Life in General

A Band by Any Other Name….

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I just read an article about how bands like the Beatles and Pink Floyd and pretend bands like Coldplay got their names. It was interesting up to a point. The point being that they left out one of the world’s premier, if somewhat understated and underground, bands. I speak (write, actually) of none other than Not Garfunkel. The stories of how others got their names pale into insignificance when compared with the saga around our name. Did I mention that I was one of the founders of this iconic band and am currently the only member? Actually the others may still consider themselves to be members. It’s just that when I grab a guitar to play, I’m the only person in the room these days.

Back to the name. Son and girlfriend at the time came round to see the CB and me one night. The girlfriend was 24 and basically knew nothing about anything that had happened before her 18th birthday and outside this state. So when we told them we had tickets to see Simon and Garfunkel she explained that not only had she never heard of them but that it was a stupid name for a band.

Later that evening I announced that Saturday afternoon some mates were coming over and we were going to set up our gear on the deck and play some music and drink some beer. I forget which was used as an excuse for the other. Son asked if we had a name for the band and before I could answer girlfriend blurted out “It’s not Garfunkel is it?” And a legend was born.

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A Dog with a Cattitude Problem

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It’s time for a treatise on pets. They’ve been mentioned in despatches occasionally in my Facebook musings and the occasional atrocity has been described and pictures published but it’s now time for an in-depth investigation. What has prompted this, you ask? It’s all about a rug and then some. Apparently “and then some” was a phrase Kurt Vonnegut used a lot – he wrote Slaughterhouse Five. I learnt this from a National Lampoon magazine parody of great English language writers not from an analysis of his writing style. But I digress.

The rug in question is a beautiful Turkish piece that the child bride and I bought in Turkey, funnily enough. In fact it’s one of two we bought in Kusadasi on a trip some years back. We didn’t want to hang them on the wall and make the place look like a Middle Eastern brothel because being rather expensive and hand-made they are quite durable so we put them where one normally puts rugs – on the floor.

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In the picture above you can see an opening on the right which is the doorway into the laundry. On the other side of the laundry wall are located not one but two litter trays. These are placed there for the cats’ convenience however one of the cats has decided that he doesn’t like grit in his furry hobbit-like feet so he occasionally craps on the rug. I am sure this is also to keep us on our toes such that when we stagger downstairs first thing in the morning to give the cats their breakfast (also located in the laundry) we have to watch where we step. Hence the first order of business (if you’ll excuse the pun) is to stand and stare at the rug until the morning’s booby trap has been located if there is indeed one there. It took me three stares one morning before I saw the offending bratwurst. If you want to know what that’s like imagine doing a Where’s Wally puzzle when you’re half pissed.

Now in that photo there is a cat crap somewhere and I defy you to find it. I’ve forgotten where it is and I can’t find it. Top left I think.

Cats are considered to be fastidiously clean because they lick themselves constantly. What this means is that they swallow a lot of their own hair and occasionally it comes up the same way it went down in the shape of a fur ball. And cats will chunder where they stand which is what we woke up to this morning. We regularly wake up to last night’s dinner spread all over the floor or dripping down the back of a chair because the cat couldn’t be bothered getting off the dining room table.

Charlie the small white dog on the other hand, will demand to be let outside and he’ll bounce around like a pogo stick if he really needs to go outside. He may be a veritable crapping machine but he knows where the convenience is – anywhere outside.

The most alarming thing about cats is that they epitomise the old saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. They fight each other regularly although it rarely escalates to a full on biting, scratching death tangle because one’s a bully (Ed) and the other one (Kaos) isn’t. The bully is big and slow and the other is small and agile so spends quality time under chairs which are no-go zones for Ed of the ponderous bulk.

Ed and Charlie on the other hand have lived an inter-species truce for the past year or so except for the past few months where Ed has taken to stalking Charlie and literally boxing him when he least expects it, like when they are seemingly innocently walking past each other. Of course Charlie recognises that he has to stand up for canine pride so the occasional biff from Ed degenerates into sound and fury. This is where the enemy thing comes in. If Charlie and Ed are in a blue, Kaos charges in and blind-sides Charlie in a neat pincer movement. So the poor little bugger is being punched in the head from all directions.

I challenge anyone to attempt to break that up with anything other than a broom or if one isn’t handy, a foot. I reached into one of these altercations a while back and months later we were still finding blood spatters in odd places after a vein on the back of my hand was opened by a razor sharp cat claw.

If we didn’t lock the cats outside and Charlie inside when we go out, God knows what we’d come home to. We love Charlie but look forward to the day David gets his own place and moves out with his dog. Unfortunately, the preferred living option at the moment is right across the road from us so during working hours we would be right back where we started. Not to worry.

 

Back for My Birthday and The List

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The aftermath of 4 weeks in Europe.

After 4 weeks on the road (and on the sea and in the air to be more precise) and gastronomic, oenonic and beeronic overindulgences of the moronic rather than lessonic kinds you can imagine that our immune systems were vulnerable to attack so the child bride and I duly came down with catastrophic colds yesterday. Last night my nose, throat and lungs felt like Helms Deep under orc assault with Gandalf and the cavalry not due to arrive until about Friday. Consequently, on this my 60th birthday I feel like doing not much at all really. But this does allow the time for a degree of contemplation of something of vital importance.

If you have passed 60 already you will have received The List. No one knows where it comes from or who sends it or why. It does however provide guidance (as if any was needed, we’re 60 after all) for the twilight (zone) years of our lives. If you are over 60 you need read no further as you will have received your List already. If you are well past 60 you will have received it by post in an envelope with no return address. If you are well under 60 you will not know what I am talking about in that previous sentence (if you know what a sentence, of the grammatical not prison kind, is).

The List I received goes as follows:

1. Health
We, the human race, are living longer. For this reason we are apparently imposing an increasing burden on the health system. Now it stands to reason that if we are living longer we are actually healthier so there is an obvious contradiction here. Notwithstanding this, for the over 60’s the health system is a veritable pub smorgasbord of drugs and treatments to be taken advantage of at every opportunity. Over 60’s have lost all respect for the user pays system because we’ve paid and now it’s time to use. The younger “me generation” is going to have to come to grips with that as total economic melt-down looms because, as yet, they haven’t. Over 60’s won’t because we’ll all be dead, possibly from a drug overdose.

2. Education
a. English
English is about communication. This involves more than abbreviated texting and sexting (in the words and clothes departments respectively) via various devices. These are for making phone calls so people can speak to each other in well constructed sentences. Over 60’s understand this. They also understand that punctuation is not something you do in a colonoscopy bag.

b. Mathematics
Over 60’s can perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in their heads. They also know what these things are.

c. History
Over 60’s love history because they have more of it than the young. Stuff happened before the internet. You can use it to check.

3. Sex
For men over 60, sex can be likened to pouring your last can of petrol on the fire. This is a euphemism (for a metaphor) for attaching your superannuation to a fish hook, dangling it in a pool of pre-cougars, catching a trophy wife and going for it until the fire flames out in about 6 months. Then it’s over, assuming the money’s run out also. For married women over 60 this list item has no relevance.

4. Music
In our over 60s’ music, performers actually sing. More recently this has not necessarily been the case. Remember MC Hammer? “Thanks for talking us through that song MC. Now can you sing it and add a few musical instruments to that boring repetitive bass line? Oh…that’s it?” He’s got a lot to answer for. We of the Rolling Stones generation look forward to hoe rap clones scratching each other’s eyes out and the gangsta rap clones shooting each other into extinction. Either way the biggest con in musical history has a limited shelf life. Now leave us to our country and western heavy metal – a tuneless noise about hay – and dreaming about the hedonism of 60’s and 70’s rock.

5. Dancing
Over 60’s don’t or shouldn’t dance. Unfortunately some wish to retain this right. Fortunately the Dad Dance phase is well and truly over by 60 and if you must, it now involves anchoring your feet to the ground and swaying your arms to the music, generally with a small child attached to them.

6. Sport
All references to sport must now begin with the phrase “Back in my day…” as in “Back in my day these poofs wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes with Lezzy Boyd, Greggy Dowling and Artie Beetson.” All given names (we used to call them Christian names) must end with “y” or “ie”.

7. Injuries
The above sport reference applies equally to sporting injuries as in “Back in my day we’d play on Sunday and go down the mine with a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder and concussion on Monday”.

8. Religion
Most people don’t have any anymore but over 60’s reserve the right to a gradual return especially if the church is putting on free food or more importantly, free booze. The logical extension of this process is the death-bed conversion, just in case.

9. Free Stuff
We deserve it and the rest don’t. They have to pay for it. Simple.

10. Working
What’s that? Hahahaha

11. Fashion
Back in the day when today’s over 60’s were dedicated followers of fashion, it meant something if you wore jeans and thongs. It meant you also wore a flanno and had a mullet which were quite popular for a while there amongst a certain demographic. Some over 60’s now feel comfortable with fashion faux pas such as wearing socks with sandals, a crime for which you can be shot incidentally. And for the over 60 ladies the transition from frilly and filmy to industrial strength is now complete.

12. Drinking
Once you crack the big 6 oh there is no reason to ever buy a drink again. If you find yourself in a pub in a shout with younger members of the community it is likely that they will tell you to take your hand out of your pocket when it is your turn to shout. This behaviour should not be discouraged. In fact it should be actively encouraged by constantly complaining about the bloody government and its treatment of the backbone (sciatica notwithstanding) of the community and you can’t make the pension go as far as it used to blah blah blah. And anyone who doesn’t think we’re the backbone, may we suggest a headcount (see Health).

13. Birthdays
As a youngster, birthdays involve waking up in a pool of your own vomit with a new face tattoo. The older generation is satisfied with more material but no less cheap thrills. Like for the mature man a trip down memory lane with a “look but don’t touch” pass. May we suggest a particular place that unnecessarily interrupts football games with displays of….and…..and beer.

14. Gifts
Birthdays (if it’s yours) are about receiving gifts. Unlike the economy, which many youngsters of a socialistic bent think is a zero sum game, gift giving actually is i.e. every time one gift is given, one is received. We over 60’s know which side of that equation we want to be on.

15. Cars
Over 60’s know that as phones are for making phone calls, cars are for getting you from A to B. Unlike with phones however, we like the toys that come with cars. But we are torn between getting the GT super sport pack or going on another cruise. Convertibles are a particular dilemma. These are for very young people but because most very young people can’t afford a decent convertible, special dispensation has been given to the over 60’s to buy them. Looking ridiculous in a convertible is an issue for people who want “the look” but is irrelevant to over 60’s who revel in not giving a stuff about what they look like (see Fashion).

16. Aging
This brings special privileges which are called brain fades or mental blocks or senior moments or CRAFT as in Can’t Remember A F—ing Thing moments. These involve issues such as going into a room then having to contemplate the exact reason for going in there in the first place.

17. Political Correctness
Over 60’s don’t do political correctness. It’s for well norked celebrities with their climate off-sets and private jets and bureaucrats, academics and ABC types who think they’re distantly related to Evonne Goolagong. If you take offence then put the bloody thing back before the cows escape. Now, did you hear the latest Irish/Polish/Kiwi/Arab/Jewish/Catholic (insert ethnic/religious group to be ridiculed) joke?

18. Politics
This is not relevant. Over 60’s know all there is to know about politics. From one me-generation (baby boomers) to another (the young), don’t worry, it’ll all be fine. We’ll spend our super and you can spend the tax we contribute. Oh that’s right, we don’t contribute tax anymore. Hahahahahaha.

Looking Daggers

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A while ago I had a run in with a sharp pointed implement. The story is related here as a warning.

You would think it unnecessary to issue a warning against mixing football, comfy chairs, red wine and sharp knives. But it seems there is no limit to the rather unfortunate consequences which can arise when one considers the endless permutations resulting from the juxtaposition of those four variables.
Last night I settled into my favourite chair with a generous splash of red at my elbow and a steak dinner, courtesy of my lovely wife, on my lap (the dinner, not the child bride). A tough game of footy beckoned. Sometime later said wife returned to find me fast asleep with the now food-relieved plate still on my lap and the fork and (very sharp) steak knife clutched in my hand like a drowning man clutches a life preserver. As a consequence, she removed the plate and unknowingly (or was it??) left me and my eating implements to our collective fate.
At game’s end the cacophony which signals victory for the underdog, as happened in this instance, contrived to wake me up. At some point between the knife (the fork is now irrelevant to the story) being riga mortised in my hand and my waking, it had migrated down the side of the chair, nestling snugly, sharp side in as it turned out, against my side, just above the hip bone and just below the left kidney. On waking I swivelled to the side for some unknown reason and experienced a somewhat sharp (pun not intended) pain in my person. As you, dear reader, can imagine, this resulted in my awaking rapidly from my sleep induced torpor and I leapt to my feet.

On placing my hand on the area from which the eye watering pain was emanating, I felt the now located sharp implement protruding from my side. “That’s not supposed to be there” I thought, and proceeded to remove it. I can confirm that withdrawal is just as painful as entry. Fortunately it was only in far enough to not immediately fall out when I stood up as our steak knives are of the cheap variety and are therefore quite light. The upside is that I now have a cast iron excuse to not exert myself in the garden today.
As a consequence of last night’s misfortune (which wasn’t as bad as two Christmas Eves ago when 12 stitches in my arm was the end result) this morning I have been laughed at by my wife and my youngest brother. It’s a sad world when one’s adversity becomes the source of mirth for others although as the brother pointed out, his kids do it all the time. But then he has been raising them to be sociopaths.

Addendum

Another Friday night. Watching the footy. Dinner was pasta and meatballs (not steak) which has been despatched; spoon has been placed in the dishwasher before it attempted to do a King Lear on my Gloucester and no stab wounds to date. Will no doubt wake up with the red wine glass inserted in my forehead.
Visited my dermatologist yesterday to continue the ongoing crusade against the sins of the child visited on the adult (sun-baking as a 10 year old was not smart for someone with my complexion). She commented about the stab wound in my side and I told her someone has to protect the city and risk life and limb rounding up the bad guys. She didn’t believe me. My disguise remains intact.

 

Don’t Drink the Water

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Have you noticed that little sign over the sink in an aircraft toilet. It says “not drinking water”. And just next to it there’s a drawer full of toothbrushes and toothpaste. This raises a number of questions. If we shouldn’t be drinking it should we be putting it in our mouths even if we spit it out? Will the toothpaste kill the greebies that obviously lurk in this ungreen, unsmelly, uncontaminated with obvious wriggly things, water.

In the backblocks of what would be considered lesser developed countries where there is no bottled water, beer is a reasonable substitute for water for cleaning one’s teeth and I have heard of scotch being used although this is a rather expensive way of going about it. Scotch without the toothpaste would be a much more palatable option for a few days.

And if this water’s not to be drunk, where did it come from in the first place. At one end of Sydney airport is the Cook River. Next time I get on a plane parked at that end I’ll be looking out for a bloke in airport high-viz standing next to the plane sucking on a hose dangling in that river.

Anyway, I’ve inadvertently swallowed that water when cleaning my teeth or washing out the taste of the airline food, or swallowing sleeping pills. My GP assures me that the recurring bouts of cholera are caused by breathing contaminated air.

That Looks Familiar

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I may have already mentioned that in the event of my actually writing a book about travel, I already have a title for said book. It took 11 years of regular international travel to come up with it so as you would expect it’s a doozy – one Dickens, Hemingway and Steinbeck (Jason, Barry and Daryl respectively) would be proud of. I was sitting in a taxi with a colleague in Seoul one day and I said to him “You know, there are no yellow cars in Korea” and he spent the next two days trying to find one. And thus a title was born. Of course the stodgy, conservative and superstitious Koreans have loosened up considerably in the years since, what with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads. So now you do occasionally see a yellow car……. in a crumpled mess wrapped round a light pole. Actually, to be fair, the “stodgy” Koreans will entertain you to within an inch of your life given half a chance but when it comes to automobile paint strips, they’re Oliver Cromwell.
We all do this when we travel. That is, spot the most obscure differences between our homes and our destinations. Here’s one for you. On a hot summer’s afternoon especially down by the beach you will notice (so I’ve been told) that many young women forget to don a certain item of undergarmentry worn mostly on the frontal part of the torso, north of the bellybutton and south of the chin. Don’t even bother looking for this particular fashion quirk in Japan.
And while on the subject of Japanese fashion, every Japanese male wears a dark blue suit from Monday to Friday. Of course he makes up for it on the weekend and on vacation in the most emphatic way. Witness the garb worn on the golf course and you will be looking at a gaggle of golfers who steadfastly ignore their exasperated wives’ advice on colour and pattern coordination.
We also look for the occasional reassurance. Some destinations go out of their way to accommodate this – fish and chip shops and Boddington’s beer in Torremolinos for the tastefully discerning British tourist for example. In strange or unfamiliar places we appreciate that reassurance. That’s why many people like to travel in pairs or groups so even in the most unfamiliar or hostile of environments we can look at the person standing next to us and think “I can run faster than you if the shit hits the fan”.
We westerners shouldn’t demonstrate our insensitivity to the mysteries of especially the east without pointing out that Australia, for all its banality can be idiosyncratic and mysterious as well. Why, for instance, do we walk into polling booths with our eyes wide open and vote for idiots. Basically because notwithstanding the open eyes, we have our thumb in our bum and our mind in neutral and on reflection, we’re not alone in this regard. And why are there no taxis after 10.00pm? As I have previously mentioned, in Hong Kong, if you close your eyes and step out into Nathan Road at any time of day or night, you’ll be hit by a taxi (or occasionally by a Rolls Royce).
The child bride and I lived in Tasmania for three years. Tasmania is about as big as the park I can see across the road from where I am writing this. Yet Tasmanians wouldn’t travel as far on their holidays as we would to the shops. There were people on the west coast who had never been to the east coast. If it wasn’t for a hilly bit in the middle and a few big trees you could see the west side from the east side. Yes, many people crave familiarity and are terrified of losing it although Tasmanians do have an excuse for not seeking out new and interesting places. Many of them think the world ends at Bass Strait.

Sniffing the Wind

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There are some things we just don’t talk about but are so natural and in some cases, confronting, you have to wonder why (because they’re confronting I guess). For example toilet breaks are never written into the script in American films whereas the Europeans love them. Like Kim Jong Un, Hollywood’s elite don’t excrete – neat slogan eh? Well at least most of them think their shit doesn’t stink which gets me to the topic of the day which I will approach in my usual roundabout way.

If you’re in a frequent flyer program, you’ll know how airlines send you those “Help us to help you” forms to fill out or direct you to the profile page on the website. This is so we can tell them we like opera of polo or flower arranging. Why, I’m not sure. My boss did get invited to a golf tournament once by an airline but that’s the only time in 30 years of travel I’ve heard of anything like that happening. And it was about 30 years ago. If an airline is thinking of slinging one my way, can I go to the Superbowl? Cheers.

In said profile, I always put that I want an aisle seat on the lower deck (for double decker planes you understand). But all airlines number their seats differently so unless you ask at check in, you don’t necessarily know where you’re sitting until you get there. Why don’t I ask? Because I bloody forget.

So I’m in 11H which is an aisle seat (woo hoo) but upper deck and right at the front against the bulkhead. That’s right the front row is row 11. I had to get up at 4.15am to get down to Sydney to catch this plane to Singapore so I’m grumpy. And then there’s the smell, which brings us back to where we started.

Smells on planes can be lumped (or wafted) into two groups – those you make and those others make. They can also be ranked according to desirability. At one extreme we have smoke, for obvious reasons and at the other extreme is the alluring scent a Singapore Girl leaves as she floats by. Personal odours are way down at the smoke end.

I once heard English doctor/writer/actor/comic/etc Jonathan Miller being interviewed and he commented on the propensity for air travel to make him fart and the “fact” that that they were “strangely odourless” (his comment). This puzzled me for many years because (1) he’s a medical doctor (2) he’s wrong and (3) assuming the first two assertions are correct, why can’t he smell his own farts. I’m also assuming all olfactory components are present and accounted for.

Anyone who has travelled at least a few times will be aware of that situation when someone drops one and there is nowhere to hide. Fortunately it doesn’t last as long as if you are in a closed room or heaven forbid, in a lift. This is because the air-conditioning in an aeroplane is strong enough to suck the dermis (that’s your second layer of skin) out through your pores.

Having pondered this riddle for many years and refused to ask for expert advice (I don’t ask for directions either), I decided it was because air is pumped into the cabin at the top and sucked out through vents at floor level. This means any olfactory nastiness emanating from the trouser region has to battle against the wind (excuse the pun) to get as high as your nose. But God help your feet.

This theory prevailed in my mind until on one subsequent trip I accidentally listened to the safety demonstration. Apparently a row of floor lights will guide you to an exit if someone in first class has accidentally set his polyester track-suit on fire and the plane has filled with smoke. You hit the floor and as the kids’ saying goes “get down low and go go go”. So much for the theory because this scenario assumes the smoke is being sucked up not down. Of course it’s only relevant in the event of a tracksuit mishap while on the ground. If you’re more than a few metres off the ground and it’s anything other than a smouldering tracksuit, forget it.

So why don’t Jonathan Miller’s farts smell. I have no idea. Maybe he only eats rose petals.

We are now going to leave smells and get onto toilets (another execrable pun which is also almost a pun itself). And if we go right back to the start, this was the original rationale for writing this piece. So let’s cut to the cheese, sorry chase. (I’m on a roll).

Seat 11C isn’t so bad except for what I’ve already said and for one other thing. The convenience is about a foot away from my feet. There is a flimsy inch thick wall between us but it’s not enough to disguise the whoosh which sweeps from the little room immediately in front of me then under my seat (below the floor – this is Singapore Airlines after all) to who knows where.

At the start of the flight it whooshed three times over a few minutes and no one emerged. Funny what you notice isn’t it? But something else slowly emerged and then they wheeled out the brunch trolley. The eggs thought it was their birthday. Harmonizing sulphurous fumes everywhere. Eventually the person who had been sitting (presumably) immediately in front of me barrelled through the door and hastily resumed his seat, having despatched….no no no, we’re not going there.

But some things are indelibly seared into your brain, never to be expunged. And one of them is pushing open an unlocked toilet door only to see a lady who forgot to lock said door squatting on the seat. Needless to say, having a complete stranger barging in on what is generally a most private moment is a reason for considerable dismay and apparently a justification for peeing on the floor. One needs to be very light on one’s feet in this circumstance.

So the upshot is, if I’m unfortunate enough to get a seat next to the khasi and someone steps through that door, I shut my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, thumbs up my nose and think of England.

Currying Favour

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Did you hear about the Indian who ate too much curry? He fell into a korma.

Indian jokes aren’t quite as prevalent (outside India) as Irish jokes or Polish jokes or blonde jokes but they exist and they’re all as funny as that one a few lines up. Actually, that’s an Indian Dad joke.

Notwithstanding the just demonstrated joke standard, Indians do laugh. A lot. Especially when their cricket team is stitching up an opposition which just happens to be Australia at the moment. There is nothing worse than negotiating with a room full on Indians at the same time as their team is murdering yours. I’ve been there. It was inevitable as I’ve been to India around 90 times. I used to keep a travel log recording all of my overseas business trips and was up to 78 in 2003 when I stopped counting. Consequently, I’ve seen a lot of the place – good and bad. A lot of my future stories will feature various aspects of the place so I thought I’d start with all the good things I can think of. Here we go:

• The waiters are more polite than they are in France.
• In hotel construction more time and effort is spent on the bar than any other room in the building.
• Women and girls adorn their long hair with flowers.
• The beer is getting colder.
• Waiters show you the label on a beer bottle before they pour it for you.
• Ambassador cars are cute relics of motoring’s past and are safer than armoured personnel carriers.
• There are no high speed car accidents but unfortunately the roads make up for this.
• There are fewer plane crashes than there are in the USA.
• India produces a lot of Miss Worlds and Miss Universes.
• If there’s a cricket test match occurring anywhere in the world it will be on TV.
• The food is great.
• Breakfasts are fantastic.
• Beer goes great with Indian food.
• I heard a man in an Indian bar say “Beer drinkers make great lovers”.
• On my first trip there were two TV channels. Now there are about 2,000.
• There are more newspapers than TV channels.
• Newspapers tell their version of the truth without fear….
• On my first trip there were two beers. Now there are a few more.
• Notice how I haven’t mentioned the wine.
• After all of those trips I now enjoy arriving in India more than I used to enjoy leaving
• Sexist comment alert!!!! Trigger warning!!!! (this is an example of a sarcastic put-down of political correctness) On some airlines, Indian flight attendants are extremely good looking. The females that is. I’m not qualified to comment on the males.
• The Taj Mahal.
• The child bride likes India and wants to revisit which is more than I can say for some countries we won’t mention here (yet).
• Communications used to be crap which was kind of nice if you wanted to disappear for a week or so and blame the phones.
• There are lots of new airports. The stories I could tell…..
• Here’s one of them. Getting through immigration (either way) used to be the slowest in the world except for Iran where immigration’s computer actually was a large filing cabinet (going back a bit admittedly). It’s now improved in India. I haven’t been to Iran for a while.
• The cashews are bigger than anywhere else in the world.
• Everything is cheaper except real estate and anything associated with a decent hotel room.
• You can always get a lift home on New Year’s Eve.
• Mobile phone usage used to be less ostentatious and inclusive (if you get my drift) than in Hong Kong. Alas…..
• Elephants.
• The three women in C.A.T.S. (you’ll have to look it up) were cuter than Charlie’s Angels.
• Indians are friends for life, even if you don’t like them.

 

To Blog or to Book, That is the Question

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I recently read an article written by Megan McArdle an American blogger and writer, in which she expounds on the tendency for writers to procrastinate. I thought to myself “I can do that” – procrastinate, that is. I’ve sort of been doing it in relation to this blog for a couple of years now (20 years if we include all of the attempts to actually write a book). You see my time was previously taken up with gainful employment but my position with a mining company was made redundant. That allowed me to set up a consultancy to capitalise on my invaluable experience. I set it up during the worst market conditions in a long time. By “long time” I mean geological time which for the unaware means a really, really, long time, sort of like the time it takes for Christmas to come round when you’re six years old and it’s January 2nd.

So I’ve had a bit of time on my hands. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done a bit of work, kept my hand in as they say. But things are pretty slow as they also say. Actually, to digress, you’ll know when business (the one I’m in) picks up because this blog will slow down or stop. Fortunately I’ve got a lot of material to drip feed into it for now.

Ms McArdle makes the point that the driving force behind writing procrastinators is the deadline. Fair enough if you’re an employee of a newspaper company or a magazine company or a regular freelancer or a repeat novelist. For the first timer there isn’t a deadline for anything or with anyone so procrastination beats drive every time. There are plenty of people out there who would challenge this contention – those with boundless energy, ambition and a plan. They’re keeping the rest of us awake.

This tendency to procrastinate when it comes to writing is a shame. Apparently we all have at least one novel in us and it would definitely be forthcoming apart from you know what. Isn’t that the biggest cop-out imaginable? “Aw I was going to write this blockbuster on the weekend, you know, violence, action, sex, plot twists that would stun Agatha Christie and that. But the footy was on so I thought fuck it; I’ll have another beer instead”.

It’s a shame I haven’t found the motivation to get round to it because let’s face it, a book’s not a bad legacy even if it is crap and with self-publishing available you don’t even need to convince anyone that it’s any good. I had hoped writing was like riding a bike – once learned never forgotten. How many activities prove that old adage (apart from riding a bike)? None that I can think of. I can’t run as fast as I could 30 years ago. I can’t drink as much as I did in my reckless youth because the defence mechanism automatically kicks in and I fall asleep. I can’t hold my breath for as long as I used to. There are a number of other things I can’t do for as long as I used to but we’ll leave it there.

My earliest attempts at writing used to make my primary school classmates laugh, possibly because what I wrote pissed off my teachers so much. By way of an example, if the essay subject was “Pirates”, I might write something like this:

The fierce looking smelly (for they did not wash) pirate captain waved his cutlass and said “Ahhhh” which was pirate for “Attention” but he didn’t say that because he didn’t go to school because his parents were drunks who spent all their time in the pub in London which was a big town made up of houses and mud caused by the rain and horses which were also smelly.

Stream of consciousness essay writing only got me so far (as far as the principal’s office once) and I had to revert to more conventional prose to preserve my position in the class exam proficiency hierarchy – that’s a politically correct term I just made up.

Actually, I have to confess that I’ve made two previous attempts at writing books; one attempt valiant but ultimately in vain, the other rubbish. One was a novel (the rubbish) and the other was a travel book (“There Are No Yellow Cars in Korea” – fantastic title if I do say so myself). I found the novel outline when cleaning out some old files recently. It was scribbled in long-hand on both sides of an A3 sheet of paper. Then I found the manuscript (about 75% complete) but couldn’t bring myself to read it. The travel book, on the other hand, is written (also in long hand) in numerous note-books I used to carry with me when I was a regular international traveller. That sounds uber pretentious doesn’t it? I was effectively a travelling salesman although to be fair (pretentiousness alert) what I was selling was worth tens of millions of dollars. I’m not going to tell you what I sold because if you vote Green, you’ll stop reading.

Alright, it was coal. Very large amounts of it. Millions of tonnes at a time sometimes. And just to add to the pretension, we didn’t sell it, we “marketed” it. And when I say “we” I mean a small select “Band of Gypsies” at the top of our game, keeping your lights on and the world’s steel mills producing the material that built the chair you are sitting on (unless it’s made of wood or plastic, of course). Those were the rose coloured days.

Why didn’t either of these books get finished? You guessed it.

So there’s the motivation for writing this blog – antiprocrastinarianism. But what’s it about? Novels have plots, non-fiction books have themes. I know novels can have themes as well, especially clever ones like those that Ayn Rand used to write. Actually her themes were developed into a full-blown philosophy and I’m really getting out of my depth here.

Anyway, I’m going to write about stuff that I know and have experienced and the rest I’ll make up. I know about international travel as previously mentioned so there’ll be a healthy dose of that. I’ll try hard to distinguish taking the piss from xenophobia and outright racism but there’s no pleasing some people especially the terminally disgruntled lemon suckers. So to you people, get stuffed. There’ll be a few business and sport themes running through various narratives and copious references to the good old bacchanalian pleasures as the name of the blog suggests. Hope you enjoy the ride.

In the Beginning

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Someone once suggested I write a book. This is the next best thing as the post below explains. Rather than write my own stuff on Facebook and have nobody read it, I thought I’d come here and write something on my own blog and have nobody read it. If enough nobodies read it someone may put ads on here and I might get some money. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve put a lot of travel logs on Facebook over the years. Most of them related to holidays the child bride and I have taken. I’ve written many more related to work travel and over time I’ll share my retrospective thoughts with you. It’ll be my take on people places and things as well as the odd non-sequitur when I feel like regaling you with my thoughts on crap management, crap music or crap people. And sport.

Of course one thing is ubiquitous in all of this and the name of this site probably gives it away. There will be regular references to it. It may not be front and centre but like the iPhone it will always be there or there abouts.