say), perhaps the reasons are clearly obvious – yes, that is poo in the bottom right corner. Pic: Hagas

They ruin your life

2011-04-30T14:27:00.001+10:00

Man, I wish I had a buck for every time a heated political argument amongst long-time friends was silenced with phrases such as, "Well that's all very well and good for you, but I've got kids, and I need to think about their future".

Compared with the majority of my peers, I was a bit of a late bloomer in the Family Expansion Department, and it always pissed me off when the same people who I'd grown-up with in the outer suburbs, who I'd gone to school with, who I'd rebelled against familial and social stereotypes with, who I'd moved into inner-city doss houses with, who I'd drank in the same inner-city pubs with, and with whom I'd debated politics and popular culture, would suddenly (coinciding with marriage, offspring and an exodus back to the Outer East) execute a complete 180 and change their age-old lines of argument and values in favour of bog-standard, Channel 9-like conservatism.

This particularly hit home to me about ten years ago when one of my friends who had pursued many social and environmental causes over the years (including a two-year stint being abused by errant teenagers while inside the Wilderness Society's koala costume) informed us all during one of his rare nights-off from familial duties, that he would be voting Liberal in the forth-coming federal election because only 'The Libs' were offering to extend the Eastern Freeway!

Of course, this ridiculous misunderstanding of state versus federal political responsibility was immediately and enthusiastically leapt upon by our gathering, and before long, this once politically-savvy and proud crusader for human and animal rights informed us that we all needed to grow-up and take some responsibility for ourselves if we ever expected to live in homes without cracked walls and warped floor boards. He added that neither of us had any significant life experience upon which to make informed decisions about future generations, and until we did, we should keep our naive political opinions to ourselves.

Of course this aggressive challenge would never do, and the conversation became increasingly heated before it concluded with my old friend jumping to his feet, gathering his coat and letting fly with, "Until you guys have kids, and have to think about their future education and employment opportunities, you'll never have any idea about the political and economic realities of the Australian electorate". Following which he stormed out of the pub.

So that's it, hey? Kids change everything ... or is it just that the kids were the factor which 'forced' him back to his politically-affiliated, geographical roots? Isn't it telling how your life circumstances can dramatically alter your values and beliefs?

It's true. We all know the cliche of the mate who's out with you and your other mates six nights a week, getting drunk and trying to pick-up women, until on one rare occasion he happens to be successful with the latter and immediately his drinking pursuits are replaced by rom-coms and flower shows, and his mates never see him again. Clearly that guy's circumstances changed his views on what was important; his priorities had altered from his mates and beer in favour of companionship, love or at the very least, getting his end away on a regular basis.

I can relate to this a little (well, not that last bit, obviously). I used to be right into outdoor packsports, and nature and wildlife conservation; for a good while I much preferred heading off into the bush with everything I needed for a few days and sitting alone on a rock all afternoon contemplaying myself and my surroundings, rather than attending garden parties and making polite small talk with friends and their new girlfriends.

When I finally did meet the love of my life, my rugged, outdoor pursuits were promptly replaced with rather more sedate, beachside loitering, and before long, I was no longer pining for the deep solitude of the remote wilderness. So it would indeed seem as though chicks change everything!

Interestingly, in those days of being a vocal advocate for wilderness protection, I harboured a visceral hatred for zoos. I recall being physically ill once while visiting the zoo with my nephew, and watching in horror at the dilapidated, Victorian-era surroundings that the seals had to parade around in before crowds of jeering, screaming children.

I stayed away for many years after this, and only recently returned to the zoo with my son, Hambones, thanks to one of these annual subscriptions which allow you to visit as often as you like. I have to admit, I love it! I find the enclosures much more respectful of the animals than I remembered, and as long as I don't think too hard about the climactic differences between a Bengal Tiger's natural habitat and Melbourne in May, I usually come away feeling OK about the experience.

So I guess it's not quite that cut and dried. Is it chicks? Or as stated by my friend of old, perhaps it really is kids who change everything.

In my newfound enthusiasm for caged and tethered wildlife, which has seen me visit the zoo about three times a week since we got the membership pass (gotta get me money's worth – my notorious tight-arsedness is one entrenched value I suspect is never going to change), I decided to take Hambones along to the Adelaide zoo over Easter, and there found myself almost winded by what I saw. Clearly my decade or so of avoiding the zoo was time enough for the Melbourne zoo management to get their stuff together towards a more humane approach to caring and providing for their animals such that I am no longer horrified by what I encounter.

Not so the Adelaide zoo, at which some of the exhibits appear not to have changed very much since families ventured-forth on Sunday afternoons in top-hats, tails, bonnets and holding sticks with which to poke the frightened animals through the bars of the minute cages. This place was terrible! A real throw-back to a bygone era in which there was absolutely no ambiguity over who was the real king of the jungle.

To look at Adelaide zoo on its own, I would again advocate for the abolishment of such institutions throughout the world. However I also understand the work that better zoos, such as Melbourne's, are doing to protect endangered species, and to educate the community about the factors which threaten their survival, and importantly, what can be done to address these. I think zoos have their place, but standards need to be developed and adhered to. And Adelaide, you certainly do not cut the grade!

What all this has taught me is that using kids, or partners, or indeed any other life circumstance as an excuse for changing your long held values and beliefs is nothing other than a selfish, ignorant and lazy sell-out.

I am working on a new bumper sticker, which at the moment goes something like this; "I have a wife, and a child, and I live where I want, and I believe in protecting human and animal rights, promoting social justice, and protecting the environment for my children's children's future". The only catch is that I'd have to completely sell-out and buy a Merc with a bumper bar big enough to stick it on.

South Australia: A Brilliant Blend (of Dickensian animal rights and modern-day admission prices). Pic: http://www.old-print.com

Psss ... you chasin'?

2011-04-14T15:35:00.001+10:00

Melbourne Air Traffic Control must have pricked up their radars recently with the number of unregistered, airborne objects appearing above the city's inner north. It seems we can't turn a corner around here at the moment without seeing pairs of running shoes, laces tied together, hanging from the power-lines.

I've never quite understood what this is all about; in my day, the odd occurrence would likely have been the result of a weedy, unpopular kid with new sneakers having wandered across the path of the neighbourhood toughs; the latter having seen fit to take advantage of the former's lowly social status by forcibly removing the offending footwear before an audience of admiring sycophants, and launching it to the heavens.

But this could never be the explanation for the modern-day appearance of these 'pedal stalactites' all over our suburb. For starters, the sheer volume of hanging shoes would mean that there were too many unpopular youths to make up a critical mass of social strata such that there wouldn't be anyone left over to rule. Furthermore, the local toughs would have had to outsource their bullying responsibilities to independent contractors in order to meet the necessary quotas for juvenile public ridicule, and the current government requirements for meeting basic safety standards for commercial contractors would be beyond the means of most 12-15 year olds. So there has to be another explanation for this urban phenomenon.

A friend of mine suggested that hanging shoes were a sign that drugs were sold in the adjacent house. Indeed, a quick scan of the innernet suggests this to be a common belief in many parts of the world, but it's not clear to me whether the intention of the shoes would be for the dealers to advertise their location, or whether it was the doing of neighbourhood vigilante-types trying to expose these 'undesirables' to law enforcement authorities.

But I am afraid this all sounds pretty implausible. While I don't hold the Victorian Police in particularly high esteem, if the hanging shoes were a signal to prospective buyers, I do think the cops are at least capable of using Google to discover this, and subsequently initiating the biggest round-up of illicit drugs since Nancy Regan sat down to play Risk with Ron, and landed Afghanistan, Burma, Thailand and Colombia in the opening round.

The local, anti-drug vigilante option also doesn't sound too plausible given they have proven in the past that a limited grasp of the English language and a can of red spray paint works effectively enough.

And let's face it, if hanging shoes were a signal, either to the lazy, fat, donut-grease-stained coppers, or to people out chasing a score, then the vast number of these signals would indicate that every second person in my locale would be off their head on coke, smack, weed and meth, at any time of the day or night; my hood would be like Southeast Los Angeles during the annual LAPD Picnic – everyday!

There has to be another explanation, and I'm all ears. What I did find interesting today, though, was a particular pair of hanging shoes. I have mentioned before how people around here are just that little bit too cool, and that they like to stand-out by making an alternative, unique statement. Well, just around the corner from my home, hanging from the power lines is a pair of shoes much like all the rest, except this is a pair of lace-less, slip-on shoes, and someone has gone to great effort to sew some string to each one, before launching them over the wire. Perhaps it is a sign from a drug dealer trying to market their product as being something different from that sold at five or six other houses on the street. No doubt by December, it'll be flashing Christmas tree lights contributing the next breakthrough in the urban drug advertising war.

"Hey, anyone know where I can get some drugs around here?" Pic: http://www.jenius.com.au

The Horror, The Horror

2011-04-07T15:19:00.001+10:00

It's so hard to remain young and funky when you've got kids; the cool, hip pubs and bars which you once habitually frequented, although just as geographically close to you as they'd been but a year or so ago, seem completely inaccessible these days.

It's not enough that caring for and raising a child keeps you tied to the home in terms of being there to watch over them through waking and sleeping, but even when you do have the opportunity for a free night away, you're completely knackered from the day's responsibilities such that you know it's gonna take chemicals a damn sight stronger than mere alcohol to even get you into the front bar, let alone on the dance floor ... and that's when the allure of half a DVD movie and an early night is just too good to pass-up.

The only consolation to the passing of your misspent youth is that your fellow offenders of yore, ensconced as they are in their own breeding programs, are experiencing the exact same social isolation and troubling passage of time as you. And like you, they are just as happy to let one Saturday night after another pass on by without so much as setting foot out their front door.

But there's something about our culture which demands that at Christmas time, one makes an effort ... kids or no. The problem, though, is where can a bunch of people, once famous for their selectivity towards cutting-edge venues and significant staying power possibly get together and maintain their hip and groovy status?

The answer is ... no where!

And so, a couple of weeks before last Christmas, in a determined effort to get together somewhere that was both kid friendly and licensed, we all bit the bullet and descended upon the 'dining room' of an inner-city hotel, complete with pokies and bar maids wearing the mandatory, low-cut bodices and push-up bras that any self-respecting, red-blooded, TAB-going Aussie male would expect from someone pouring his $2-Happy Hour pots.

We were the first of our group to arrive, and had to wait in the front bar for 10 minutes until the dining room was opened. It was here the realisation dawned that this wasn't the kind of place one was wont to frequent in one's wilder days; there were four men at the bar, each wearing Christmas break-up Santa hats and were very, very drunk. They were all speaking at the same time; their different conversations creating a loud moan that seemed to buzz around the bar and, as if by telepathy, would come together in unison to utter the phrase "f@*king c@nts", before heading off again on murmured, indecipherable tangents. It was kind of like this,

Drunk Man #1: "Murmer murmer murmer murmer - f@*king c@nts - murmer murmer murmer".

Drunk Man #2 "Whah blah whah blah whah blah - f@*king c@nts - whah blah whah blah".

Drunk Man #3: "Wang wang wang wang wang - f@*king c@nts - wang wang wang wang".

Drunk Man #4: "Yarda yarda yarda yarda yarda - f@*king c@nts - yarda yarda yarda yarda".

So, not quite the kind of place we cool, funkmeisters would once have sought-out for a drink, and not quite what one might have had in mind for one's child. Still, the dining room looked like it might be a little more civilised, so we surreptitiously slipped in, and hid in a dark corner until the booking Nazi was ready to throw open the doors.

Within five minutes, the place was packed with large groups of pre-Christmas revellers ... and their kids. At every table, there were as many high chairs as there were seats. We could tell by everyone else's assured movements that we were clearly the only newbies in the place; as we tentatively sought-out our table and tried to work out whether we were yet allowed to sit, we saw other couples stride-in with great purpose and resolve, and once inside, without even making eye contact, the acid-wash jeaned man would head to the bar while the peroxide blond, pink-spangled boob-tubed woman would dump their kids at the indoor playground and proceed to the table where she would fidget anxiously in anticipation of the impending delivery of her bourbon and coke (by the industrious Mr Acidwash) – all this executed with brilliant timing and precision.

Hang-on a minute, Donkey! Did you just try to slip something by us, and think we wouldn't notice? An indoor playground ... in a pub?!

Heh heh ... yes, I was getting to that. One of the things that makes this place kid friendly is that it has an indoor playground [ie: a place you can dump the kids while you get schickered]. This is quite an elaborate set-up, completely sealed-off from the dining room with glass that, while not great for ventilation, does allow one to keep an eye on one's offspring while downing one's pre-Christmas beers and Bundy chasers.

Our friends all arrived, and with similarly haunted looks, we sat down with our kids to order dinner. This was our next shock, and the second string in this venue's kid friendly bow. Y'see, it wasn't just the indoor playground that had this place buzzing at 5.10 on a Tuesday evening, there was also the sentence in big, bold, red letters staring back at me when I picked-up the menu, "Kids eat for free!". Uh oh!

Yes that's right. Kids are able to select - for free - from a menu of deep-fried goodies, PLUS get a free 'red-lemonade', PLUS a free 'frog-in-a-[red]-pond' desert. "Sure, it's not the most nutritious feed in the world for a growing body and mind, but hey, it is great value and...", I was suddenly warming to the whole experience, "with the money we save on Hambones' meal, we could try our luck on the pokies".

Hang-on, did I just say that? Or did I just think that ... blimey, what's happening to me?

So, brushing aside a strange, unexplained, nagging feeling of alarm in the pit of my stomach, the kids ate for free, and we ate our own, larger but equally deep-fried slabs of meat with sides of deep fried potatoes and bright-green, oily garnish. I was feeling thoroughly ill myself by the time Hambones'd downed his red lemonade and jelly, but it was only fair to let him have another run around the indoor playground with the other kids before we headed home.

As I followed him in to take-up our group's supervisory post (our revolving, continuous presence in the 'fish bowl' constituting the only adults to visit the room all evening), I was nearly struck down by the visceral wave which hit me in the senses as soon as we opened the hermetically-sealed door. It was at this time when I came to understand the instinctive unease which had been gnawing at me since I first laid eyes on the words, "Kids eat for free!"

Because the thing about kids is that if you feed them high-fat food prepared in bulk, in conditions of questionable hygiene, and you combine this with immediate, post-ingested physical activity in a humid, poorly-ventilated room, one of three things are likely to occur; i) they will vomit, ii) they will shit themselves, or iii) they will vomit and shit themselves.

And another thing about kids is that if you feed them red food colouring (in lemonade and jelly) and you send them into a humid, poorly-ventilated room with brightly-coloured plastic play equipment and rubber floors, they will go nuts; run around and scream at the top of their high soprano little voice boxes.

And another thing about kids is that if they have been fed red food colouring, and been sent into a humid, poorly-ventilated room with brightly-coloured plastic play equipment and rubber floors, and they are going nuts, it won't be long before these kids start pushing, hitting, punching and biting each other like little savages.

And another thing about wild little savages who have been force-fed artificial stimulants and placed inside a glass prison to fend for themselves while the prison guards go off duty to immerse themselves in cheap liquor, is that like any group of beings fighting for their survival, they will factionalise; with the biggest, strongest inmates asserting their dominance, and surrounding themselves with flunkies through which to inflict real, physical pain on the weakest individuals sharing their cell.

So with my sauce-enveloped, fat-saturated meat products sitting rather precariously just above my liver, I entered into this maelstrom of writhing, screeching, vomit- and shit-reeking madness, and physically shuddered as I witnessed two bigger boys beating the absolute living daylights out of a much smaller child, and an older girl clothes-lining other kids in the neck as they were pushed down the slide by one of her accomplices. In one corner, a little boy was curled-up in the foetal position, screaming as another boy unwrapped foil from a dozen, soft cubes of butter he'd misappropriated from the dining room, and was smearing them in his victim's hair, while in another, a little girl {demonstrating how her sense of taste was inversely proportional to that of her parents for bringing her here] was throwing faecal matter leaked from her bulging nappy at the flat-screen TV belching-out vintage Britney Speares music videos at megasonic volume.

Needless to say Hambones and I didn't last too long in there; by the time we'd dragged him out of that horrendous glasshouse and bundled him into the car, Colour 123 had expended its influence and he'd fallen into one of those post-party hypoglycaemic comas which make it almost impossible to pry a child from a car seat at the other end. Never-mind coming down from ecstasy a couple of days later, this night of chemical inducement took our wee one a week to recover from. OK, it was Christmas – a special occasion, and we got to meet up with our old friends ... but everyone else in that hell-hole were regulars. Given the time it took for Hambones to 'come down' from his trip, these other kids must spend their whole week like brain-dead zombies, before doing it all again, and again, and again.

The experience has definitely placed mortal fear deep into my heart. My next trip to the pub will therefore be with Hambones and his mates, aged 18 ... and we'll be going somewhere cool. I just hope I'll still be able to squeeze into my drainpipes.

Under the influence of artificial stimulants, it's only a short jump from indoor playground to juvenile offender. Pic http://cakeplow.com

Road trip IV: Encounters with the dead, the un-dead and the soon-to-be-dead in Napier

2011-03-27T17:29:00.002+11:00

Something we Euro-descendant antipodeans suffer from is a lack of our own, tangible history. Sure, we have indigenous history, but no one's really happy about our claiming that as our own, and these days, harking back to tales of the ol' country's not considered all that PC either. So we meander through life not really sure of ourselves; who we are, where we've come from, and when it comes to vacations, rather than head 'out back' to see the natural wonders which are the envy (and desired destination) of our kindred in the northern hemisphere, we take off to Europe every few years to get all aroused and drooly over 14^th century gothic churches.

Apart from history and natural beauty (the latter often combined with outdoor adventure sports), the other main thing that travellers are looking for when they hit the road these days is excellent, modern cuisine. Unusually for any single place in the world, New Zealand's Hawke's Bay has managed to land the Trifecta, boasting fantastic, rolling green foothills, sweeping, misty sea views, fine wines and dining and, thanks to a fatal natural disaster eighty years ago, an intriguing history which has resulted in a fascinating anomaly of town-planning such to induce rare, south-of-the-equator stirrings in the gussets of architecture aficionados.

Coming down off the putting-green foothills to the plains was pretty lovely; the bright blue, sweeping bay views were spectacular and the abundance of vineyards gave that whiff of promised fun over the coming days. But as we got closer to the town, we ended up on a highway bypass, looking at the high back fences of new housing developments such that you'd see from any such arterial, anywhere in the world ... except that these fences were really, really high. "What are they hiding from?", I enquired of my colleague and former Napier resident, Madge Q, shortly after my return to work.

"Everyone visits Napier and spends their day walking around marvelling at the lovely art deco streets, taking happy snaps and joy rides in 1930s motorbikes with side-carts; buying Old English Toffee and pretty bags of lavender-infused potpourri from the souvenir and gift shops," responds Madge Q, "and they head-away in the late afternoon thinking that Napier consists of only two square blocks sitting on the shore. But," she adds, now very animated, "Napier's a big centre, eh? And beyond those few, sculpted streets, there're a lot of people living in pretty poor conditions; unemployment's at 462% and rival gangs go each other with clubs and chains in supermarket carparks every night. That's what the glossy tourist brochures don't tell you about, but there's a lot to be read in the heading, 'Visit Napier; one of New Zealand's great day trips' – get out before dark, everyone!".

Useful words of warning, Madge Q, but delivered two weeks too late! T'was true enough, though. With the exception of the tourist-industry bolstered, main thoroughfare, every second store-front in Napier was empty, and those that were occupied comprised charity op-shops, Chinese import stores selling an array of brightly-coloured plastic household 'essentials', and a surprising number of employment brokers (each handily located just a few short steps from the unemployment benefit office). Napier was truly a down-and-out town!

But this message hadn't really hit home to us until our second day in Napier, when at about sunset (as always, Madge Q was spot-on), we went searching for some fish and chips - what's that? ... Oh, alright ... some fush 'n' chups - for dinner and ended up driving down streets now deserted of traffic, but along which entire households had emptied-out onto the pavement where they lounged on tattered sofas, drinking from brown paper bags while their dirty kids played in the gutters.

Our dinner was bought from a grubby, back-street store sporting a peeling, once-white art deco facade, and we adjourned to the grassy playground by the beach to sit and eat. Here, even dirtier children hovered at the edge of our vision like (and with) a pack of marauding sea gulls intent on our steaming dinner, while their parents sprawled beneath windy branches shouting and swearing at each other.

Now, one likes to think one's all very equitable, inclusive and understanding of the various ways of the world, with all its different walks of life and so-on, but I can now attest to this generosity of nature; to this enlightenment going completely out the window once you've got a wee-one in tow. "Not in my bloody backyard!".

So, scared shitless for our safety, we began scoffing our deep-fried goodies with huge, burning mouthfuls, and shoving steaming-hot morsels into our screaming child's maw in an effort to get out with our lives as quickly as possible. Only half-finished, and with the slavering kids circling closer, Mrs D and I agreed it was time to get clear.

As we stood to clean-up and get moving, the vacant, starving kiddies looked over and started limping towards us like a pack of mindless zombies out on a feeding frenzy. As Mrs D quickened towards the car and I picked-up Hambones in an effort to move with a bit more pace, the said pack of marauding urchins responded with a similarly accelerated, instinctive lurch in our direction. Openly running now, all I could hear were my pounding blood booming in my head, Hambones' frightened whimpers and the hungry moans of our slavering pursuers, hot on my heels ... I was losing my grip on Hambones as I got close to the car, and I realised it was either him or the dinner; I threw down the greasy package and dived for the car as Mrs D dropped the gas and screeched off past the pink and beige, art deco arches of Marine Parade. Through ragged breaths I glanced back and shuddered to see the young kids throwing punches and scratching at each other's faces as they ripped open the greasy white paper and gorged themselves on the fleshy remains of our ill-omened dinner.

But it wasn't all Dickensian soup kitchens and sinister run-ins with The Undead - just as long as you were in and out before dark. As I mentioned earlier, Napier's fame as an internationally recognised art deco capital is a positive outcome of a devastating earthquake in 1931, which completely wiped-out the town, leaving the land clear and ready for a stylish re-building to reflect Napier's prosperous, industrial reputation, and to communicate the 'only way is up', great expectations New Zealand had for the beach-side holiday destination.

Within a year or two of the quake, award-winning town planning had been issued and heavily regulated, structured building was well underway on a fashionable, 'golden mile' stretching down Tennyson Street from the beach to picturesque, Clive Square. It was all about style; it was all about image; and it was all about wealth.

And into this building boom wandered a young Frank; our landlord for a couple of nights while in town. I had caught Frank in a difficult circumstance the day before; turns out he wasn't quite the potty-mouth I had experienced on the phone, but rather a clean-living Baptist Minister with an eye for a real estate bargain. So in the 1940s, once building authorities gave the 'all-clear' for the new coastal land that the 'quake had thrown-up just to Napier's north, Frank took out a subsidised building loan and built a fantastic, art deco mansion directly opposite the beach. Nowadays, with his family grown and moved away, Frank rents out the bottom floor to savvy tourists such as ourselves, and it was here we spent our first, fantastic evening in a stylish house, with modern bathrooms and awesome kitchen facilities, kicking-back with some great micro-brews, a glass or two of Hawke's Bay Syrah and chomping on a succulent NZ lamb roast while gazing out over blustery, foaming waves. What a find!

So after a great night's sleep in luxury surroundings, we took-in a lazy breakky and played on the windy beach before heading into town to see what all this art deco guff was really about. While I will admit that I was pretty impressed with the stylish, two-toned architecture upon our first whip-around, after having done the two-block circuit in two minutes, my interest was starting to flag. There were a couple of key buildings which we went and posed for snaps in front of, but as buildings, well, that's all they are without a good story behind them to make 'em interesting.

Did someone ask for a good story? As I said before, Napier's mass embrace of all things art deco in the '30s was all about style; all about image; and all about wealth. Amongst the booming economy of post-depression New Zealand, Napier was at the forefront of showy displays of industrial might, and as big business clamoured over itself to secure newly appeared port access (thanks to the 'quake throwing-up about three metres of terra firma), the largest, best-positioned plot was secured for the stunning Rothmans (National Tobacco Company) Building; a sprawling, flawless, gargantuan demonstration of classic art deco fit for communicating the awesome industrial might of The Empire's tobacco subsidiaries.

The Donkeys stopped for a pose outside this celebrated monument to the furtherance of New Zealand's oncology industry. The fine structure retained pride of place amongst the nation's collective consciousness for decades, long after millions of Kiwi smokers began expiring with sinister, black fluid dripping from their autopsied lungs.

In the name of celebrating New Zealand Industry, Napier's Rothmans factory became the preferred destination of field trips for primary school students across the length and breadth of the North Island. The venue offered a great, three-in-one learning opportunity for an increasingly under-resourced, post-baby-boomer education system, combining lessons of Napier's tragic seismological history with the art deco movement of the '30s and, most importantly, an impressive display of national industry. What better way to convince the young of New Zealand's impenetrable, economic robustness than to expose them to the production of tobacco products?

And so, through they went ... for decades. I am assured by my informed correspondent, Salmon (Madge Q's long-suffering companion and former favourite son of Napier) that there is a not a single North Island citizen over the age of twenty-three who, as a child, has not visited Napier's Rothmans factory, and been given as many cigarettes as s/he can carry in their little hands to 'take home to their parents'. Not surprisingly, New Zealand's tobacco industry was one of the last of its global peers to experience declining output ... in 2009!

It was shortly after this stop on the art deco trail that we went searching for fish 'n' chips. Needless to say we refused Frank's offer the next morning for a free, additional night's accommodation. We hightailed-it out of crazy old Napier that morning, heading for stinky Rotorua, and, as it turned out, another potential opportunity for a serial-killer thriller.

Napier's stunning Rothmans (National Tobacco Company) Building; servicing the nicotine addiction of New Zealand's primary school children for over half a century. Pic: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/new-zealand/

Funky Town

2011-02-27T15:39:00.000+11:00

Setting the scene.

We live in a pretty funky part of town. I hasten to add that it certainly wasn't funky when we moved here; we're not the kind of shallow, weak-willed, easily influenced fashionista types who will blow which ever way the fickle winds of street cred will take us. No way! We moved here long before it was funky [admittedly because we couldn't afford to live in the funky area].

And now, with financial markets across the globe still clawing their way out of a deep, dark, self-inflicted hole, like us years before, the Funkies have found themselves with less spare change creating an awkward bulge in their ridiculous, low-wasted, black, drain-pipes, and they too have made the journey north to 'enrich' our living experience with their very own, incredibly-individualistic-and-yet-so-like-everyone-else-in-the-room brand of cool.

And because being Funky is all about being around other Funkies, they haven't just arrived in a trickle, but rather have lobbed, en masse, into the share houses of this historic, migrant, working-class suburb, and hot on their heels, a plethora of laid/peeled-back bars, second-hand clothing stores and, most noticeably, coffee roasters have exploded onto the streetscape.

It's the latter, growing out of just about any hole in the wall, closet, stairwell or similarly confined space with street access which has really made the biggest impact upon any local residents larger than a size 24 trying to squeeze their way down the sidewalk past bandy-legged, latte-sipping über trendies (let alone trying to get through with a Hambones-sized stroller, or heaven forbid a disabled person might be allowed out of their home!) which is the main reason for this post. So let's go for a walk and take a squiz...

Welcome to The Scene.

Without doubt, the avante garde coffee pad for local Funkies in this area is Cafe Stan [not it's real name]. Cafe Stan arrived on the scene very quietly about eight years ago, but became very noisy, very quickly, as word passed around the surrounding doss- and art-houses. Cafe Stan's one of those places without any signage – it could be called Cafe Freddy, or Cafe Darren, or Cafe Sebastian for all I know, but it's 'known' as Cafe Stan, and that's all there is to it.

Cafe Stan's success, it should be noted, can without doubt be attributed to a fastidious commitment to really incredible coffee. If you're after a blow-yer-head-off, tangy, single origin/estate blend, served with a fine, aromatic crema at just the right temperature, then this is your place. But let's face it, when it comes to Funkies just wanting to be seen hanging-out with other Funkies, Stan may as well be serving up molten poo in a bucket, and word would still get 'round that this was THE place to be [seen].

Regular reader of this Blog will know that I am the kind of person who quite enjoys a fine brew just about as much as anything else I've had the fortune to experience, but even I have trouble summoning-up the courage to visit Cafe Stan for my 'morning' pick-me-up. Why? Well for starters, no one goes anywhere near Cafe Stan before about 11.30am. The first rule of Funky is that you're no where near awake, sober and/or straight before 11.29, so it's all tumbleweeds and surly staff - who've obviously drawn the short straw at last night's vampire party – while the sun's in the eastern sky.

But from 11.31 onwards, the place is packed with a most eclectic bunch of [non-]personalities trying terribly hard to see what everyone else is doing without actually looking at anyone. This is not an easy ask, I can assure you, when one is also straining every muscle and sinew trying to look incredibly cool and comfortable, while balancing on tiny, size 15-arse wooden boxes which only barely stand upright on their own. If I didn't know better, I'd say Stan was completely taking the piss; pushing these tragically aloof, self-absorbed fashion victims to see just how far their humiliation could reach before they started to get some perspective.

Please allow me to offer an example by way of demonstration. About two years ago, I found myself out and about alone, around midday on a Tuesday, and thought I might drop by for a long black, to see if Stan still had it going on, barista-wise. But as I approached the stylised, peeling facade, I bottled out. Why? Well this is the gauntlet I faced having to run before I could even get to the door.

Wandering along the footpath towards Cafe Stan, despite it being a work day, I noticed that every one of the six wooden boxes were occupied, and as I approached, I clocked each one in turn;

Wooden box #1: a lanky gentleman in fluorescent pink board-shorts (circa 1984), golf shoes with the frilly flaps hanging over the front, a leather vest (no shirt), a massive black moustache and a 1960s bikers flat-cap (think San Francisco 1987, or just Google the Village People). This nit wit was not looking at the person sitting opposite him (who may or may not have been his companion), but did manage a judgemental sneer at the sight of my cargo shorts and runners.

Wooden box #2: another lanky gentleman wearing checked shorts way up high on his waste (which, if the small wooden box hadn't been in the way, would no doubt have disappeared way up his jacksie), revealing very long, thin, white legs, and on his feet, a pair of Blundstone-style, slip-on work-boots ... SPRAY-PAINTED GOLD! He was wearing a brown, checked golfers flat-cap (think Chevy Chase in Caddy Shack). He did not look at me, nor did he bother to withdraw his outstretched stork's pegs, which I was forced to step over.

Wooden box #3: A young woman in an altered, sequined 1920s cocktail frock, black GP army boots and with a silver-studded, black leather wrist-band, which just happened to match that of her companion, sitting opposite her.

Wooden box #4: The presumed companion of Ms Charlston on box #3 was wearing nothing but a silver-studded black leather collar. This individual was a short, ugly bull terrier, and like everyone else outside the cafe, was neither looking at its companion, nor anyone else. It did spit-out a deep, guttural growl at my plain, blue t-shirt as I passed, however.

Wooden box #5: Another woman, this time wearing what must have been a little girl's dress (all pretty flowers and frills), which she had managed to squeeze into with the aid of strategic slits across most of the panels. She had green leggings protruding out the bottom, pink and purple leg warmers (Flashdance) and pointy, white flats on her feet. Most extraordinarily about this lady (as if you needed more) was that she held her massive latte in one hand, and in the other, was trying to negotiate an early model e-reader, while trying to balance with only one butt cheek on the box (now e-readers might be like electric kettles in households nowadays, but I assure you, this phenomenon has been a rapid one – this crazy chick was leading the way). Did I say crazy? She tipped half her latte onto the pavement just where I was about to walk, and then spat in it!

Wooden box #6: This kid almost certainly wasn't the Nutcase on box #5's companion, but probably chose to sit there with his NEWSPAPER just to demonstrate that he'd gone full circle and was now completely retro. He was wearing super thin, black drainpipes, Dunlop K26ers on his feet, a tight, moth-eaten t-shirt featuring Bobby McFerrin (whose rumours of suicide must have been long-cold by the time this young 'un had even been born) and had massive, thick-rimmed Tootsie-style spectacle frames. He was sitting closest to the front door, and talking very loudly on one of those massive, Motorola bricks from the early '90s. As I approached the front step, ready to enter, he was screaming into the phone, "Yea-aah, he's wearing like, a pair of contemporary sneakers", after which he let out a very feminine, high pitched squeal of laughter, which caused the occupiers of both boxes #3 and #4 to start howling at a young Mum struggling to avoid on-coming traffic with a stroller out on the road (as the only way to get past the cafe's cluttered frontage).

At that point, I lost all courage and nerve. I walked straight on past Cafe Stan and went and bought the guaranteed, worst coffee of all time from the next closest option; the last remaining takeaway 'restaurant' in inner Melbourne with an exclusive menu of deep-fried delicacies served straight to you from the glowing chamber of a greasy bain-marie – the eating place of choice for junkies down on their luck!

I know this is showing both my age, and how out of touch I have become with the young and funky, but I really don't know why Lipps Inc were so keen to get here. Judging by the apparent way the Funkies spend all their time avoiding eye-contact and passive-aggressively competing with each other for wacky self-image supremacy, not to mention their outward disdain for anyone not considered anywhere near their league, Funky Town must be the loneliest place on earth!

Coming soon to a cafe near you ... well ... near me, anyway! Pic: http://www.radiometal.fr

TV and advertising: no respect for the market

2011-02-02T23:51:00.002+11:00

Is it just me, or has TV advertising become completely tired and jaded lately?

Aside from the sharp suits, cool demeanours and sassy women of 1950s Madison Avenue, below the surface of TV's Mad Men, one can't help but be fascinated and appalled at the rapid growth of a wholly unsavoury and immoral industry designed to make shitloads of money through the blatant manipulation of people's thoughts and actions.

These advertising firms are the origin of things which have not only become commonplace in our lives, but have done so in such a way as to convince us that they've existed for ever. Such as the fat, jolly, bearded fellow who "Ho ho hos" his way down the chimney every December, and whom a few of us can still remember was once known as Saint Nicholas. It is a false assumption that he always wore red and white – even though this stylisation from the Coca-Cola 'family' can't be more than 60 years old!

Same goes for the 'age old tradition of sending greeting cards' – Hallmark's deliberate, massive scaling-up of an otherwise unnecessary 'tradition' resulting in a multi-billion dollar empire. Or the introduction and subsequent integration into people's lives of a whole host of 'must have' products such as disposable nappies, frozen vegetables and paper towels.

It's true that this commercially-driven, mass brainwashing didn't happen without firm intent, considerable expense and subtatntial elbow grease, at least metaphorically. The efforts which advertising agencies went to in order to understand their clients' markets was extensive, utilising focus groups, behaviour modelling, surveys and even illegal, hidden cameras and wire-tapping. It's fair to say that these processes, honed to perfection in pursuit of the advertising dollar, are now available and utilised today to inform less morally corrupt enterprises such as customer service standards for community or government services, for international aid programs, for disaster and humanitarian responses and, I guess, for international espionage. So while they are processes which can occasionally benefit society, they were definitely developed to generate masses of wealth.

But regardless of whether or not you agree with the motive, or the method, the intention of the advertising industry to learn about the wants and desires, behaviours and practices of the market is evidence that a certain level of respect for that market exists. The market is not taken for granted, but rather the individuals and groups which comprise it are viewed as highly legitimate, and their thoughts and ideas important. Sure, this desire to hear from, and understand them precedes a merciless attempt at mass brainwashing, but up until that point, there were great efforts made towards engagement and learning, and this is what is to be admired.

This is the way it has been for years, not only on Madison Avenue, but here in Australia, also.

And as a result, although we now better understand the evil intent, there have been some pretty wonderful, enjoyable and truly entertaining advertising campaigns over the years, not only from the hallowed agencies of Madison Avenue, but also from our own, home-grown pretenders.

Remember the Four-n-Twenty hot stuff ad from the 70s? Fantastic ambience! – which could have only been possible through in-depth study of who eats pies, and why. Interestingly, one of my favourite ads of all time was also from Four-n-Twenty, this time from the late 90s. This was a tremendous demonstration of the advertising agency getting 'back to basics'; everything, including the slick Holden sliding past at the beginning, being clear evidence that it was developed after very close and respectful consideration of the market.

Australian Coke ads were also pretty great over the years, with their big 'blow-up things' over tropical shore lines, on which young people were having about the best time anyone could with their clothes on (although admittedly only barely on), demonstrating that the advertisers' knew what it was that people really want from their fizzy beverages.

Speaking of which, the Big M Girls were a leaf out of the old 'Sex Sells' book. They were eventually retired to the mechanics' shop walls once the smouldering remains of the last bras sputtered out on the pavement. But this vehicle boosted the sale of chocolate-flavoured milk to a receptive, even wanting market for decades.

These days, with the advent of u-toob and internet-based social marketing tools, advertising has taken an entirely new direction, with sometimes feature-length ads being developed using CGIs and other home-editing goodies and being spread throughout the world in seconds like supersonic viruses. But again, someone has done their homework, and aimed this stuff just right.

So with consumerism at an all-time high, and the responsibility for worldwide economic recovery lying squarely on the shoulders of recognised, multi-national brands producing lots of shiny 'must have' stuff that nobody needs, why has the decades-old commitment to understanding the market and targeting advertising accordingly suddenly been dropped?

Or have we, the market, finally 'evolved' such that we are now so brain-dead that we will buy whatever shit is going, for no other reason than that it is there? My case in point was a TV ad I saw tonight (during prime time, not at 3am) for a jewellery store; an attractive looking, female model in an expensive-looking evening gown opens a jewellery box and says, "This reminds me of Spain". This is followed by close-ups of a couple of diamond rings and a necklace.

Hmmm ... why Spain? No reason? Yeah, that's what I thought. Tck, tck, not good enough, Madison. Lift your game or we, the market, might just decide to start thinking again, and decide that we really don't have need for the John Wayne commemorative plate set.

And while we're on the subject of the poor state of TV, a post I read today over at www.clementineford.com.au about the way reality TV promotes nasty, social hatred and bigotry, reminded me of how powerful those horrible, negative lessons can be when such programs go viral and global.

While facilitating public consultation with groups of community, civil society and government stakeholders about the new national health promotion policy in Samoa last year, one of the senior government officials, in complete honesty, asked me, as an Australian, to explain to the gathering about the benefits of "that great, nation-wide public health initiative on Australian television, The Biggest Loser", and to convince the audience to consider such an approach for Samoa.

"Yes, Your Excellency", I replied, "Indeed, public health research has shown that the best way to make obese people lose weight is to expose them to public ridicule by having them wear bikinis and work-out until they throw-up on national television".* And with that, The Biggest Loser has been adopted as national health promotion policy in Samoa for the next ten years.

It is no wonder the US, through free trade agreements, are so keen to ensure that other nation's TV is rife with their content. The unsuspecting can be so susceptible to political, social and even religious views and ideologies they see on The Box. Very concerning indeed.

* - just to be clear, I said nothing of the sort!

The Big M Girls, keeping a nation hooked-up to chocolate milk for decades. Pic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDk26MtUq94&playnext=1&list=PL8F060F10E3A34F87

Road trip III: Sex is everywhere, but no where around me

2011-01-27T16:25:00.002+11:00

Like the TV series, MASH, which ran three times as long as the Korean War in which it was set, this Road Trip story is reaching Cecil B. DeMille-esque proportions, greatly out-distancing the actual trip upon which it is based. I'll see what I can do about wrapping it up.

My last waking act before leaving Windy Wellington was to return to one of the hundreds of coffee outlets I'd been churning through over the previous few days, to buzz my brain a little more while I sorted out some onward accommodation using the free Wi-Fi.

After many false starts, bogus postings and rude landlords refusing a two-night stay, I eventually got onto Frank, a beach house property owner from Napier who answered the phone with, "Awwr shut! ... ah, hello? Frank speaking...". Frank's engine had exploded moments before I'd called, and he was swearing blue, kiwi murder as he stood stranded on a country road.

"Yeah, thut should be no worries ... fuck ... just come up and we'll sort everythung out when you get here [boom!] ... shut, nooooooo... [click] beep beep beep...".

So with a gullet full of caffeine, a well-rested Hambones and Mrs D wrestling with a plethora of chords as she tried to get the sexy Kiwi GPS navigator working, we started on our way out of Welly ... just after a final supply run to the ironically-named 'New' World. In no way is New Zealand more like 1980s suburban Melbourne than in its supermarkets; when I was a wee one, Coles supermarket was known as Coles' New World, and walking through the doors of the Wellington New World, the surroundings immediately had me reminiscing about climbing into one of those hard plastic trolley seats, and taking a massive dump in my daks.

The setting was flawless 1980s; tins of food were stacked in precarious, delinquent-child-attracting pyramidal displays, the trolleys were massive, deep and without the modern child-safety straps, and there was a tobacco counter up front at which stood four or five old ladies in plastic shower caps trying to buy cartons of ciggies with loose change.

Mrs D and I went crazy with the nostalgia of it all and filled that stretch-limo trolley with all kinds of stuff you haven't been able to buy in Australia for 25 years. As we approached the checkout, we were more than a little sheepish in anticipation of the expected whack this was going to make in our savings.

The first pleasant surprise we received at the checkout was a surprisingly pleasant young man ringing-up each item with a smile, a laugh and a generally amiable disposition (something we haven't experienced in Australian supermarkets for at least two decades), and the next wonderful gift was that the African-famine-saving haul of 1980s groceries we'd just procured totalled exactly what it would have back in the '80s!

Are you kidding me? All through our trip in NZ, all we ever heard from people we met, or on the radio, TV current affairs programs or in the papers was that Australians' salaries were 40% higher than Kiwis', and that economists were tipping this inequity to rise in the next year by 20 - 437% (depending on the disgruntlement of the person relaying the story – "Err, it's not fair. You Australians get it easy. We're thinking of leaving and going over to live in Aussie 'cause it's just too expensive here"). And yet there we were, with the biggest hoard of groceries since Henry VIII decided he was going to up-size Christmas dinner, costing only about 40% of a regular grocery bill back home! Get some perspective, Kiwis! We might get paid more than you, but it costs you nothing to live, eat, own a vehicle or an ocean-view property.

So with that warm feeling one gets from having a wallet still full of cash, and with our mouths full of pineapple lumps and 'chocolate fush', we nudged out of the New World car park, and thanks to the seductive, dulcet tones of 'Dulcie', the sexy Kiwi GPS, we were on the highway and heading-off on the Road Trip proper with some classic Black Seeds dubbing it up on the stereo to help us on our way.

Within moments, sophisticated, windy old Wellington was behind us, replaced by stretches of farmland dotted with periodic communities of New Worlds, McDonalds-es and Bunnings Warehouses. The suddenness of the city's disappearance reminded us just how small this country was, and while musing over this, as if to hit the point home, we emerged from a deep valley and were looking out over a spectacular, sun-swept bay with dramatic, mountainous islands shooting-up out of the sparkling water. The road along the shoreline was as tight and spectacular as our own, much-lauded Great Ocean Road, with the adrenaline-pumping bonus of no safety barriers, and we were thoroughly pumped as the dramatic views and Salmonella Dub's Dancehall Girl created an expectant air of exciting adventures to come.

As we passed through Palmerston North, university town to many of our Kiwi friends, I exhaled a deep sigh of relief that I had stuck to my guns and refused Mrs donkey's demands that we book a night's accommodation here. Apart from Massey University, the only other thing Palmy is famous for is that at least one of its residents features on the evening news each night, usually for having beaten, killed, raped, eaten or been practicing polygamy with a neighbour and/or family member. I quietly locked the doors as we cruised down the main drag, and gunned the Epica through the red lights to ward-off University pranksters and/or armed car jackers.

As with Wellington, we were through Palmy in a jiffy, and before long were hurtling along a windy, barrier-less road through a spectacular gorge at ridiculously dangerous speeds thanks to a massive cattle truck balling down on our arse. This deep canyon seemed to be the sluice via which inland communities emptied their refuse into Palmerston North, and before long we were cruising though the quaint little town of Woodville, where we stopped for a break, a leak and an ice cream.

The latter was sourced from a wonderfully, 1950s-looking dairy in the main street, and we took our 30 cent (!) treats a block down a side street to a magnificent local park. What I have failed to describe to date is the great contrast between the colour of the Australian countryside and that of North Island New Zealand – NZ is so spectacularly green! And this public park was just incredible. Reverently we each took off our shoes before tiptoeing onto the fluffy, emerald carpet, and then grinning guiltily, we stood waiting for some old Kiwi, Mr McGreggor-type to come running over to us waving a shovel and shouting, "Git off the grass, wull yous!". But we soon realised that this lush, well clipped and rolled public lawn was fair game for all, and judging by the indifference being displayed by the bike-riding teenagers wandering across the furry floor over yonder, such facilities appeared reasonably commonplace.

We stuck around in that park for about two hours, lounging back on the soft grass beneath the swaying oaks, and watching Hambones amuse himself on the gravity-defying, 1950s safety standard play equipment. After a while we also came to take a little interest in the other park users, and to notice certain behaviours and circumstances that bound them.

Firstly, over the course of an hour, a gathering of young teens swelled from three to about twelve, comprising tough, fit, young white boys in low-slung daks, and similarly-conditioned girls in cut-off denim shorts and crop tops. They would move from one set of play equipment to the next, flirting and laughing together, almost touching and then breaking away again. They seemed intimately familiar with each other and ... well, bored.

From time to time, one would call out to similarly-aged citizens walking along the park's periphery, or through the middle on the immaculately curated paths as they pushed prams containing wee, crying babies.

The original group continued to wander from the swings, to the slide, laughing and flirting and occasionally splitting off in couples to hold hushed conversations beside the thick oaks, before outing a shrill laugh and re-joining their friends.

As we packed-up and headed-off to join potty-mouth Frank in Napier, I reflected that despite the lush surroundings of Woodville, like so many small towns the world over, there was very little to occupy young people such to prevent the kind of boredom which can rapidly slide into circumstances which may ultimately anchor them in the very place which offers them so little stimulation. I had no doubt those swinging teens (no pun intended) would soon be joining their park-traversing compatriots during infant-sleep-inducing perambulations.

Fine green grass might keep the mid-week golfing ladies busy, but for the youth of Woodville, it's not quite enough to steer 'em clear of the rough. Pic: http://www.hickerphoto.com/putting-green-shot-oliva-nova-golf-course-valencia-12635-pictures.htm

Park Life

2011-01-15T14:54:00.001+11:00

I much prefer being at the park with Hambones when the prevailing activity around us is other young families with children playing on the equipment ... rather than transactional sex!

Visiting the local parks for a daily play on the equipment is new to me; as a kid, my parents were all, "You must not go to the park by yourself or with your friends ... only with us".

"OK", I would nod uncertainly, understanding the instruction, but not the sentiment behind it. "Can we go to the park?"

"No!".

So there was pretty much no park at all for young Donkey, but we lived in the outer 'burbs anyway, and compared with the postage stamp that Hambones has to run around in today, our backyard when we were growing up was as big as any park going. Still, one always wants what one can't have, so I continued to nag.

But to be honest, compared with today's facilities, the park in those days wasn't really that fantastic; just a couple of metal-coloured, metal bars and a metal slide baking in the harsh midday sun (and guaranteed to cook my young, supple Donkey butt into a couple of toasty-burnt muffins).

So while I could appreciate that the park was pretty boring, and a little bit painful, I didn't really understand what my parents had against it. When I was a bit older, I suppose in an effort to put an end to years of incessant nagging, I was told that the park was to be avoided because, "it was a dangerous place where strange people went and did dirty things". Unfortunately for my folks, this off-hand explanation ended up causing a bit of a social scandal within the local primary school community and had to be publically retracted after our driving past the park one day and me seeing Sam D'Mond (one of our neighbours' kids) playing there on his own. I went to school the very next day and told everyone that my Mum had said that Sam D'Mond (already a bit of a social outcast due to a penchant for the taste of his own snot) was "a weird little twerp who did dirty things at the park!".

Still, despite the red-faced retraction, I remained unaware of the dangers of the park. As nearly as I could ascertain, apart from a burnt ring, boredom and Johnny Butler and his gang alternating between dishing-out common, schoolyard, Chinese-burn-style bullying and experimenting with cigarettes and soft porn magazines in the bushes in the back corner, there was not really all that much to fear from the park. Besides, Mrs D'Mond didn't seem to mind old 'Snot Muncher' playing there on his own!

But as I mentioned, the facilities and surroundings in today's parks are another thing altogether, and especially here in the high-density, inner city, it's no surprise that families turn out in droves to play on the colourful, non-heat-conducting plastic slides, rubber swings, flying foxes, non-splintering wooden beams and airborne-child-cushioning, bouncy-floors, all situated beneath wonderful, shady oaks and gum trees, and surrounded by well-manicured, grassy lawns.

In most of our parks, there are also free gas barbeques and picnic chairs and tables for the public to use, as well as necessary, disability-accessible public lavatories. Our friend Mr Belfast still can't believe the barbeques, "If this was in England or Ireland, people would piss and shit all over them - there's no way I would use one of those things!". "Ha Ha", we laugh, humouring his European naivety. He clearly doesn't understand that such things don't happen here in Australia – no, Australians would never shit on a public barbeque in a park when there is well-moulded, designer play equipment easily on hand!

Recently, while playing at the park, we were approached by a gentleman whose firm had been contracted by the local council to survey park users about the facilities. T'was an interesting experience to be approached by this supposedly impartial surveyor, and to watch him get increasingly animated and agitated as the survey unfolded;

Surveyor: How would you rank [1-5] the cleanliness and tidiness of the park?

Donkey: Yeah good. It's pretty clean. I'd say 4.

Surveyor: A 4? Are you kidding me? What do you call that over there?

Donkey: Oh yeah ... there's some rubbish. OK, a 3.

Surveyor: You don't think a 2?...

Surveyor: How would you rank [1-5] the state of the play equipment?

Donkey: Oh. Really great. 4-5, I reckon.

Surveyor: Were you aware that a child broke her arm here last week?

Donkey: Um ... no. Maybe a 3?

Surveyor: [smiles and nods].

And on it went for about half an hour. He said that this was his first day of surveying, and that he was going to be there all week (obviously I stayed away for the rest of the week), but no doubt he was, through his Woody Allen-esque neuroses and generally judgemental disposition, single-handedly responsible for the play equipment upgrade just a few weeks later, which included a quaint little cubby house with chairs and a little table ... just perfect for little kids to sit in and share a picnic and, as it happens, also a pretty tidy place for young people to start experimenting with each other's bodies.

Look, I'm all for a bit of experimental teenage safe sex, but it might be nice if they could deposit these 'Agents of Protection' in one of the nearby bins when vacating the premises – after all, what we don't know won't hurt us ... or our tea-partying toddlers.

So maybe these were the kinds of goings-on at the park that our parents were trying to protect us from all those years ago ... or maybe it was something else again ... maybe it was what Hambones and I were exposed to yesterday afternoon.

As we approached the empty park, I noticed a couple of people about fifty metres ahead of us wandering towards the recently established disability-accessible public lavatories. I wasn't really taking much notice, but only became aware that something was not right when, on arrival at the play equipment, neither person was in sight, and the only sign of life was the urgent blinking of the red "occupied" light on the lavatory door, silently screaming out like an emergency distress beacon pleading for assistance, "Danger! Warning! There are too many people in the loo! Please assist. Danger!".

But you know how you get all irrational when you're scared? I thought to myself, "Oh look, Donkey. I am sure it's all legit. He's probably a man with end-stage colonic cancer and she's his carer, and they've gone into the disability-accessible lav so that she can help him to change his colostomy bag".

Time dragged on and on, and still no one emerged from the toilet. While others may have viewed this as suspicious, I took it as further confirmation of my very plausible scenario. "You're onto it, Donkey," my delusions continued, "Those bags can be pretty tricky to get off ... and sometimes they leak and have to be cleaned-up. It's all good."

After about half an hour, by which time another couple had arrived at the play ground with their infant son, the carer emerged from the toilet looking every bit the qualified health worker that she obviously was; a big-haired, gum-chewing "lady" in a professional ensemble of dirty white crop-top above (which showed-off her massive falsies) and low-slung black tracksuit pants with matching runners below.

Seeing the park occupied by playing children and wholesome young families, she immediately turned to go back inside, only to find the door locked. "Can ya hear me?" she shrieked to her patient within, "We better get going".

About five minutes later, out stepped the tumour-ridden gentleman; a dirty, lanky and very skanky dude in jeans (no belt), runners and a long pony-tail, and would you believe, he was actually scratching his [no doubt, greasy] nuts! "What the fuck are ya yellin at me for?", he politely enquired of his carer, and off they took themselves (walking along the fence-line, rather than on the designated path), conversing (read: arguing) loudly to each other.

"I guess those anti-cancer drugs can make you pretty narky", I thought to myself.

Within moments of their departure, the park was full of oblivious families, laughing and playing with their children on the wonderful equipment, in the shade of the swaying oaks. That's Park Life, inner-Melbourne style!

Breaking Bad's Wendy the Crackwhore demonstrating her new career caring for terminal cancer-sufferer's in Donkey's local park yesterday. Pic: http://remotelyinterested.blogspot.com

Road Trip Part II: The Real Wellington

2011-01-06T15:21:00.002+11:00

Walk into any travel agent in the land, or log onto a myriad of travel webs and one is invariably faced with multiple images, mostly falling into one of the following three categories;

i) Beach scenes with hot young guys and girls in fashionably skimpy swimming costumes; aqua-blue water, sparkling white sand, azure skies and horizons punctuated with coconut palms and/or sailing vessel.

ii) Ancient ruins with groups of grinning young girls and guys decked-out in funky threads; all looking like they're having the time of their lives, partying their way through all the attractions of Europe and the middle east.

iii) Mountain-top vistas in front of which pose fit looking young women and men, all decked-out in the latest, brightly-coloured outdoor trekking gear, beanies and cool sunnies reflecting the bright sun and deep blue sky of the upper Himalayan atmosphere.

Obviously the pony-tailed marketing executives have done their homework and decided that of all the things that people want from their travels, these three scenes strike a strong chord with the geographically bored, and offer hope and excitement enough for people, regardless of their physical appearance, fitness, fashion sense or ability to party, to sign their hard earns away and take to the skies.

Interestingly, the common element of the three scenes is age; everyone in these pics is young, regardless of the location or the activity, suggesting perhaps that they are designed to make people feel young, or to think that going on a trip might make them young again. Of course this is ludicrous, and anyone with half a brain would be able to see right through this cheap marketing stunt in an instant.

Fortunately, between Mrs Donkey, Hambones and myself, we manage to come-up with just over half a brain, and this type of manipulative marketing has no effect on us, whatsoever. Quite the contrary, in fact; past experience has demonstrated time and again that Mrs D and I are much more likely to visit an attraction if it is the recreational choice of octogenarians with hearing aids and colostomy bags, rather than young people with iPods and stubby-holders.

For example, many years ago we slipped-off early one Sunday morning to try out a different Samoan beach from our usual, idyllic locale, and spent a delightful half-hour alone together beneath the swaying palms. Shortly afterwards, however, a tour bus pulled up and within moments the water around us had taken-on the appearance of the set of Cocoon; the beach became crowded with tanned, leathery, old German men and women in skimpy Speedos and rubber bathing caps – a greasy slick from sunscreen and tanning oil oozing in their wake. They were joined by more buses, and we subsequently made our way home.

On another occasion, we left Glasgow with raging hangovers from a week with friends, and decided to see some of the English countryside on the way back to London. First stop was Lake Windermere, where the white and purple hair brigade had booked-up every poky English accommodation option in the whole district. Despite the grumbles from Mrs D, I kept my chin-up and pushed on to The Cotswolds, where the sights may well have been pleasantly quaint, but where there was nary a place to sit on any of the public lawns due to their having morphed into jammed parking lots for wheelchairs and walking frames.

We can't miss a trick, really. But this was going to be different. This was NZ! Home of extreme sports and by all accounts, fine food and wine.

And by mid afternoon on day 2, I'd had about 13 cups of ball-tearing New Zealand coffee, and was having a little trouble getting to sleep during a scheduled afternoon nap. The same seemed to go for Hambones, who must have been breathing-in the caffeine which was seeping out of my pores in great, brown droplets.

So after much tossing and turning, up we all got, and tooled-up for a jaunt around Wellington. It's a little known fact that, contrary to popular misconception, the English name for gumboots does not derive from Field Marshall Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, but rather from the only appropriate footwear to be worn in the city which bears his name. As we walked out of the hotel, there was so much horizontal rain beating down upon us that we made a dash across the road to the only dry tourist attraction within sight – the Wellington cable car. Within moments we were safe from the elements, and making our way up above the city to the botanical gardens, encased in glass with thirty or so others, all of whom were over the age of 94! Here we were again – the Real Wellington.

And they were all white, too (not just their hair, but their skin) ... mostly Australians taking advantage of cheap airfares and seniors' discounts to cross the pond and immerse themselves in the world of their collective childhoods; where dark-coloured skin was only read about in His Majesty's Colonial School Readers. And what better way to relive the Glory Days of the Empire, than by a jolly outing up the hill to the beautiful, English-inspired botanical gardens.

Grumpy, cold, wet and defeated, we waited out the storm and travelled back down the mountain as the sun started through the clouds. We bailed out of the train, crossed the road and piled into the first pub we could find with an open fire. To our pleasant surprise, we found that a left turn in the rain, rather than a right, would have brought us to the other half of the population; here were the people from tourism propaganda photo number ii (see above), all singing and dancing and having a great old time.

So despite the cold and our depression at having been yet again exposed to the 'waiting for God' travelling circus, we kicked-back our heels and got stuck into some fine Sauv Blanc and about two dozen Mac's Sassy Reds – now this is what I call a town! Sure, it may be small, and it may be the destination of choice for aging white supremacists, but the food and drink is superb ... and cheap. It's not for nothing that Lonely Planet named Wellington an extremely "liveable small city" ... however the caveats around that award were starting to show through the cracks – it is small, and it was time to get out before we became completely water-logged.

Load-up the boot, Mrs D ... it's time to hit the road, Kiwi-style...

This scene is reminiscent of Donkey and Mrs D's romantic, early-morning visit to a secluded tropical island beach in 2000. Pic: http://www.homevideos.com/freeze-movies/Cocoon/Cocoon24.jpg

Random Observations of Lhasa

2010-12-21T21:30:00.000+11:00

Golden ice.

While the freezing temperatures ensure that every man and his Tibetan mastiff pissing against random brick walls less offensive than, say, in a stifling New Delhi summer, it certainly plays havoc with a freezing Donkey trying to negotiate the already treacherous cobbles of Lhasa’s sidewalks in the early morning darkness; the golden, icy slicks sending him sprawling unceremoniously onto the filthy stones every couple of metres, much to the delight of the similarly rugged-up, although considerably more nimble youngens making their way to school.

Did somebody say dark?

As if it wasn’t bad enough that Tibet operates on a Beijing time zone despite being at least two hours ahead (in real time) of the distant seat of power, the Party Regime has seen it fit to dictate that all of Lhasa’s street lights be switched-off at precisely 7.55am, which happens to be approximately one hour and thirty minutes before dawn.

Under cover of darkness.

The opportunistic urbanites of Lhasa use this veiled, pre-dawn window to their advantage, thumbing their noses at Central Government directives to make Lhasa “a model National city” through forced clean-up campaigns, by disposing of their nightly waste water directly over the footpath. While such practices might be great for keeping the street dust at bay in summer, in winter the frozen slicks encrusted with toothpaste, noodles, slimy vegetables and worse (given what goes on behind the greasy curtain hanging in the back of most of these shops), in addition to posing a potential public health risk, again make negotiating perambulation rather difficult.

Speaking of sex…

Adorning the many shops in Lhasa which sell ladies’ “intimate apparel” are larger-than-life hoardings of Western lingerie models sporting skimpy designer bras and panties in a range of fashionable hues. You don’t have to get up too close to notice (although one has been known to do so) that despite the advertising, inside these stores you won’t find anything smaller than ankle to neck, cover-all undergarments in a range of fashionable beige; an inventory more likely to appease a grim Victorian school ma’am than a sultry seductress with come hither eyes.

And while you’re licking your chops over that one…

…you may like to join the thousands of Buddhist pilgrims who flock to Lhasa from the remote countryside in their crazy, fluffy headdresses, braided locks and bejewelled faces each winter to worship and prostrate themselves before Tibetan Buddhism’s foremost holy temples, monasteries and shrines, and while they are here, to visit the roadside dental stalls which specialise in gold caps and whiter-than-white pearlies (ridiculously white, really … I guess a mouthful of Clorox will do that for ya). I can assure you it is quite a shock to be wandering along with the crowd and a sideways glance towards an open doorway revealing a short man in a grubby, blood-spattered (formerly) white lab-coat, cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, holding aloft an enormous horse-needle poised for insertion into an old woman’s gums while her family strain to clamp her arms to the chair.

Almost as shocking as what you’ll find in the adjacent store, separated from the “dentist” by nothing but fly-blown air; the meat locker, filled to the ceiling with half-frozen, butchered yak carcasses. Don’t believe me? Well have a shifty at this.

The Lhasa Meat Locker. Pic: Hagas

Zit Face: a heart-warming Christmas message

2010-12-16T13:42:00.000+11:00

Call me an old, romantic idealist (oh, go-on), but what I love most about Christmas are not the massive haul of presents sitting beneath plastic pine trees, nor the mountains of land-fill generated by Chinese-made plastic crap, nor the crowded press of zombies wandering around shopping mauls (sic) at 2am just because they’re open 24 hours, but rather, what I love most about Christmas are the tales of love and hope; the celebration of solidarity, and the message that our loved ones, including ourselves, are the most important commodity in the world.

So I thought I’d dedicate this, pre-Christmas post to the message that no matter how down-trodden you may feel, or how abhorrent you think you are, there’s always someone who feels worse, or is more repugnant than you.

Over the years, I have gone to great lengths to make sure that this Blog maintains my anonymity, without outwardly telling any untruths (although that may be one of the few just there). But I am about to reveal something about myself which could well oust me from my quiet, little, internet hidey-hole.

I suffer from disgusting, horrible, disfiguring acne. It all started way too early, when I was 9 – just my luck getting acne at age 9, but my balls refusing to drop until I was 25! – and by the time I was 13, my doctor was scribbling down in his notes phrases like “visible lakes of pus” and “deep sinus fissures tracking to Norway”.

The awful thing about teenage acne, despite it leaving you looking like something which, in biblical times, would have seen you ejected over the city walls, is that the extent to which anyone really knows what to do about it is inversely proportional to the number of unsolicited opinions that are offered as to what to do about it.

The obvious approach one might have considered when, as a 13-year-old, one awoke to a pillow soaked in blood and pus for two-weeks running, would have been to consult a dermatologist. However, due to the fact that every teenage kid in my school who had ever visited one of these witch doctors, while certainly having their acne cleared-up within a matter of weeks, was usually left with a face resembling The Somme in 1917, and thanks to the powerful drug regime they’d been subjected to, a bonus shoulder hump and a combination of breasts, falsetto and/or hairless groin (in boys), or no breasts, baritone and/or hairy arse (in girls). So the dermatologist was never seriously considered as an option for me (I’ve never needed any help acquiring hair on my arse, thank you very much!).

What was considered, and adhered to for most of my teenage years, thanks to my parents placing stock in increasingly whacked-out opinions as to the cause of my acne, was a gruelling regime of either denying or increasing my intake of various food groups and “natural remedies”.

For example, thanks to one of my father’s old cricket chums, I was urgently taken off dairy food for what would have been the best ice-cream-eating three years of my life. During this horrible period, a new brand of Belgian Chocolate ice-cream came and went, but not for Donkey. Instead, the only treat going around for this crater-faced barnyard beast was jaffa-flavoured soy milk (what is it about the latent heat properties of soy milk that no matter how many days you leave it in the fridge, it still comes out warm?!).

Needless to say, the “dairy-free” didn’t stop the pus pouring from my facial pores. Next, one of my mother’s mid-week golfing “colleagues” heard from a “well-respected naturopath” that seaweed was the go. For about three months, I was forced to chew on semi-dried, stinking kelp every morning for breakfast. My pimples maintained their proud stance on my schnoz and chin, for which I must admit I was vaguely relieved, as I was certainly reaching the limit of how much kelp I could stomach.

And on it went. Obviously chocolate was considered and denied me fairly early on in the process L, and even though the acne remained, chocolate was not returned to my needy bosom for many years thereafter. Raspberry jam was out. Honey was withdrawn for a while. Potato chips (surprise! surprise!), Coca-Cola … ok, to be fair, my diet wasn’t all that great, but which teenage kid’s is?

Then there were the topical remedies that were applied to the skin daily, twice daily or even hourly, depending on which women’s magazine such-and-such was reading; thistle milk, Vitamin E cream, lukewarm rhinoceros semen, tomato paste … the thing was that all of these “cures”, according to the “experts” down at Centenary Park Tennis Club, were not to be rubbed-in until no longer visible, but lathered thickly onto the face and left for the duration of the “prescribed” regime.

Fortunately this line of treatment came to an abrupt end after a work colleague of my father returned from Rotorua in New Zealand and suggested I try using this thick, black, sulphuric tar he’d acquired which, he assured my Dad, was a sure-fire remedy against skin ailments. So reluctant as always, and smothered in thick, black paste, I made the trek to school one day and was immediately dragged to the principal’s office and given a week’s suspension on a charge of racial vilification (no doubt the matter wasn’t helped when, in a snivelling mess, I shook my hands in the air and asked to speak with my “Mammy … oh I want my Mammy” – visual gag there; you might need to work on it).

All this ridiculous hokus pokus, disguised as treatment and remedy, despite going on for years, never did anything for my acne, and really only succeeded in making me miserable. The real cause of my acne, or at least one of them, was eventually discovered, like so many breakthroughs in science, by accident.

One summer, while mucking around on my skateboard (skaters being the only social group who didn’t seem to care much what you looked like), I slammed pretty badly off a small flight of stairs and broke my arm in about 723 places. Apart from the pain I endured, not to mention being ridiculed daily by my peers for having to get my mother to wipe my 16-year-old arse (and for the record, it’s not true, people! A person can adapt to left-hand wiping!), I was also unable to get into a swimming pool, which had, for years, been my only competitive sporting outlet. Within a week of no swimming; with no dodgily chlorinated water infested with infant-piss and used band-aids, I was cured! No more zits!

Years later, I came to learn that times of stress were also a trigger for an outbreak of fresh facial pustules. When I mentioned this to my mother, she scoffed, “Oh yeah, sure, stress. Exactly what does a teenage boy know about stress?”.

Hmm, I dunno, Mum, maybe it is living with two chain-smoking, staunch Catholics who consider masturbation a mortal sin, and who denied me all of life’s culinary pleasures in favour of a daily intake of seaweed and public humiliation?

These days I try to manage my stress in various ways, and this seems to help my skin a little. But unfortunately for someone whose career involves a lot of international travel, one of the major triggers of stress which is guaranteed to send my face into volcanic eruptions and release a massive miasma of rank body odour (I’ll post about that another time) is international air travel.

Today was a lovely day in Melbourne, and I took the rare opportunity of a late afternoon flight to go for a morning swim down at the local pool. I was feeling great when I got the airport, and was wearing appropriate clothes for managing my body temperature. But after all the check-in procedures, and immigration, and finding the departure gate, I nicked into Sunglass Hut to see what they had going on, and while trying on a new pair of sunnies, I glanced in the mirror and noticed what the cocktail of chlorine and internal body oils had done to my face.

Feeling too embarrassed to hand the glasses back to the smokin’ hot sales girl (although she saved me the problem as she’d noticed my face on the way in and was definitely putting some distance between us), I dumped them on the counter and bolted for the loo.

As I stood up close to the basin, ejecting great globules of yellow and red fluid all over the mirror, my self esteem had hit an all-time low. Although I was scared witless that some poor schmuck would walk in any minute, see what I was doing and lose their lunch, there was nothing for it; I had to purge my face of this vile infestation.

And moments into the process, it happened. “Oh my God! That is disgusting!”. I froze in mid-squeeze, and turned sheepishly to face my denouncer; a well-dressed, Business Class-type traveller, dressed ready to walk off the plane and into a high-powered board meeting. But to my surprise, the man in the suit wasn’t pointing at me, but rather at another man, of South Asian extraction, who I hadn’t notice come in, but who was standing behind me changing his shirt; his 432 rolls of belly fat and man-boobs any female swim-suit model would sell her only brain cell to have, flapping around all over the place.

I grabbed a paper towel, wiped the mess from my face, and got the hell out of their with Mr Business Suit not far behind me.

See, there really is always someone more repugnant than you. Merry Christmas everyone.

Welcome to my world. Pic: http://t1.gstatic.com/images

Road Trip

2010-11-30T14:18:00.002+11:00

We're off on a road trip. So we load-up the massive boot of the brown Kingswood with chips, biscuits, bread and sauce, an Esky full of beer, Coke and sausages, fishing rods and cricket bat, ball and stumps, strap the boards to the roof racks, load the tape-deck with the best mixed tapes of the year, throw the guitar and some cushions in the backseat, pick-up the girls (tight denim shorts, tans and bikini tops) and hit the highway in search of sun, sand, surf and who knows, maybe the odd bit of sex?!

Whoo hoo! It's summer, I'm 19 and I'm off on a road trip with my best mates, some smokin' hot babes and a boot full of piss...

Hang-on, I'm not 19! I don't drive a Kingswood anymore ... is this some kind of memory throw-back to the mid 80s?

Hang-on, there were never any smokin' hot babes in my car when I was 19 ... is this some kind of morphing of my memories with youth-targeted TV and U-Toob advertising for clothes/mobile phones/flavoured-milk/pre-mixed vodka drinks? Exactly what the hell is going on here?

Road trip? What? ... now? ... at this age?

Oh right. Yeah, New Zealand ... North Island ... just me (no mates), smokin' hot Mrs Donkey (tan and denim, but a bit light-on in the bikini-top department – mind you, Wellington was only 2 degrees in the sun), Hambones strapped into the child safety seat in the back (no guitar, no cushions ... barely enough room as it is for the bairn and a folded-up porta-cot) and the boot of the respectably suburban Epica (a far cry from the Kingswood aesthetic) full to bursting with suitcases, stroller and jars of baby food (not a chilled beer or aorta-blocking sausage in sight).

Road trips have indeed changed since I was a young buck hitting the road full of adventurous anticipation ... or at least since I was a young, luckless, awkward, acne-ridden virgin, sitting down in front of the TV and watching advertisements featuring beautiful young things looking cool and sexy at the beach and on country roads up and down the east coast, and realising the closest I was gonna get to that lifestyle was buying a carton of chocolate milk and drinking it on the bonnet of Dad's station wagon. But I digress ... New Zealand.

New Zealand? What would I wanna go there for? It's exactly the same as here, only thirty years behind. Let's get this straight - I grew-up in the outer suburbs in the 1980s, and I've spent the last thirty years decisively getting as far away from it as I could, both in time and space. So why the hell would I want to return to orange Laminex tables, mission-brown carpet tiles, culinary home delights such as "beef and noodles", vegetables boiled to denture-friendly mush and tinned "two-fruits" for desert, or for that formal family occasion, the local "Chinese" specialising in sweet and sour pork, prawn toast and steamed dim sims (considerably more exotic than their less-authentic, fried compatriots available from the fish 'n' chip shop next door).

And while we're at it, I have to say that nostalgics are definitely the stereotype which I find the most irritating (next to New Zealanders, of course). They bang on and on about milk bottles, 6-o'clock closing, hot chips served in newspaper and about how everything was simple, and tasted better and was cheaper "back in the old days". How bloody ridiculous?! Who wants to wake up at 5am every day to the sound of some arthritic old bastard with a smoker's cough tinkling bottles of curdled, unpasteurised milk outside your front door, or to rush like an idiot after work on a Friday to buy bread from the shops before they close for the weekend, or to have permanently tattooed hands and tongue from the combination of scalding chip-grease and lead-based newspaper ink? Nostalgics are dishonest scumbags who can be annoyingly self righteous as much as they like, smug in the knowledge that no one will ever be able to call them on their wistful reminiscences because no one ever wants to go back there ... 'cause it was shit! So again I ask the question ... why would anyone want to go to New Zealand?

But as is so often the case, despite my concerns at the idea, my machismo behaved true-to-form and I quickly caved to Mrs Donkey's "suggestion" that a trip to New Zealand to catch-up with some long lost friends would be just what we needed. So one lovely, warm, spring afternoon, we set off in blinding sunlight for bleak, bleak Wellington, where the sky sits two inches above your head, where the shrieking rain falls sideways and where the trees don't sway in the breeze; they shatter in the sleet. "Urgh", my stomach sank, "who'd live here?".

The answer to that is our good friends, E, J and G, who were waiting excitedly for us in the arrivals hall, their thick woollen coats, scarves and beanies a comical contrast to our shorts, t-shirts and chattering blue knees. But their embraces went some way to warding off the forbidding chill as we headed off to see what this country was all about.

However, as would become a reliable feature of our New Zealand road trip, there were delays. Donkey had been defeated in yet another round of persuasion from Mrs D and had forked-out a hundred kiwi dollars for a so-called "NeverLost" navigation device. Unfortunately, the helpful instructions don't start until you can get the thing switched on, so we sat in the airport car-park for an hour with the howling wind threatening to blow the car into the adjacent concrete wall (like so many in NZ, decorated with a local artist's lame attempt at a life-sized scene from Lord of the Rings) plugging chords into various sockets and pressing buttons here and there to try to get the thing started.

Upon achieving success, we started out on the highway towards the city. In days to come, this device would signal a new era of ease and argument-free road travel, but during that first twenty minutes on Wellington's hectic motorways, our enthusiasm for GPS technology was dampened by Pythagorean feats of concentration in order to decipher the irritatingly grating whine of the Kiwi computer geek's wet-dream - a digitally-generated, sexy female voice with an accent straight out of West Christchurch; "Orr yup, Baybee, tiern luft ut mai luft nupple. Orr yup, thut's ut. Thut's toatully Choice, Bug Boy!".

By the time we rounded the point into Oriental Bay, however, things were starting to look a little more promising. The sun was shooting down through the clouds in gorgeous, golden shafts onto the silver water, and a hip, cafe-lined promenade wound along the shore, along which, despite the wind, people lounged at tables mounted with tantalising, steaming mugs and glasses of chilled white wine.

By the time we'd made it to the hotel, I had passed a large proportion of the 17,000cafes which contribute to Wellington's reputation as having more coffee outlets per capita than New York. Add to that a tonne of cool-looking bars and restaurants, and our trip was starting to look up – perhaps New Zealand wasn't quite the 80s suburban throwback I'd been expecting.

But tasting some of this coffee – the real proof of a nation's developing status – would have to wait just that little longer 'cause breakfast was near E, J and G's digs in Lyall Bay, and to get there, we were forced to get all Lord of the Rings and "...journey beside the silver bay before passing through the dark tunnel beneath the Mountain of the Old Queen, and there you will find the Bay of Gold". Honestly, New Zealand, the sooner you get over this Peter Jackson crap, the better for all of us – call it what you like, but Mt Victoria is merely a hill, and a road over the top would have been a piece of piss – alright, Im just sayin'.

While not quite golden, Lyall Bay was very pretty, and we wandered through its lazy streets, past white-painted, weather-board dairies which could well have passed for the suburbs in 1985, down to a rickety-old boat house with beaten-up, peeling wooden walls reflecting a century of sand-blasting, au naturel. Definitely not the most promising locale for a decent feed, but my casual, and (let's face it) hilarious enquiries of our friends about where a bloke could get some smoked kippers for breakky, "Just like back in the Ol' Country" were being met with daggers from Mrs D, so I decided to put a sock in it and see what New Zealand was going to serve-up.

The building's forbidding exterior was merely a mask for what we found upstairs, however; a bright, warm, furious cacophony of rushing waiting staff weaving through laughing crowds of über cool Wellingtonians packed into tables, benches and onto bar stools as the hissing shoots of steam from the espresso machine and the shriek of frying bacon punctuated the gut-trembling bass of the Kiwi dub booming out over the sound system. Everyone was happy and chatting to each other, and even the cheerful staff seemed in on the joke.

But the real winner for Donkey was not so much the convivial air, but rather what was being lumbered across the floor in shiny white crockery, and landing in front of the salivating sophisticates; possibly the finest, punchiest organic coffee this increasingly sheepish chump had ever tasted, followed immediately by Martian-transport-sized plates of tasty, organic, eggy goodness atop thick, sourdough toast, plump, juicy baked tomatoes and garlic-bloated mushrooms, with mouth-bashing basil pesto on the side.

By now ol' Donkey was supplementing this fine fare with a considerable serving of humble pie, and while this would have convinced a better man to re-assess his perceptions about what to expect from New Zealand, it should be understood that there are few lumbering hulks more difficult to rein-in than the irrationality of an egomaniac trying to avoid embarrassment. Sure, others might have suggested that the throng of hip and the platefuls of yum in the room were undeniable proof of a progressive, culinary culture, and yet my ill-placed dogma continued, "But this might have been just a bit of luck; and perhaps E, J and G have deliberately guided us to the best place in the city for our first feed".

More coffee was going to be required before any definitive conclusions could be drawn ... and beer ... wine'd be good, too. Ice cream anyone? Yeah. I'm no soft target to be won over with a single, outstanding breakfast. I grew up in the suburbs in the 80s. I know what I'm in for ... let's get out of this funky cafe ... it's time to check out the real New Zealand.

Next stop ... the 'Real' Wellington.

Donkey's expectations of modern-day New Zealand ... stay logged-in to find out just how canny he is. Pic: http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jdumas/berendo/berenfot.html

Another political shit-fight

2010-10-10T13:22:00.000+11:00

The biggest problem with the gentrification of the inner suburbs is ... me!

Like most of my recently-established neighbours, I too was born-with-a-silver-spoon-up-my-arse and brought-up amongst outer-suburban garden tea parties in literally massive, manicured backyards before seeing the light (y'know, that huge, increasingly hot, skin cancer-causing one in the sky) and deciding that such lavish living was unsustainable. It was high-time to move closer to the city and to work on creating less of a footprint.

Just like everyone else living in the renovated nineteenth century houses up and down our street, we too have taken to reducing our household waste, and to trying to grow, rather than buy (from miles away and in some cases, other continents) part of our weekly dietary intake.

The problem with trying to do the right thing by Ol' Mama N is that the tiny backyards of the inner suburbs, designed as they were in the late 1800s, and since then shrunk considerably as households discovered the merits of kitchens and toilets, are becoming crammed with stinking bins of rotting vegetable matter with which to feed the exponential proliferation of newly erected, raised garden beds.

These postage stamp yards were never meant to house such festering filth, especially given we're all living on top of each other, with only a narrow, wooden fence line acting as a psychological barrier between honest citizens and drug-manufacturing, wife-beating, illegal immigrant-smuggling, terrorist-harbouring, pawn-peddling and weapons cache-ing neighbours. "Don't worry", we all nod knowingly to ourselves over the racket of pounding body-blows and accompanying screams, "If we can't see it, it's not really happening".

At least, that's what we all said until we started smelling each other as well. And now, thanks to the organic-promoting, food-miles-reducing, resource-conscious revolutions of the nouveau riche, a disgusting miasma of decaying vegetable matter hangs over the once sought-after real estate of the inner north, creating friction between formerly harmonious, cup-of-sugar-borrowing relations that is threatening to break-out in funk-induced, fence-breaching fisticuffs.

Local governments have been inundated with complaints from disgruntled neighbours demanding prosecution on public health grounds. It is, quite literally, the biggest socio-political shit fight since the Chinese Market Gardeners got busted re-directing Melbourne's fledgling sewerage system towards the biggest pumpkins in agricultural history back in 1894, which saw White-Australian public resentment of the 'Yellow Peril' spill-over into cholera-induced, micro-genocide*.

Councillors have had great, steaming piles of manure dumped on their door-steps in the wee hours as threats for local government inaction on the issue, and the EPA has added an urban-stench-o-reading to their daily smog alerts.

This seemingly irrelevant issue is gaining legs as the hallowed chambers of Council meetings groan under the weight of unprecedented crowds, all screaming for an end to the festering fecundity, and in the aftermath of the recent, hung Federal Parliament, the sinister, 'Faceless Men' of the major parties have swung-in behind their Council stooges.

The fear is that the forth-coming State Election could end-up mirroring the Federal result unless urgent action is taken, and so it looks like the boat people will be left to their own devices for a while as the election gears-up to be fought on rather different ground, albeit the type that is infused with the stench of decaying organic matter.

For once it's not regular mud that's being flung by the Majors in an attempt to discredit their opponents, but rather rich, nutritious, organic loam. Ironically, given that they were the ones who started this whole sustainable living gaff in the first place, it's The Greens who are being looked-to for a solution to the urban stench by furious residents with cotton wool stuffed up their nostrils; the Majors, as ever dedicated to their polling, remain reluctant to alienate themselves from either side, and are yet to take a significant stance.

So as this festering issue continues to gain momentum, and the rot sets in on another, otherwise insignificant State Election, some of us are taking action before it's too late. The lid is off Donkey's compost bin, and the contents are being urgently worked into newly-erected garden beds in an effort to get our veggie stock well and truly established while the law still allows us to do so – the neighbours and their sensitive nasal passages be damned. This is my patch of ground, and I'll make it as foul and unpleasant as I like.

* I know that 'micro-genocide' has gotta be a contradiction in terms but I've used it deliberately to match seamlessly with all the other stuff I'm making-up here. No need to hit the history pages to check any of my historical facts, I assure you.

And there it is – the new garden bed. Not bad for a tradie with no opposing thumbs! Pic: Hagas

Undercover Donkey

2010-10-06T22:44:00.001+11:00

There's this gawd-awful show on the tele at the moment called Undercover Boss, whereby some corporate high-flyer dons the company duds and goes and stands alongside his unknowing minions at the cash register, or behind the wheel, or digging ditches (not, I notice, cleaning toilets!). I must confess I haven't watched this show, but judging by the ads, it seems that each episode ends up as a heart-warming, gut-wrenching, tear-jerking sob-fest as the Boss' ice-cold, ass-kicking corporate drive is melted in the face of the hard-luck stories and sheer anguish of his employees, with their terminally-ill kiddies, their animal shelters and their community service to struggling migrants. Big Boss gets a free lesson in the "real values of humanity", and proceeds to handover cash and hand-out promotions as reward for their previously unrecognised, selflessness.

Honestly Channel 10, as if The 7PM Project wasn't bad enough!

Anyway, although not the boss of anyone or anything (and for good reason), I have recently found myself as Undercover Donkey in my workplace, but the only tears being jerked on this occasion were my own tears of excruciating pain and/or embarrassment.

I work on a hospital campus, and although I'm pretty far removed from the patients during my work day (again, for very good reason), I do skip-along to the horrors of the hospital cafeteria for lunch most days. Now aside from the absolutely disgusting food that is served-up, the trouble with having lunch at a hospital caf is that you're sitting down to a plate of greasy, oily, barely-edible fare with a bunch of people carrying just about every communicable disease known to ape and man.

And the thing about hospital patients sitting down to a feed beside or across the table from you is that they're usually "wearing" hospital garments. Why the inverted commas, I hear you ask? Well because the thing about hospital garments is that ... well, they just aren't that conducive to being "worn".

Take the old man in the wheelchair who sat opposite me today. He was attired in a pair of hospital-issue, one-size-fits-all pyjama pants – you know, the ones with the massive fly that leaves his Old Fella hanging out for all to admire. I'm telling you, a sight like that can really put you off your rather limp, hospital cafeteria bratwurst!

And the same goes for those poor folk who come down from the wards wearing nothing but one of those white hospital gowns that "do up" at the back (inverted commas again, as there's a lot of space between those tie-up straps). So again, try tucking into your hospital cafeteria carpaccio when some homeless-looking man's hairy arse-crack is winking at you through the substantial chink in the starched, white curtains!

Like most aspects of the public hospital system, one finds oneself coping with these kinds of horrors with humorous attacks on the kinds of people these semi-brain dead patients must be to get around in such an undignified fashion.

But then, I became one ... twice! And I soon learned that their lack of dignity is not self-generated, but rather a dastardly bi-product of a cruel, uncaring public hospital system.

The first time I experienced this was during the birth of Lil' Hambones. When Mrs Donkey was kitted-up in smart-looking, green, ER-type hospital scrubs and sent off to theatre, I was thrown a pair of white overalls by a midwife and told (with a barely-concealed smirk) that they were one-size-fits-all.

Uh oh! That phrase again ... one of two, standard features of all hospital-issue attire ... the other being that said attire can't be done-up. So there I stood, in a tight, white, full-body suit, successfully parting my testicles in the kind of camel toe you'd expect to see on a deformed camel with a congenital, cleft toe, and just above these separated global hemispheres, the suit opened out, right to my shoulders! Honestly, I looked like a cross between a young Sean Connery and Borat in his mankini.

"You're taking this piss!", I remarked to the midwife in a quivering falsetto, to which the sadistic bitch giggled that it was all they had and we had better get to theatre immediately. T'was a good thing that the hoary old chestnuts had done their work, for they mayn't be the same again after the birth of Lil' Hambones.

And then again this week, I became Undercover Donkey, and again I came to have my heart softened towards my fellow demented, semi-clad diners. This time I was heading back to theatre to have the scar left over from the removal of my festering alien parasite removed. By the time I got to theatre, I was delusional from not having eaten (or more to the point, not having drunk coffee) for about twenty hours, so I didn't really take much notice of what they dressed me in before sending me off to the knife.

But when I awoke afterwards, with the usual early morning, post-slumber, anatomical male processes unfolding downstairs, I was mortified to discover that the smiling, caring, and not-unattractive recovery nurse by my side had been witness to the whole depraved scene thanks to my having been attired in hospital-issue, so-called "disposable underpants" which when adorned, being one-size-fits-all, was tantamount to wearing a tube of stretched, translucent, elastic gauze.

So no heart-warming, gut-wrenching story from this Undercover Donkey! These hospital linen services are completely taking the piss! It's a breach of patient dignity ... a breach of human-bloody-rights! As they say in the States, I'm taking this all the way to City Hall!

These old folk in big pyjama pants deserve better!

These homeless folk in poorly-fastened gowns deserve better!

And these recovery nurses definitely deserve better!

It's time to take a stand against this blatant disregard for patients' dignity. C'mon Julia Gillard. C'mon Barak Obama. C'mon Ban Ki-moon. Give us zips! Give us Velcro! Give us buttons! And please, give us something in our size!

Ministers finger fags

2010-09-22T22:30:00.008+10:00

Any day of the week, Samoa is definitely one of the greatest destinations in the world; awesome beaches, wonderfully lush mountains, natural water slides off the sides of said mountains, fantastic beer, relaxed vibe (bordering-on-coma) and a serious commitment to food (my kinda peeps).

There're also the wonderful, friendly locals; always joking, laughing, dancing and singing, that make the place so welcoming and so much fun.

Hang-on, did I just say "always friendly"? That's definitely not quite right ... for starters, Samoans – all of 'em, at one time or another - suffer from the "musu". This is a cultural phenomenon which, for no apparent reason, turns your normally laughing, joking, cheeky colleagues/friends/partners/waiters/hotel staff into brooding, inpatient, aggressive ticking-emotional-time-bombs in the blink of an eye.

Seriously, the musu can easily turn a happy, convivial conversation into a spiteful verbal barrage. For example;

Donkey: Thanks for taking me to the pub last night, I had a great time.

Mose: Hey no worries, Donkey, me-ol'-mucka.* Yeah, it was really fun. You're pretty good a darts.

Donkey: You think so? Ah thanks. Yeah, I really enjoy it. Wish I hadn't drunk so much, though.

Mose: Ha! It was kinda funny when you downed 17 Vailimas and spewed all over the pool table before passing out on the sea wall.

Donkey: Urgh! Don't remind me – woke-up with a washed-up, fermenting coconut next to my face. Still, good fun. How 'bout we do it again some time?

Mose: Fuck off!

And that'll be it for Mose for the next couple of hours. Next time you see him, he'll be his old self again. Ah, the musu. It can make inter-cultural relationships pretty difficult to negotiate for the uninitiated.

So as I was saying, apart from the musu, Samoans are great fun to be around; very generous with their time, their praise, their food. Great people; very open to newcomers ... oh, unless they happen to be palagi (foreigners). For those of us who aren't Samoan, there's a special kind of Samoan Pride (read: arrogance) which anyone whose been there for longer than a week will have been exposed to at one time or another. It's not too bad, really; no violence or hate crimes, just a very Samoan way of talking to make you feel that you're less than the dirt under their shoe ... um, sandal.

Actually, this pride (read: arrogance) isn't only reserved for foreigners, but for all who are considered beneath the speaker in question. So in the hierarchy of Samoa, a man will display arrogance to a woman, who'll beat-up on the kids, who'll have a stab at the dog, who'll take-on the cat, who'll chase the rat. And we palagis are right at the bottom (luckily there's no plague in Samoa!).

At the other end of the spectrum are matais (chiefs) and church ministers. These morbidly-obese blokes lord it over everyone, as the next story demonstrates.

Now this story is completely true (I think ... at least, I've certainly told it many times as though it's a true story ... I've even made it slightly better from time-to-time with a few Donkey-specials, just to make sure my audience is on-board ... so yeah, it's pretty true).

Many years ago, some foreign anthropologists from The States were conducting an investigation into the origins of the Pacific races. They spent many years researching in countries all over the Pacific, and many years in Samoa, particularly. At the end of nearly a decade of research, they offered to share (in person) their findings with the various countries of the Pacific, and were invited to do so in Samoa, where they would address a gathering of the Council of Chiefs.

This was back in the days before PowerPoint, but they had lots of slides, and went to great pains to ensure the audience understood the rigour of their research, and the ultimate findings that the peoples of the Pacific, including Polynesians, all drifted east from what is now Southeast Asia, settling, then moving on, then settling again. They described key evidence of language, art, cultural practices, mythology and DNA as supporting these findings.

After a day of talking, explaining, demonstrating and answering questions about their research, the Paramount Chief stood up, and in the spirit of fine Samoan oratory, went on a one-hour verbal bender which can basically be summed-up as follows;

"Thank you very much for coming here today to tell us about your work. But we know that Samoa is the Cradle of Polynesia; God put us here and from here all the Polynesian nations were settled."

Nods all 'round. Paramount Chief ... who's gonna argue? The researchers (both inferior and foreign) hung their heads, packed-up and went home.

Donkey, too, has come up against this closed-minded, unquestionable Samoan arrogance. I was running a consultative workshop about health promotion; how to do it better in order to meet the needs of Samoa's most concerning health problems.

I'd wanted to get a few young people along to discuss the cause, and possibly throw-around a few ideas towards a solution to the very high rate of youth suicide in the country. When I asked the gathering of Church Pastors and Village Chiefs why no young people had come along, I was informed by one particularly large gentleman who, despite his profusely sweating brow, managed to pull-off a spotless white sports-coat with nary a blemish, "We are the representatives of God here on Earth and we speak for our communities, which includes our young people".

OK, so by this time I'm getting the message, loud-and-clear, on the high rate of youth suicide. "So," I asked, "what can we do about it?".

"Our young people need to be more involved in the Church ... they need to pray more and be closer to their parents and leaders, and especially to God".

Exasperated, I looked to my practical, street-savvy, scientifically-minded, Health Promotion colleagues for a life-line. All I got were beaming smiles and,

Nods all 'round. Church Pasters and Chiefs ... who's gonna argue? This health promoter (both inferior and foreign) hung his donkey-head, packed-up and went home.

And now someone else has come-up against the ol' Samoan Pride. This time it's an international climate change summit to which, for no apparent reason, someone decided to invite a bunch of senior Samoan Church Ministers. And the result? What is the Number 1 root cause of climate change? ...

... wait for it ...

Homosexuals! Ha!

I love the line in this article from The Register, "...Academics were apparently thrown off their consideration of "Arts in the Age of Global Warming" and "Ecology in Poetry / Poetry in Ecology..."

Nods all 'round. Church Pasters ... who's gonna argue? Those academics (both inferior and foreign) hung their heads, packed-up and went home.

* OK, so clearly Mose doesn't talk in cockney-rhyming slang – I was just translating from Samoan into some kind of cross-cultural equivalent ... I think I nailed it!

Wonder-twin powers...activate! The white-coated Church Pastors from Samoa power-up to tackle climate change in their own, unique, homophobic way. Pic: adventist.org.au

Give ‘em an inch…

2010-09-12T12:31:00.000+10:00

It’s great being back in Melanesia again. Apart from the joy in being able to communicate with people in [something resembling] their own language, I have come to remember a few of the wonderful, and occasionally baffling things about these people that I’d previously known and loved, but of which I had completely forgotten.

“What am I, hard-of-smelling?”

Within an hour of hitting Vila, I was waiting on the dusty roadside for a “bus” to come along to take me into town. Beside me was an old lady with a massive ‘fro and a brightly-coloured, Mother Hubbard dress, unashamedly staring at me with a massive, toothless grin. I nodded, smiled, said “Halo”, smiled again, nodded again, winked, smiled again … but she wasn’t done yet; there’d be no looking away from my amusing spectacle.

Eventually, a beat-up, rusting old van with clapped-out suspension and bald tyres rocked-up and the mad old hag and I climbed on board, squeezing into the remaining two seats. From this you might deduce that the bus was packed, but in truth there were only two others - young guys - on board. The rest of the seats, comprising the back half of the bus, were taken up with two ridiculously-sized woofers which bashed out gut-thumping, island reggae beats. I settled into the groove, and sat back to enjoy the ride.

As soon as we pulled off the curb, I received Repressed Melanesia Memory #1. It is a fact of island life that fresh water is a scarce commodity for many communities, and as such, it is not uncommon for people to bathe only once ortwice a week, and this rarely with soap (an unnecessary expense for poverty-stricken households). And so, as I sat in the sweltering bus, I remembered the all-pervasive, musky tang of Melanesian body odour.

To be honest, though, this is not a completely unpleasant odour – it’s actually quite a sweet smell, which is rather odd. How is it that Melanesians - women and men alike - despite rarely bathing, and even more rarely with soap, they still smell a damn sight better than those fat blokes in the Australian public service who, despite sitting all day in climate-controlled offices, still exhibit great, wet, yellowing under-arm stains and smell like turds rolled in ground cumin? Same goes for those pot-bellied, balding types in stubbies and blue singlets you sometimes get stuck next to on the train – ew! Never mind the “poor, primitive natives of the Pacific with their backward cultures and heathen ways”, maybe island hygiene (or the lack thereof) is still far-and-away more advanced than your average Australian male?

Strange misconceptions.

It must be all those Hollywood blockbusters like Hotel Rwanda, Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland, not to mention the harrowing footage we see on BBC World every night from regions as far flung as Sudan, the Congo, East Timor and Haiti. Whatever it is, I am ashamed to admit that the sight of a Toyota Hilux racing along a dirt road with a spear-bristling pile of young, black, male faces staring determinedly over the cab fills me to the core with cold, mortal fear.

What a wave of surprised relief I experience, though, when these young men turn that menacing grimace into a big, white, toothy grin, and a laughing “Halo” as they make their way across the island to their circumcision/initiation ceremony. This is Vanuatu, you idiot, not Sierra Leone!

Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.

There’s nothing quite so uncomfortable when, as a waetman (foreigner) with comparatively shitloads of money, you’ve just opened and are ready to tuck into a packet of Twisties (a luxury food item, given average household incomes) when the seventeen year-old guesthouse maid walks by for a chat. Clearly she’s not in a hurry to get back to work, and the stilted conversation seems to drag slowly by as the Twisties waft their tantalizing scent throughout the room.

Giving into my cultural inclinations, and also as a result of the guilt this have, with my great, big bag of corny, deep-fried snacks, feels before this young have-not, I course extend the packet for her to share my tasty treat. “Thank you”, she smiles as she reaches for the pack, takes it from my hand, turns, and wanders off into the guesthouse.

Oh yeah, Repressed Melanesia Memory #3, one doesn’t share, one gives away. Bugger! I really wanted those Twisties.

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

I arrived late in the day to the quiet town in the remote southern island, and all the stores were closed. In the dark, I found my guesthouse, and was feeling a bit freaked-out at the grotty, shoddy surroundings which would be my home for the next ten days. With nothing to eat, and only a cold pipe for a shower, I fumbled through the gloom to my sleeping bag, tired, hungry and miserable.

Sometime in the night I was startled awake by a group of staggering men returned from sloshing kava at the nakamal, and I lay quiet and still, fervently mouthing my prayers for deliverance from being stabbed in the night by a pack of wired, tribal warriors, and done up the bum while my corpse was still warm.

In the morning, I staggered out onto the guesthouse’s mouldy, crumbling balcony to see two fat, old, greying men sitting before a well-set breakfast table. They offered for me to join them and shared their bread, which I gratefully accepted and ate quietly while they farted, scratched their protruding tummies and chatted away in their local dialect.

While cleaning-up in the disgusting kitchen afterwards, the third member of the party, who’d been making the breakfast for the others, informed me that one of the two sitting out on the balcony was none other than His Excellency the Honourable Minister for Foreign Affairs, here on an official government visit to meet with his constituency! Let that be a lesson to all those who think that national budgets in the islands are all blown on five-star holiday resorts for corrupt government officials.

Lord Voldemort in a Penis Gourd?

Vanuatu, like a number of other Melanesian countries, remains one of the last great tribal cultures of the world, with many people still practicing and following the tribal customs and beliefs of their ancestors. Rather paradoxically, it’s also staunchly Christian, but like many parts of the world where a kind of hybrid Christianity has sprung-up, much to the chagrin of missionaries both past and present, so too Vanuatu enjoys a rather bizarre mix of belief in both the magic of the Holy Spirit, and the magic of the mountains, trees, rocks and sea.

And to further add to this crazy soup of beliefs and practices, modern technology has been well and truly embraced by all, so that today even the remotest communities have access to satellite TV, internet and mobile phones.

The clash of these ancient beliefs and modern technology was brought to my attention one day while out in the field with one of the engineers responsible for bringing essential water and sanitation facilities to remote communities. This wiry, weathered bloke is one of the few of his countrymen to have completed both high school and tertiary education, and for the last twenty years, has travelled to every province and island in the country guiding communities to implement these positive changes for their health and well being.

Did I say every island? Sorry, that should have been ‘every island but one’. It’s hard to get information out of this bloke sometimes; he being always on his mobile phone, banging away in a number of different languages to someone or other. One day, I was standing by him when his phone rang. He looked at the screen before swearing and muttering something in his own dialect, and then turned the phone off. I realised then that I’d seen this happen quite a few times over the previous days, so asked him jovially whether an old girl friend had finally caught up with him.

Rather than smile at my joke, he gravely explained to me that he will not answer a call that the phone display lists as an anonymous, ‘Private Number’, as this, he said, is likely to be a local sorcerer trying to put a curse on him.

Surprised by this response, and the fear in his eyes when he told me, I asked a few more careful questions and came to learn that the reason he’d never, in twenty years, visited the island of Maewo, was because it is a place of black magic, and he will surely be cursed by a local sorcerer if he goes there.

With that, he picked up his bag and headed-off to church.

But mostly it's the people that make it great. Pic: Hagas.

Bae mi laek fo drinkem wan fala cofi no moa

2010-09-04T15:24:00.001+10:00

I’d not be the first to remark that Melbourne’s obsession with coffee seems to be getting a little out of hand. T’was not all that long ago that, Lygon Street aside, if you wanted an espresso coffee, you’d have to go to one of those special Milk Bars (the ones with the somewhat perplexing, “Delicatessen” sign out the front), and even then it was only for a cappuccino or a flat white. But now, especially in Melbourne’s Central Business District, you can’t turn around without some semi-trained dick with a portable espresso cart shooting a spray of steam in your ear, or without seeing jittery, ipod-ed students jumping about with a bucket full of latte in hand.

Of course, the rise of the espresso culture is proportional to the number of times a week one is subjected to one’s co-worker casually remarking (at 20,000 decibels across the open-plan office) to their nearest colleague, “Oh, I just can’t function without my morning coffee”.

Oh, pah-leez! Won’t you people just fuck off and leave the rest of us in peace?! It’s just coffee you’re drinking – a legal, and very minor stimulant. You’re not shooting-up heroin; it ain’t acid; it ain’t ice and it ain’t the ol’ nose-candy. It’s coffee … and besides, you drink it with a pint of warm milk anyway! So please stop carrying-on like the tough kid from down the road whose showing off to his BMX-riding mates with the pack of Alpine Lights he’s bought with the two bucks he’s nicked out of his Mum’s purse*, “What, this? Nah, this is nothin’. I smoke ‘em wiv me ol’ man all the time – don’t you?”.

This attention-grabbing, loudly publicized, faux-obsession with a steamy-hot beverage is not impressive; it just gives the rest of us the shits. If these self-absorbed show-ponies would just pull their heads out of their own arses for a minute and look around, they’d notice that while they’ve been bragging about how “I can easily manage three before lunch time”, more than half of their colleagues, at any time of the day, have beneath their desk an over-flowing bin of stinking, slowly-congealing empty paper cups.

Like most obsessive types, we keep our habits to ourselves … even try to cover it up with unnecessary, old-growth-forest-destroying HP laser-printer test pages. We are the truly obsessed, and frankly, we find your ridiculous theatrics offensive.

Now right from the outset, I wanna make it clear. While I might be a tad on edge most of the time, my relationship with coffee is one of obsession, not addiction. I … love … the … stuff! And although this post might be tantamount to shouting across the office that “I just can’t start the day without my morning coffee”, it’s definitely different because I’m pretty sure no one is listening … and besides, it’s not even true … I don’t think.

OK, maybe it’s a bit true. There could be something to be said for the fact that these days I actually like getting up early-ish on the weekend. I have to admit that while there are two reasons for this, only one of them is to play with Hambones. The other is to take my cheap, piece-of-shit espresso machine, and to bash it and squeeze it and gently rub it and squash it and rock it back-and-forwards and then hug it in an attempt to churn out the best possible, double-strength long black money can’t buy … and I don’t mind boasting that together we consistently produce the most exquisite thing to ever come out of such an abusive relationship.

Of course, one doesn’t just do this on the weekend … no, this is Donkey’s de rigueur start to any given day, so I’ve got the jump on my loud-mouthed colleagues long before they’ve even thought about interrupting the rest of us. And this little morning pleasure of mine; both the drinking and the creation of the special brew, certainly keeps me going well enough until I arrive at my desk at 7.45, when I start looking around for something to drink. A coffee’d be good, but from where?

Who else will take the kind of care I do? Who else will obsess over finding, and then sticking to the right beans, the right roaster, the right grind, the right temperature (room and water)? Who else will constantly worry about whether or not he’s got enough stock to get you through the weekend; who’s concerned about having enough cups on the warmer; about having all the various tamps, spoons, jugs, dirty sponges, clean sponges on hand? Who else sees making a cup of coffee as a creation?

It’s not easy to choose. As I mentioned, every cashed-up bogan within a hundred miles of the city these days reckons they’re obsessed with coffee, “and it has to be expresso” (sic), so as a result, every single food outlet, milk bar, convenience store, train platform, pub, street corner, law firm lobby, hospital, book shop - even McDonalds - bashes out lattes and cappuccinos at an incredible rate, and for a pretty reasonable price. But that’s not to say they’re any good.

Now I don’t mind paying up to three dollars for a decent cuppa, but I will object to having to do so for a tasteless cup of brown water, or worse yet, the steaming mug of what I got served-up last week for the princely sum of $3.30, which looked and tasted as though a diarrheal-ridden Biafran kiddie had taken a squat over a porcelain cup.

This place was supposedly French, named after it’s proprietor, Jacque M, and located in a pretty trendy part of town. Knowing what we all do about the French and their fastidious attention to fine dining, I thought I was probably in safe barista territory, but I should have known something was up when, as I waited for my long black, he answered the phone with, “Yeah, G’Day this is Jack Mole-ey-nooks … orr, how are ya, mate?”.

Fortunately the French redeemed themselves today … or, perhaps more correctly, some 100 years ago, when they brought culinary discretion to the South Pacific. Today I crossed a dusty track in a five-ute, three-building, two-boat provincial town on a remote southern island in Vanuatu, and ducked-into a tin shack where I quaffed a cup of perhaps the finest, organic, locally grown and roasted espresso I’d ever sent south. Vive la France – and jam it, Starbucks!

* - yeah, yeah, two dollars for a pack of fags … I know, I’m showing my age.

This cuppa saved my life. Pic: http://tannacoffee.com/

Beaten by reality

2010-08-15T15:09:00.005+10:00

FOREWORD: I drafted the following post last Thursday (12^th August), back when all was quiet on the inner city streets ... little did I know that my Hindenburg-like, pseudo-intellectual smugness was going to be deflated in a great, blubbery mess by the pointy-end of the real world, as Melbourne's gangland mobs geared-up for a whole new shooting spree.

While the ongoing northern suburban teenage knife fights and the cudgelling of Indian students keeps the blood-lusting Sunday paper readers interested past the Page 3 Girl, the rest of the city is starting to get a little twitchy that there hasn't been a decent shooting outside a suburban home, cafe or primary school for well over a year now.

For a while there it was looking promising that Carl Williams might be released before someone could knock him off in broad daylight outside Woollies (preferably at a home-value-inflating shopping strip near you), but alas, the grubby, tubby drug lord met his end on Her Majesty's watch, selfishly denying a salivating populous its opportunity to spend the next eight years driving by 'the spot where it all happened' and pointing at the pavement where one would claim that in the right light, you could just about determine the outline of his leaked cranial blood.

Such is Melbourne's obsession with organised, true-crime. Where the release of a ghost written 'auto-biography' of a notorious, nouveau celebrite gang lord can steal the front page from a politician's dastardly, late-night government takeover or a despot north Asian leader's preliminary steps towards nuclear world war.

And thanks to the good folk at Channel 9 bashing-out three series of Underbelly in as many years, the rest of Australia has followed suit and is obsessed with the seedy underworld of organised crime (not to mention soft porn and Matty Newton's arse!).

But while all eyes and cameras are firmly trained on the last known survivor of the Moran clan (poor, two-year-old Kitty is alleged to have signed a multi-billion dollar exclusivity deal with Murdoch's News Limited, to be paid in a lump sum on the release of Volume 1: the Primary School Years, should she be fortunate enough to live that long), the rest of the nation's established criminal families have been more-or-less free to get on with the business of drug-manufacturing and running, theft, extortion, protection racketeering, arms trading and illegal gambling, with narry a glance from the press or the cops.

Take my neighbours, for example. These folk aren't the types to be escorting high-end hookers and joining Eddie McGuire for the AFL's Brownlow Medal Count at Crown Casino in a few weeks time. They're not even the types to be seen playing at the high-roller tables of the same establishment. You won't see them hooning up and down Chapel St in Ferrari convertibles or spot them joining George Calombaris at table in one of his fine-dining establishments.

Rather, these fat, balding, tracky-daks-wearing, butt-crack showing, pitbull-walking, possibly excessively violent, but otherwise neighbourly types are more likely to be seen scoffing $8-parmies-and-a-pot-before-noon down at The 'Wick, throwing a few bucks each way on Race 6 at the Cranbourne Dish-lickers, or dropping twenty-cent coins into a slot after 3pm at the RSL. They're more likely to be driving a '96 HSV Commodore than a Ferrari, and the only thing high-end about their hookers is that when working the back alleys, their girls make sure they're not standing where the drain water pools at the bottom of the rise.

So while the three generations of criminals living next door won't ever grace the front page or be made the subject of a high-rating Australian TV series, you gotta hand-it to them for their diligence at keeping at it – a bit of a meth lab here, some movement of stolen goods there, a dabble in some illegal importation of tobacco products there – for decades, and all completely under the radar*.

I guess you'd have to liken them to former Prime Minister John Howard's Little Aussie Battlers. The kind of folk who will never be singled-out for their selfless and unrelenting contribution to society, but who, by their commitment to honest hard work, keep the economy on its feet.

That's my neighbours ... the Little Aussie Battlers of Organised Crime. They'll never be recognised for what they do, but with the media, the police and the hungry, true-crime-obsessed public's attention preventing the higher-profile crooks from dabbling in anything even slightly bent, my neighbours, and other, likewise established families are keeping organised crime alive.

The real Aussie Battlers of Organised Crime look more like David Wenham's character, Johnny Spitieri (Gettin' Square, 2003) than the slick, playboy types of Channel 9s Underbelly. Pic: http://www.oldmovies.net.au/top-10-funny-characters/

* - well almost completely, except if you count the incident which saw our neighbourhood wake up to view the late night handy work of one of our neighbour's grammatically-challenged competitors or disgruntled clients scrawled across their front fence in red spray paint; "DRUG DEELERS" (sic).

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign...

2010-08-10T21:22:00.008+10:00

...Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

Five Man Electrical Band

Here I was thinking I'd come a long way since I was fifteen years old, travelling through Germany, and breaking-out in adolescent hysterics every time I saw a sign denoting an exit.

"Ausfahrt! You gotta be kidding me, Ausfahrt?! Hey! Hey! Pull my finger. Pull my finger ... I'll show you how an Aus Farts! Woo hoo! Yuk, yuk, yuk".

On my return to Australia, my teacher repeatedly asked me to bring my Germany trip photographs to school to share with the other students. In order to hide my embarrassment (given that every second shot was of me doubled-over in fits of hilarity beneath an exit sign), I conjured excuse after increasingly implausible excuse to throw her off the scent; "Our cameras were taken from us by East German border guards and they strip-searched me to get the negatives I'd hidden up my arse ... despite the stench, my substantial, numerous ausfahrts were still not enough to deter them from their merciless quest".

She stopped asking.

But anyway, those juvenile days are well and truly behind me now, right? Right? That's what I thought, until on a recent trip to Tibet.

It's bad enough having to prepare yourself, both mentally and physically, to visit a Tibetan toilet. For starters there's the negotiating one's way around the disgusting piles of steaming turds that accumulate over a year or so between cleans, but it really does make the experience completely inaccessible when one faces fearful confusion over which cubicle is for the fellas, and which is for the ladies.

Believe me, it can be quite an uncomfortable, and potentially life-threatening ordeal to have daintily picked your way through the stinking smears of nomad excrement, placed your feet carefully either side of the over-flowing hole in the ground, be squatting in vein-popping agony as you push-out last night's yak steak, only to have an attractive, young Tibetan village girl wander in on you as that brown bear pushes its way into the world!

Funny, maybe, but I can vouch for the fact that things can rapidly deteriorate into a public health disaster as you suddenly reach for your strides with one hand, accidentally twist sideways, slip on a fresh coat of gravy and reflexively reach to the floor with the other hand to steady your body's downward trajectory. Splat!

So it was a great boon to me on my most recent visit, to approach one of these fragrant, rural outhouses, and be provided with some assistance by [I suspect] local youths with a piece of charcoal.

Very helpful indeed ... and yes, I love the artist's impression of the gash! Pic Hagas

And while I'm in the middle of this incredibly mature missive about amusing foreign signs, I'd like to share with you a label I found about ten minutes after viewing this sign, in a local dining establishment characterised by the same standards of hygiene displayed in the bogs.

The label was attached to a most remarkable piece of Chinese engineering and manufacturing; a plastic, automatic toothpick dispenser in the shape of a German country house [there, ya see, this post's gone full circle], on which the pressing of a small button forces a single, clean, round toothpick into the hands of the eager consumer. A tremendous feat of modern, scientific research and development.

And the label read;

AUTO TOOTHPICK CASE. Design with meticulous care the external appearance beauty is generous usage convenience.

That's all very well, but you know what they say, "Self praise is no praise!".

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!

2010-08-09T13:18:00.002+10:00

Mrs Donkey's currently on the Indian subcontinent enjoying her fill of the leering eye and twitching moustache – ah yes, the South Asian male; small in stature, but large in virility!

Meanwhile, I'm holding the fort and attending to the (occasionally, unreasonably high) demands of Little Hambones. He's got this new, incredibly hilarious breakfast, lunch and dinner schtick goin'-on which sees projectile mush, toast, fruit and milk bouncing off the walls, table and floor to the soundtrack of hysterical infantile belly-laughs.

More and more, with each passing day, the house's interior resembles the blood-stained hands of Lady Macbeth; it seems no matter how well I scrub at the soiled surfaces, when I turn my back they are immediately smeared with a replacement coat of partly masticated foodstuffs.

So after a week of this, I figure the only way to manage the edible air traffic control in the dining area is to brave the chill and get the hell out.

Fortunately, the sanitary, public thoroughfares of the developed world are conducive to the recreational and safety requirements of young families, and there is a myriad of parks and public spaces to shoot for within a ten minute walk from Donkey HQ.

This was not the case for us a couple of months ago, when we were living in Samoa. There, the competing demands of poverty reduction, health care and a selective, user-pays education system selfishly consume government attention and public spending to the detriment of safe, public play equipment, leaving Hambones with little more to enjoy in his recreation time than a plastic bottle full of rice to shake, shake, shake.

But here in the land of milk and honey, where there is just too much money floating around to know what to do with (Heaven forbid that we'd ever put it towards a public health system!), one not only has a myriad of play options to choose from, but you can be sure that each one has a range of equipment that meets as many safety standards as it has won international industrial design awards. Hang the expense! - it's the safety ratings that are all important, especially given that the equipment is provided by local governments hell-bent on re-election and the avoidance of childhood injury compensation payouts. These multi-coloured, plastic pleasure palaces are so safe that you won't find a right-angle within 50 metres of them!

What you will find, however, are truly unique constructions erected on small green patches dotted across the urban landscape, and these are great for kids in most respects, except that they are all so incredibly Freudian; each piece of equipment resembles some kind of body part or function. Take that long, purple slide over there [womb], or those pendulous swings [breasts], or that weird, red plastic ring on rusting rollers that squeals when rotated [a giant sphincter after last night's dodgy curry] or that massive, purple and blue rocket [penis] or that dark, red, ominous-looking tunnel...

This is all well and good – I mean, no small child's ever going to notice, right? But it's not so much what the equipment resembles, but what they make some people do that's the problem. Take yesterday morning, for example. Hambones was driving me crazy with the Great Breakfast Tornado, so off we went into the bitter morning in search of a playground on which he could run it all out of his system. As we approached one of our favourite little haunts, the extra litter strewn around the place didn't register with me, as it's not uncommon for a few empty cans of rocket fuel to be discarded by the regular midnight teenage bingers.

So over to the playground we went, and I am just about to put Hambones into his favourite, yellow-swirly-cup-thing which, now that I think about it, looks suspiciously like a toilet bowl. I reached in to remove some paper from its innards when I noticed that the aforementioned litter all over the ground was white ... and brown. Bog roll! ... and ... urgh, Maaaaaaan!

That's right. Someone had taken a massive dump in the yellow-swirly-cup-thing-which-looks-suspiciously-like-a-toilet-bowl. One might immediately suspect the midnight teenage bingers, except that the evidence of toilet paper everywhere suggested that this had been no accident - no unfortunate octogenarian with irritable bowel syndrome accosted by urgent pains while taking a nocturnal constitutional around the park - but rather a pre-meditated act of defecation!

And I'll tell you something else for nothing. It is not easy to stop a curious Little Hambones when he's set his mind to picking-up an unusual-looking piece of litter!

My sharing this little story with you has been inspired by a similar one I read over at Burb Central. Clearly this is not an isolated incident, and yet, there is hardly a peek from the media concerning this most concerning issue. While travelling recently, I was accosted by a hotel cook demanding to know why Melbournians hate Indians enough to want to injure and maim them (he'd been reading all about it in the Indian press) and I have heard that news of late night, alcohol-fuelled violence outside Melbourne's nightclubs has reached the genteel folk of Sacramento, California.

So how is it that the international media can be all over these minority stories and painting them as typically Melbourne, while not one media commentator has even touched-on the out-of-control public pooing escapades occurring en masse during the dark hours across suburban Melbourne? Looking for an election issue to get people interested in State politics? There it is right there - certainly puts a new slant on the term, 'smear campaign'.

Did I not mention that the yellow-swirly-cup-thing looks suspiciously like a toilet bowl? Pic: Hagas

Churning and burning: tales of human butter, politics and religion

2010-08-07T13:33:00.007+10:00

Know any good Kora stories?

I know a few stories; whether or not you think they’re any good might depend on your social or political point of view, but let’s see what you reckon.

First though, perhaps I should have a stab at enlightening those who are a bit lost.

The Kora.

A Kora is the circuit around a place, building or thing of Buddhist religious significance, which the faithful circumnavigate in a clockwise direction, as an act of spiritual devotion and cleansing. This thing can be a religious artefact, a religious building such as a temple or shrine, or even a natural place of spiritual and/or historical significance, such as a tree, rock or spring.

In Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, the most significant religious shrine is the imposing, Jokhang Temple; a huge, squat structure, perhaps the city’s oldest remaining building, lying slap in the middle of the city which has grown, fallen, been re-built, razed and re-built around it for centuries.

For over a thousand years, beneath the gilt spires and statues adorning the roof of the old temple, the complex has expanded from its original size to house the growing legions of monks and novices who came from all over Asia, from as far away as Bangladesh to the south and Mongolia in the far north-east, to live and learn from the great gurus and lamas, and it now occupies a space of roughly a square kilometre.

Sadly, the once-thriving monastic community within those metres-thick walls seems rather lack-lustre these days, but this is in tremendous contrast to the tides of humanity which circle the complex every day, lighting incense, murmuring their prayers, fingering their beads and leaving offerings for good fortune in this life and the next.

The narrow streets surrounding the Jokhang mark the Kora, along which a rushing torrent of furry-hatted and coated pilgrims, adorned with jewels in their hair, ears and belts, and regularly with babies lashed to their backs, work their way around the great walls. The unsuspecting, curious tourist needs to be careful as s/he manoeuvres for a closer look, as the rushing masses, from dawn to dusk, can literally sweep you off your feet.

Kora Story 1: The back-breaking road to Lhasa.

If you’re lucky enough to scam a permit which allows you to see something of Tibet other than Lhasa, your mind will be opened to vast skies; friendly (although very dirty) faces; unwavering, humbling hospitality; spectacular, high altitude vistas and a people with an almost super-natural commitment to their faith.

The latter can be viewed amongst the hundreds of pilgrims visiting any of the thousands of shrines, chapels and temples dotting the plains, mountains and gorges of the Tibetan plateau. But the most extraordinary demonstration of this devotion can be witnessed along the main highways within two or three days drive from the capital. Here you will see small groups of Tibetans ranging in age and demographic, from buff young men, to wrinkled, gnarled, stooped old women, making a very special pilgrimage to Lhasa.

For weeks they will make the journey on foot, through shrieking mountain passes, deep, frozen valleys and across dusty, rocky plains. And if the blasting, high-altitude sun is not enough of an impediment to their progress, consider that after every three steps, they raise their hands above their heads in prayer, drop down upon their knees, then lie flat on their stomaches with their hands still raised above their heads, before climbing back to their feet for another three steps!

One sees these pilgrims, covered in the filth and dirt of the land, sometimes with wooden paddles on their hands to save their bloodied palms, moving slowly along the shoulder of the highway as they make this agonising, exhausting devotion to their faith; each prostration taking them slightly closer to the blessings they will receive from the holy temples of Lhasa.

And so they go, surely with every muscle and sinew in their frail bodies shrieking to the highest heavens, until they reach their destination in the city, where they will circumnavigate the major shrines, three times each, maintaining their excruciating devotions with every third step. Their commitment is remarkable, and valued by all; the regular pilgrims undertaking their daily Kora take extreme care not to trample these revered folk mid-prostration.

But the weirdest thing for we outsiders, with our limited understanding of this ancient faith (and this amongst an enormous collection of very weird things), is that inside these most holy of temples, in which most pilgrims shuffle past the sacred icons and statues with a brief pause, and a murmured prayer at each, those who have taken the afore-mentioned, weeks-long, back-breaking journey (as distinguished by their being covered from head to toe in dirt and bloody gashes from their frequent clashes with the earth), literally run through the temples with barely a nod towards the most holies, before disappearing out the back door.

It’s quite remarkable – all the physical pain and torment they endure, not to mention the emotional toll their devotions must play upon them, in order to reach the holy shrines of Lhasa and complete their agonizing Koras, and they barely glance at the sacred relics on their way through the temples. Obviously, by the time they get inside, their work towards the next life is done, and they’re off for a much needed couple a’ dozen snorts of chang (fermented barley beer).

Kora Story 2: Taking the barnyard to church.

In addition to the sacred Kora surrounding the Jokhang Temple (known as the Barkhor), there is a much larger Kora which circles the other main, holy temples and monasteries of the old city. This Kora (known as the Lingkhor) marks the edge of what remains of Old Lhasa, and on the auspicious, fifteenth day of each month, it is not uncommon for the traffic to be ground to a halt by a flood of pilgrims rushing along the sidewalks and streets from as early as first light until dusk.

Now it’s hard enough to manage cycling along Lhasa’s streets when so many of the out-of-towner pilgrims know little of traffic rules and behaviours, so spare some sympathy for those of us trying to get to work in the dim light on a dark, icy, mid-winter’s morning, and having to negotiate herds of sheep and goats who are being dragged along with the rest of the family for an enlightened blessing. Fifteen goat bells certainly make quite the mockery of one's handle-bar 'ting-a-ling', I can tell you!

Not that I suffer from bell envy...

Kora Story 3: Make yerselves right at home.

Did I mention that these Koras are a pretty big and holy deal amongst Tibetans? Yeah, I thought I did. In fact, the Old City, which is surrounded by the Lingkhor, is considered so holy, that in a city which boasts a thriving, broadly located commercial sex industry, the Old City contains virtually the only streets where sex is not sold.

Now I’ve mentioned my thoughts on the Global Circus before; how smelly, self-centred back-packers believe their aimless journeys can be re-packaged and marketed to the rest of the world as some kind of international quest for enlightened consciousness, and how they believe that their 'unique' behaviours and values are the envy and awe of all.

Well I am sorry, you dirty, hairy, singlet-wearing bogan slobs! But wandering through the crowded, narrow streets of Old Lhasa with your scantily clad girlfriends, while necking imported beer from large bottles is not endearing yourselves to the local populous. And I don't think you need so much as a smattering of Tibetan language to notice that those young, Tibetan men shrieking agitatedly at you are not wishing you well on your spiritual journey ... they are telling you, and none-too-politely, to fuck-off back to whatever savage shit-hole civilization you squirmed from!

Kora Story 4: Private eyes, are watchin' you.

Remember SARS? Remember all those pictures in the papers and footage on the evening news back in 2003 of Asian people getting around in face masks? Well enter the throng of folk making their way along the Jokhang's Barkhor on any given day, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the deadly virus is back!

Thankfully it's not for protection from a fatal disease that Tibetan women and men wear masks while conducting their circular, devotional journeys around the great temple. In winter, one could be forgiven for thinking that the masks are protecting their faces from the extreme Tibetan cold, but when the masks are out and proud on a twenty-five degree (Celsius) summer's day, you know there's some other reason for it.

And that reason lies in a Tibet Government decree that workers in the public service are forbidden from engaging in rituals of Tibetan Buddhism (like climbing sacred mountains, burning incense or completing a Kora); to do so can result in severe reprimand and possible dismissal.

But the good news for those Tibetans unwilling (or unable) to denounce their faith is that it is very hard to distinguish the identity of a single, masked figure amongst a hundred others when viewed through the public security infrared closed-circuit TV cameras mounted on walls every twenty metres along the Barkhor.

Kora Story 5: A grave disturbance in the Force.

Another reason for the masks might relate to a regular disturbance to the clockwise flow of pilgrims around the Jokhang Temple since March 2008, when extreme military might was 'let loose' on the populous to quell city-wide riots. Since that time, every devotional, prayer-mumbling pilgrim meandering along the Kora has had their forward-looking view blocked by the cold, menacing stares of armed troops circling the same route in a most-unholy (and potentially insulting), counter-clockwise direction.

These hard, young soldiers make it their mission to stare-down the devotees through their riot shields, ostensibly to ensure that none of them (comprising mostly gnarled and stooped old people, children, nomadic graziers, rural farmers and labourers) don't rise up to disturb the peace of Lhasa's streets.

Armed troops traverse the Jokhang Temple's Barkhor against the regular, holy flow of pilgrims. Can you spot the sniper?

Hair envy on the islands

2010-05-31T19:32:00.002+10:00

The last week of the last millennium saw the rest of the world gathering tremendous caches of canned food products and heading to ground in reinforced concrete bunkers in order to shield themselves from the effects of the treacherous Y2K.

By contrast, the Samoans, who are somewhat accustomed to having a holocaust-surviving collection of canned meat and fish under the kitchen sink at the best of times, and for whom the electricity was hardly ever operating anyway (thanks to fifteen years of ineffectual foreign technical assistance and ongoing, bureaucratic bungling within the Samoa Electric Power Corporation), were disregarding the global call for disaster preparedness, and were preparing instead for the biggest, f’-off fiafia (party) the country had ever seen.

Each day, as the electronic, Millennium countdown clock ticked off its last 604,800 seconds, the Samoa Observer was awash with double page spreads announcing a growing line-up of exciting events and performances, the hurried opening of new bars taking advantage of the anticipated relaxing of the usual midnight curfew on the sale and consumption of alcohol, and international donor assistance to ensure that the last millennium celebration on the planet went off with one of the biggest bangs of them all (quite literally, as it transpired, thanks to China’s kind donation of a NASA-sized payload of expired, unsafe fireworks, which left at least one Samoan citizen looking remarkably like The Thing – but that’s another story for another time).

And amidst all this exciting, noisy anticipation, an additional entertainment option slipped quietly into Apia Harbour one evening, completely under the radar of the Millennium Celebration Organising Committee, in the form of “Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa” boat.

Like the grand old travelling road shows of the American Midwest in the forties, Bruno’s steam vessel was painted in garish primary colours, complete with a striped, barber-shop smoke stack and a flapping pennant promising the “Greatest Show of the Millennium”.

No one really took much notice of the circus boat until, four days later when we’d all recovered from our almighty, nation-wide hangover, the local daily decided that as the world had not ended, they probably ought to resume production, and went looking for a story that wouldn’t require them to travel further than across the street. And the story they ran with was none other than the international scandal that was “Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa”.

Every day for well over a month, the Observer ran an ever-revealing expose of this nod to old-world family entertainment. First it was that Bruno kept animals in tiny cages in the dark hold of his floating menagerie. Later, it was revealed by an international animal rights watchdog (of which no one had previously heard) that Bruno and his floating extravaganza had been refused permission to dock in Fiji on account of alleged inhumane treatment of his performers.

Over the coming weeks, the opinion pieces and letters columns of the Observer moved from one spectrum to the other in support of, and against the travelling, magical circus, with as many prominent local celebrities and politicians throwing their popular weight behind the “great and magical Bruno” as those who renounced him as a shyster and exploiter of innocents.

And through this barrage of newsreel and opinion, whether for or against, there was one act within Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa which managed to captivate and thrill the entire population. It was not Bruno’s somewhat malnourished, leaping lions that stole the show, nor was it the Vitamin D-deficient Russian bear with the balancing beach ball on his schnoz. It wasn’t the clown with the narcotic-shrunken pupils and the visible twitch which so melted the hardened hearts of the naysayers, nor the hind-legged walking of the mange-ridden pig which had the supporters up on their feet at intermission. No, the act which really got Samoa talking was Bruno’s incredible enigma, known colloquially as the Hairy Man.

Was this creature man or beast? Was he some prehistoric throwback, or the result of a pharmaceutical company’s genetic experimentation gone wrong? Whatever the answer, it got all the tongues in the country wagging, and everyone, whether doctor or patient, banker or client, lawyer or accused, land owner or tenant flocked to the Magic Circus to view the follicular spectacle.

And like the freak shows of old, Bruno knew how to give a crowd what they wanted. The Hairy Man was available for viewing after every show, where screaming children would writhe in their parents arms in fear of the hairy arms reaching for them through steel bars as the camera snapped away into the night.

And then, perhaps after two or three months, after the crowds had finally lost interest in the Hairy Man, and just before all of the animals expired from the heat and cramped conditions, down came the big top one evening, and just as it had arrived, Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa boat chugged silently out of the harbour in the dead of night, never to be heard from again.

Or so I assumed in a world where cruelty to animals is less tolerated than it once was, where unusual looking people are free to participate in society along with everyone else, and where laser surgery exist for even the most hirsute. So imagine my surprise on Day 1 of my return to Samoa, when driving through town, my saucer-like eyes were drawn to a massive sign advertising … wait for it … “Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa Training Academy”!

Training Academy!!? What could anyone possibly learn there? Bruno’s circus never had acrobats and trapeze artists; it never had Houdini-types escaping from straight-jackets in glass water tanks; and there were no contortionists or fire eaters. Bruno’s Magic Circus of Samoa only ever showcased a small number of performing animals (which he’d presumably bought for a song after they were forced out of circuses in other countries with laws prohibiting such cruelty) and of course, the Hairy Man.

So what’s really going on up there on the hill, behind those substantial Academy gates? Is it simply an online booking service for acquiring circus animal cast-offs? Or is a somewhat greying and thinning Hairy Man running a whole bunch of new recruits through boot-camp style drills for effective comb-overs? Or perhaps more plausibly, is it simply an international training camp for like-minded entrepreneurs to master the art of media manipulation? - Lord knows that in this pursuit, Bruno has proven himself a true talent of magical proportions.

Samoa continues its fine tradition of superior tertiary education … and sign-writing! Pic: Hagas

Gaugin, he went crazy, man; he went all tropicale!

2010-04-26T10:49:00.003+10:00

Living the way we do in isolated, impersonal Australian suburbia, where one’s next door neighbours are as estranged as if from a completely different city, it is somewhat disconcerting, and at the same time very comforting to walk into a supermarket here in Samoa where I last did a shop nine years ago, and have the manager casually address me by name and suggest she hasn’t “seen [me] ‘round here for a while”.

Such was our wonderful return (or home-coming) to Samoa last week. Whether it be the owners of a bar, the manager of the bank or the waitress at the best pizza outlet outside Sicily, we found that our absence had been but a blip on peoples’ memories, and that there was little surprise at our return – which in itself is no great bombshell, either, as after only one week back, we can see why there are so many people who once washed-up on these shores with the intent of completing a short-term job, and then heading home, but who wound-up staying forever.

Such as sorry old James Percival (not his real name), Gaugin-impressionist (read: imitator) extraordinaire. Percival’s been here for about as long as anyone can remember; painting scenes from Samoa’s rich mythology in bright, tropical blends, and flogging them off for a bomb to salt-water-crazed yachties and sun-scolded tourists who he manages to convince, despite his dishevelled appearance, that he is Samoa’s premier artist. Well to some extent, this might be true; he’s been here for so long that he may well be the oldest surviving artist, but I’m not sure ripping-off Gaugin’s Tahitian-inspired master pieces makes one a great artist.

To be fair, Percival’s stuff is quite nice; the colours are rich and bright, and the scenes portrayed are both mystical and intriguing, but I think it’s fair to say they would be more appropriately hung in the living room of someone’s beach-side holiday shack than in the fine-art auction houses of Sydney’s Paddington, or Melbourne’s Armadale. He must have taken some pretty crazy drugs in the sixties (or at least drunk too many fermenting coconuts) to have come up with the scenes that he did, but alas, his last original idea must have been at about that time, and since then he has simply been reproducing the same twelve scenes over and over again.

Despite having gone completely troppo some time back, Percival still maintains some semblance of his upper-crust, British roots. True, the stiff upper lip has become a little limp in the humidity, and his mandatory sailor captain’s hat has lost its colour and shape, but there are still strong traces of Her Majesty’s plum deep within his voice box, and he continues to wear button-down long-sleeved shirts, despite the effects that the intense humidity has on his dripping armpits.

He may not have always been this way, however. In fact, at one time, Our Man Jim may have been quite the lady-killer. Samoan-born, New Zealand author, Sia Figuel, in her humorous and occasionally cutting observations about life and love in Samoa’s capital, Apia, mentions a foreign artist who regularly entertained and instructed young Samoan maidens looking to learn the ways of love from an expert in the field, so as to be ready with a few handy skills when the time came for their first dallying with Eti or Sione in the plantations behind the city. Could this have been the great and famous James Percival, or merely a fabrication of Ms Figiel’s in order to enrich her South Seas adventure? If the former, then it most certainly must have been a long time ago, as we discovered during our first drive through Apia last week.

At first we had become somewhat worried about the fate of James Percival when we noticed that the dilapidated Samoan fale (house), whose rotting roof and termite-ridden pillars served as his “studio” for decades, had been torn down to make way for yet another, highly imaginative (big and square) China funded-and-built, concrete business tower.

But alas, rounding the German-built clock tower, there he was, staggering down the middle of the main street, his white hair sticking out in all directions like a rabid dog, his grotesquely swollen, ulcerated legs all bandaged up beneath his thongs, a folio under his right arm and his massive gut squeezing out between the top of his ancient micro-shorts and the bottom of his shirt, crookedly affixed as it was by only half of its original buttons.

Clearly no ladies man these days, but the extraordinary artistic output of Samoa’s self-proclaimed, premier artist obviously continues to relieve unsuspecting visitors to Samoa of their hard currency. It’s good to see that in Paradise, some things never change.

Gaugin or Percival; who would know? Certainly not 90% of cashed-up yachties passing through Apia in the last 30 years. Pic: http://markelikalderon.com.

Heading credit: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Enema Time

2010-04-25T08:17:00.001+10:00

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this some time ago, when I was last visiting; I’ve been um-ing and ah-ing about whether to post it … but here it is.

Ever been constipated? Ever had that tight, bloated feeling in your guts that renders your every movement … your every thought inert as you try to circumvent the ever-growing, gurgling, hardening mass of excrement inside you; trying to ignore it and to get on with daily life, but ultimately, inevitably succumbing to the constant discomfort, not to mention the fear of excruciating agony when it does decide to expel its way out of your comparatively tiny anus?

Constipation renders you a non-thinking, non-acting vegetable … and on top of that, the idea of putting anything else in; anything that might add to the malignant poo-tumour in your colon, more or less disappears.

So spare a thought for poor Ol’ Donkey. I’ve been constipated for near-on two years! That’s right, two years of this growing mass of pain and anguish inside me. Two years of fear that when this finally does come out, it’s gonna smart like fire. But it’s time to purge – this pain and suffering within has stopped me from being able to think straight and to act decisively. It has given me a victim complex, and it makes me whiney and unappealing to people I meet. It has also made me irritable to those around me, and thereby is starting to cause pain and suffering for others … it’s time for an almighty, soap-and-water enema up the jacksie … and here it comes.

I haven’t written much on this blog for nearly a year now. For some of that time, I have attributed my lack of creative output to the birth and parenting of Hambones, but my recent circumstances have made it clear to me that this is just an excuse; it’s not lethargy and a lack of time that has stopped me, it’s my constipation, and its life-deadening impact upon me, that has made me creatively turgid.

In my Donkey way, I have always been careful not to reveal too much about myself on this blog for fear of those I work with and know becoming harmed in some way. I’m not talking about, “Errrr, Donkey said I was fat and dud root, and now all my friends on Facecrock know and I’m a laughing stock” kind of harm, I’m talking about real, physical retribution for people and their families.

But storing all this up in my guts has made me creatively constipated. How can I be expected to come up with jolly frivolities when there is such a horrible story to be told? How can I keep banging-on to the world about new cars, coffee machines, my trip to the dentist, when someone I know has been imprisoned for life on dubious charges for actions that most of us would consider an everyday occurrence? This constipation is painful, and the pressure ever-present. It has resulted in me closing my mind to the intake of new ideas, and new experiences. It has made me bitter and stale, and a shell of the Donkey I once was.

Those who have orchestrated this constipation have done so in their clever way, as they have been doing now for nearly sixty years. But as I again return this week to the place where it all started, I have decided I want my old life back. I want to be Donkey again, so it’s time to tell the tale.

I write this post from a place way up high, but I will not be able to post this from here – it is forbidden. This place is renowned world-wide for its peacefulness, and I lived here once, working with a group of dedicated young people who, despite the obstacles and civil restrictions which control and block their thoughts and actions every day, work for the good of their people. But when their fellow citizens had finally had enough of being told how to think and act last year (as seems to happen every ten years or so), and things went awry for the authorities, Mrs Donkey and I were “asked” to leave almost immediately after we stood, horrified, as a massive line of armed soldiers, armoured vehicles, people movers and tanks (all with their distinguished markings covered in newspaper to avoid identification on film or photograph) moved into the city to “subdue” their own people. What happened that evening, and over the following weeks has never been told, and indeed will probably not be unless something changes in the world of international politics.

But I know some of what happened. I know of three men who were dragged from their families by soldiers, one of whom has never been seen again. He was a colleague of mine, and after many months of no word about his location or welfare, or even whether or not he was alive, it was revealed by the authorities that he had been charged with separatist activities, and has been imprisoned for life.

Another colleague was also taken into custody, where he underwent physical torture and abuse for eight weeks. He has been released without charge, and his scars and bruises have taken the place of his once sunny disposition. He no longer participates in society.

And these are the “sensational” stories. For everyone else, there are the six-men, armed patrols which walk in single-file throughout the city, day and night, overseen by high-tech, infrared Closed Circuit TV cameras (in stark contrast to the ancient buildings on which they are mounted) and armed, roof-top snipers on every corner. There are the constant demands for producing of identity papers on every other corner, and there are the late-night raids on homes under the dubious guise of looking for some unknown person, during which the residents are forced to line-up outside in the below-freezing temperatures, sometimes for hours, as the authorities check and re-check identity papers and ask the same series of questions they asked only nights before.

It must wear people down to be exposed to this on a daily basis. But who would speak-out when there are families and friends to consider if one did? And anyway, who will come to these peoples’ aid? Certainly not the international community; that has been clearly articulated.

I return to this place every so often for short visits, to continue my work with those colleagues who remain. We continue to work for the good of their people – nothing to do with politics, just addressing basic human rights such as poverty, education, health. Since my first return after being ejected, things have become less tense, but still the menace remains, and still people, if you’re fortunate enough to have them whisper a story here or there, will tell you that they are far from happy with their lives.

I was right, it wasn’t easy passing this through my sphincter … and the fear of more pain will exist for some time, as I worry about whether this post will create problems for me or for others. But it is an important story to be told … and I hope it will allow me to start feeling less backed-up, and more open to receiving nourishment. We’ll see…

Back in the Barnyard

2010-04-05T14:31:00.003+10:00

In the movies it always comes out of a person's abdomen, but in my case, the alien arrived last week out of my left shoulder; a massive, three-headed, mucous-oozing extra-terrestrial with white-hot fangs and razor-sharp claws thrashing at my Garnier-perfect, Donkey skin. Three hours later, having been seduced by a Grey's Anatomy-type medical intern wearing a pair of cut-off, denim micro-shorts, three-inch heels and a performance-enhancing halter neck who just wanted to get her inexperienced hooks into a bit of Donkey's meat, I found myself drugged and lying prone on an operating table, my erection mashed painfully into the solid bench-top, while the Playboy Bunny gouged the offending alien foetus out of my back by and deposited it into a formaldehyde jar destined for the inaccessible vaults of the CIA's alien research bunkers, deep below the city's streets.

Just my luck, really! For two years now, Mrs D and I have been holed-up in Melbourne preparing for, and then facilitating the arrival of Little Hambones, and doing nothing much more exciting than sniffing the baby's bum every 20 minutes, changing his nappy and nicking up to the swings for a play between poos, feeds and sleeps. And now, on the eve of an all-new, South Pacific adventure, I get abducted in my sleep and done up the bum by a load of randy, Martian holiday-makers from an orbiting cruise vessel, and before long their foetid offspring is making a b-line for the sky through my left shoulder blade, effectively delaying both our intended arrival in a tropical paradise, and therefore by extension, my having anything useful to write about on this blog.

It's been 11 years since Mrs D and I met while working in the wonderful, tropical ideal that is Samoa, and now we're heading there again for a couple of months (this time with Hambones in trail) to work with our former colleagues, and to hopefully re-experience what it is like to really LIVE; which is what it really felt like amongst the most incredible, and yet disturbingly dysfunctional and absurd individuals ever to find themselves confined together on such a small rock.

We'll be interested in returning to see if the Religious Zealot is still managing the National Finances while swelling the borders of his already massive plantation interests (which at last check, totalled almost two-thirds of the country's landmass). We'll be interested to see if the Minister for Transport is still calling the shots, after he moved the centrally-located town bus station 25Kms out of town in order to make room for his new business; the country's only McDonald's restaurant (conveniently for the fortunes of his family, this happened just weeks before the Government slapped a restraining bill on the introduction of foreign fast-food franchises).

We'll be interested to see if the taxi drivers are still requesting to be paid in blow-jobs on Sunday mornings by transvestites skipping church, whether inmates of Her Majesty's Prison Service are still allowed to go home on the weekends so that the guards don't have to work, and to see whether the police still enjoy lying under the mango tree all Sunday afternoon, completely drunk out of their brains, while everyone else in town prefers to be behind the wheel when in the same state.

Yes, we'll be very interested to see if much has changed at all, and I'll be working on making sure, through the re-ignition of DonkeyBlog, that you all get an opportunity to meet the many colourful folk of Apia who prop-up the tropical bars and talk the legs of the stools, or who sell drugs and sex on the sea wall, or who sleep around with this teacher, that pastor or that politician while outwardly condemning their brothers and sisters of the congregation for doing likewise.

Samoa is a hoot; and as soon as this shoulder gash stops weeping fifteen different varieties of pus, I'll be arriving on its sunny shores, and dispatching regular updates. I hope you enjoy them!

The view of Donkey's shoulder just over a week ago. Pic: http://www.bigcheesepress.com.

Pigeon holed

2009-10-16T20:43:00.002+11:00

I bet Peter Garret thinks that the worse thing about going to a "P" party dressed as a proctologist is that despite the jovial reception his gag generates on arrival, there's nothing funny about having to spend the rest of the night wearing latex gloves smeared in vegemite.

Pic: http://paradigmoz.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/peter-garrett-flag.jpg

How long is forever, Daddy?

2009-07-14T21:59:00.003+10:00

I remember asking my father this over and over again when I was a youngster; one of many such questions which, whilst being but a small child with little emotional and intellectual capacity, I knew instinctively were the source of grating annoyance to all adults.

Other such examples which I personally delighted in, were "Are we there yet?" and "Caniva [insert whatever you like - ice cream, lollypop, balloon, t-bone steak...]?".

But, "how long is forever?" was one that Dad seemed to pause upon, ever-so-slightly, before offering his usually, entirely unsatisfactory (and perhaps, like a seasoned sparring partner, deliberately, equally abrasive) reply, "Go and ask your mother".

Interestingly, the particularly unusual pause before answering seemed to signal that some truthful answer existed somewhere deep within him, and the fact that it remained unspoken perhaps hinted at some regretful, or even shameful element. Perhaps it was that which kept me asking ... or perhaps it was just that I was an annoying brat.

Outwardly, however, the question remained, for me, unanswered ... until recently, when faced with the responsibility of raising Little Hambones. I can assure you now, after experiencing it on a number of occasions in the last four months, that infantile sleep apnea has finally answered that often repeated question. I can now confidently assure you that the time taken for your baby's next, sleeping breath can seem like forever, and forever can be a very, very, very long time.

Maybe not Hawaii – more like the back-seat of the Kingswood on family holidays. My parent-given nick-name seems to have moved up in the world. Pic: www.myspace.com/kingofhawaii808