Aversion Therapy

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Ego: it is a dirty word

The lack of anything like it where I live was all the justification I needed while in the Regional Capital this week to take an hour out from the gruelling schedule of world-saving talk fests to go for a long swim in the National Olympic Pool.

Although I’d never been conscious of it before, I realised as I approached the ticket office that afternoon that visiting public swimming pools in developing countries is something I seem to have done quite often over the years … curiously, only ever alone. 

But despite the solitude, there is a great deal to enjoy about visiting the local pool.  First and foremost, it’s the colour.  Growing-up and living in Melbourne for most of my life means one usually only ever swam inside, in the dim, grey light emitted from heavy clouds through permanently condensed windows.  By contrast, I am always dazzled when walking through the gate of a local swimming pool in a foreign country, to see the sparkling, rich azure of the water as it reflects the tropical, midday sun.

These brilliant hues never cease to give me a tremendous, emotional lift when I first lay eyes on them, and so it was this week, when, drunk and distracted from the brightness and cheer of my first sighting of the public pool, that I completely ignored the attendant’s directions to the male change room and instead wandered over to the grassy square at the Southern end of the pool, where I disrobed and dove straight into the electric water.  One, two, three strokes and I was off in a reflective trance …

Another thing I love about swimming pools in developing countries is the chance to feel like a bloody world champion.  I am by no means a brilliant swimmer, but I can and do swim a long way, especially in comparison with local people, very few of whom have ever been taught to swim, or have attempted to complete an entire lap.  By contrast, Donkey, with his steady, relentless stroke becomes quite a point of interest for the local populace, and it has happened on more than a few occasions that on emerging from the water, Donkey has run a gauntlet of admiring, doting smiles, handshakes and back slaps from balding, pot-bellied, moustachioed men (and in some cases, women).  I guess it could get tiring, but I love it!

So it was that on this recent, sunny afternoon that something roused me from my contemplations at around Lap 14, and I noticed there were many young people sitting poolside and in the stands, admiring my stroke and appearing not a little impressed by this athletic new-comer.  Full of piss and vinegar at my own self-importance, I puffed my chest and poked my Speedoed arse a little higher in the water and ploughed on ahead, musing over what it was that had caught my attention.  Assuming it must simply have been the attention of the masses, I made the turn and headed back whence I’d come.  Before long, my mind was again trailing off …

The pool in India was by far my favourite; so busy and so well appointed in that country which was otherwise pretty filthy.  I had really been part of the furniture for a while, and I do believe some came there in the mornings just to watch me.  Why did I stop, I wonder?  Oh hang on … that’s right … phlegm!  After about 4 months of daily swimming, I came to learn that if I hadn’t had my head down in physical exertion, I would have noticed that the general populous of South Delhi used the facilities not only for their morning exercise, but also for their respiratory ablutions, and once I’d come to recognise the hoiking and spitting (even from the pool attendant), it became increasingly difficult to ignore the floaties getting caught on my goggles with each lap…

I was just coming around for another turn at the Northern end of the pool when I was again, suddenly snapped-out of my musings.  “Whoa!  What is that stench?  Good thing I hadn’t bothered with the male change rooms”, I thought as I executed another crowd-pleasing tumble turn, and pushed-on.

The Chinese hot springs, too, had emitted an odour that had been truly something to behold.  Not so much natural volcanic pool as power station cooling pond, and the toxic, green slime along the blue-tiled walls was only slightly less offensive than the truly disgusting latrines adjacent to the poolside, which hung out over a chasm onto what would have once been a pristine mountain stream.

Last turn before home; the foul smell from the men’s bogs threatened to eject my breakfast into the sparkling blue, but I ignored the gag reflex by fantasizing that all the staff in the office blocks overlooking the pool had stopped their productive work days to admire my shapely back.

And with that, I was done.  I came-up puffing and gulping-in lungs full of air, and once I’d recovered a little, I turned to notice that I was now the only person in the pool.  Everyone else had gotten out at some stage during my session, presumably to admire my fetching figure.

I emerged from the water, all glistening and triumphant, and towelled-off in the sun.  Realising I had little choice other than to enter the male change rooms to get dressed, I took a deep breath and trekked to the other end of the pool.  But just before I reached the end, I finally noticed the cause of that stench; not the change rooms, as I had assumed, but rather a toxic, floating scum of [at least] human excrement congealing along the wall and extending about half a meter towards the middle (just centimetres from where I had just swum).

What is it about swimming pools and body fluids in these countries?  And what is it about me that I can’t learn from my mistakes and take just a few moments to give the water a bit of a once-over in the interests of a hepatitis and tuberculosis-free future?  Once again, I had been lured into truly murky waters by the Siren of my athletic and aesthetic self-delusions. 

The Skyhooks were wrong; Ego really can be a dirty word, especially if it leaves a toxic residue on your skin that can only be removed with turps.

The Skyhooks clearly never found themselves in a developing country on a hot afternoon.  The Ego can really be dirty if it gets in the way of basic concepts of public health and just a little common sense.  Pic:  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/ego-not-a-dirty-word-for-skyhooks-star/story-fn9n8gph-1226446754662

You live and learn

Not being the most hirsute Donkey in the barnyard, it stands to reason that I'll rarely be spotted out in daylight without a hat.  Currently I'm sporting a pretty awful, woven straw number which makes me look like the scariest, pig-rooting yokel in the County, but better that than a scone coated with weeping sores and liver spots like C. Montgomery Burns.

This latest headdress is just another in a long line of amusing and sometimes controversial cranial garments that have become somewhat of a characteristic feature since my early teens (yes, yes ... the baldness started pretty early on).  Like most teenage boys, I too went through that phase of not washing my clothes, but I took the practice to a very unsavoury extreme by not cleaning or changing my hat for many years, and only swapping it when the dirt, sweat and hair gel (not a typo – my comb-over started early, too) no longer held the various panels together.

From dirty cap to dirty cap I went.  Over the years, I employed nails to hold various clips and visors on, which in turn went rusty and smelly and left ugly stains on my skin.  Sea salt crusted edges cut through my upper ear and bird shit was left to fester into blooms of new bacterial strains the likes of which modern science was yet to classify.  Put the pieces together and you're noticing just one more amongst the many reasons why young Donkey was never quite able to land a lady!

Anyway, it happened that after living in Solomon Islands for a couple of years, I managed to misplace my hat just before leaving the country, bound for India.  I'd loved that cap.  It had been with me on jungle hikes, mountain climbs, river crossings, open sea travel and more than a few torrential downpours, and each and every one of these was evident from the crud and muck casing every stitch and groove in the fetid fabric.

It was a great loss, and I was horrified that I was about to set-up a new life, in a new country, and attempt to break into a new social network wearing a BRAND NEW HAT!  Urgh – everyone would assume I was one of those wankers who would only be seen wearing a shiny new hat.  I'd be alone forever!  A social outcast.

There was only one thing to do.  If it had to be new, I was going to make sure my new hat at least had Edge.  So when I hit Kuala Lumpur for a 48 hour, en route shopover, I kept my eyes peeled for the prefect lid.  Things were looking pretty grim as I trawled through markets sporting nothing but knock-off Nike and Adidas caps, Department Stores with exclusive rights to Tommy Hilfiger and Gazman, and tourist centres with embroidered renditions of the Petronas Towers. 

I was desperate by the time I got to a food court for a final meal, just hours before we were due to take-off for New Delhi.  But as we pushed through a huge crowd amassed outside, I caught a glimpse of what they were all looking at, and my cold heart immediately warmed in a lovely, bright yellow and red glow – Maggi noodles!

In typical KL, gangbusters-market-economy fashion, some self-made entrepreneur had taken basic, poor-man's street food and was marketing the MSG out of Maggi Noodles through a massive, open-air gourmet cook-off, using a smorgasbord of fresh ingredients and Maggi noodles.  The noise was deafening as the crowd of onlookers ooh-ed, aaah-ed and cheered as the exuberant cooks served up dish after dish of Maggi noodle based delights for their consumption.

For me, it wasn't what was on the plate that I was interested in, but rather the Maggi noodle uniforms of the cooks and their assistants, and in particular, the sparkling, pale yellow caps adorned with the famous red logo.  I was over the moon with excitement and relief as I man-handled my way through the crush to one of the cook's assistants, and started waving handfuls of ringgit in his astonished face.  At first I was surprised at his reluctance to take me up on my offer, but by the time I was throwing the equivalent of about sixty Australian dollars at him, I was becoming both outraged and panic-stricken that I was going to miss this one chance at obtaining the object that would lubricate my introduction to New Delhi society.

As the crowd pushed past me to get their chopsticks into a plate of Maggi noodle-enriched Malaysian chicken, I was both fuming and perplexed at this young man's refusal to take my money.  He was clearly poor; he was skinny, dressed in pale, Maggi-noodle yellow from head to toe, and sporting a massive smile despite the physical and verbal abuse being showered upon him by his more senior counterpart demanding various ingredients and Maggi-embossed condiments.  I was perplexed, angry and dejected.

Within months – perhaps even weeks of living in India, I came to understand all too well why the young Malaysian man would not give-up his hat, even for the small fortune I was offering.  As I came to understand the way big business treats poor people in Asia, I realised the kind of retribution Mr Maggi would have dealt out to that young man, his family and perhaps his whole community if he'd so much as damaged his corporate uniform, let alone lost some of it.  My sixty bucks would have been nothing compared with his not being able to afford schooling for his kids, or fresh water for his family.

As embarrassed as I was to have been so aggressive towards him, particularly for something so frivolous, I was able to reflect on my changed understanding in such a short time.  It hadn't taken me very long to learn about this particular subtlety of domestic economics once I arrived in Asia, but it came as a shock to me.  I had been living in a very poor country for two years; living amongst malnourished, poorly resourced, rural communities, and observing the challenges they faced in accessing health care, education, livelihoods and cash.  I thought I had understood all these issues; I thought I was an expert; I thought I would have been doing this young man a favour ... but in fact I hadn't had the faintest clue of the issues at play during our interaction.

What I took from this learning was a very clear message; it is not possible, or at least it is extremely difficult for foreigners visiting and/or working in other countries to become experts on what local people think, feel, do and say.  This reflection taught me that every day, I learn something new about my surroundings, and everyday, this learning turns what I thought to be true right on its head.  It taught me that I am no expert, and I never could, or would be.

Which brings me to a recent, wholly unpleasant evening; just another in a series of difficult social interactions Mrs Donkey and I have experienced since we arrived in Port Vila and embarked on a quest for new friends we can rely on for a good 'bitch and moan' about poor plumbing, moonscape roads and the rising price of duty-free gin.

On this occasion, the potentially warm, intimate dinner party conversation was violently arrested by a mouthy young woman who couldn't help chiming-in at every opportunity (and even sometimes when there was clearly no opportunity at all) to tell anyone within ear shot just how good she was at ... well, everything!  From varsity sports tournaments, to dating celebrities, to maintaining lifelong friendships, to being down with 'the youth', to being a damn fine crusader for humanity ... basically, albeit by her own admission, this chick was 'The Shit'.  Sadly, judging by their screaming body language, everyone else in the room considered this description an unfortunate typo.

Now at this stage, it's gotta be said that the Donkeys aren't the most popular animals in the barnyard, and as beggars can't be choosers, we are quite willing to put up with the idiosyncrasies evident within a small social pool in favour of spending yet another night alone together watching re-runs of Packed to the Rafters.  But there's only so much one can take when the (one-person) conversation shifts up a gear from single-handedly leading the world revolution against poverty, to that dangerous red zone in which they claim to be at one with those very same poor-folk they claim to be emancipating.

It was at about the time when this la femme expertista, her crystal goblet of expensive Bordeaux sloshing with each agitated gesture, launched into lengthy explanatory diatribes of what life is like for local women – "and I know because I have lots of local female friends and I have a really special, trusting and open relationship with my house girl, who shares everything with me" - that Mrs D and I began making noises about over-worked baby-sitters, early morning starts and even (without word of a lie) that we were planning to visit a Seventh Day Adventist church service at 10am (now if that wasn't a thinly veiled scream for help, then I'm walkin').

As we were beating a hasty retreat out the door, I threw a sympathetic look to our male host whose chest was being pummelled by a mood-ringed index finger jabbing-out a painful list of the crimes that local men inflict upon "us women".  His returned glance comprised a peculiar mix of lost-dog's-home imploring and explosive fury at my leaving so suddenly – he must have seen our escape as somewhat akin to that mountain-climber who cuts the rope on his dangling friend in order to save his own skin.

Mrs D and I drove home exasperated and fuming at the way our pleasant evening had been hijacked by this 'expert' who had lived in this country for barely 12 months.  She'd claimed, through her penetrating opinions, to have the definitive knowledge about every aspect of life here, and particularly, the good oil on all issues facing local women.  Her unsolicited lectures, apart from being annoying, were to my thinking, offensive to the very people for whom she claimed to advocate.  I know from bitter experience that her opinions are unlikely to be fully informed, and I am embarrassed for her at the effect they were having on those gathered. 

Most of all, I am pissed-off that she ruined what would have been a nice, pleasant evening comprising interesting and lively conversation.  Lady, if I want to know about issues facing local people, I'll ask them.

Expect to see this on the Milan catwalks this season as the new face of emerging street cred.  Pic: http://marketingstrategy-sai.blogspot.com/2010/03/maggie-noodles.html

Zit Face: a heart-warming Christmas message

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

Undercover Donkey

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!

Hair envy on the islands

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

Movember in Jaipur

Movember my ass! Now these guys have really got it goin’ on this November. Pic: www.daylife.com

I recently spent a few days with an old friend who’s reaching the point in her life where her father is doing all he can to set her up with a nice, prosperous young man from the homeland. Sanjita was sitting back in a fancy bar in one of the city’s more stylish precincts, a glass of sauvignon blanc in one, slender hand, and a smouldering cigarillo, dangling glamorously from the other, as she discussed her predicament.

“Oh Donkey,” she pouts provocatively, “Bapa’s finding me one, skinny, high-panted young executive after another. Most of them are nice enough … one or two have even been quite charming, but I just don’t think I could ever get past those bloody, twitching moustaches! Kissing them must be like eating a mouldy mango! Why do these deluded fools think they look so attractive with those tufts of black fuzz on their lips?”.


Movember is over for another year – hoo-bloody-ray!

I shall be spared (at least for another eleven months) from having to listen to the boys from IT swanning around the office, rattling their tins for donations, banging-on about the wispy growth on their upper lips, showing off to the women in the office by stroking their manliness (am talking about their moustaches, here) while at the same time emphasizing their sensitive, new age sides by contributing to what they consider to be a worthwhile cause.

They are like a bunch of strutting peacocks, these men who have fallen into the Movember fad. They stand around the water cooler comparing the size of their droops, secretly (and often, not-so-secretly) fancying themselves as ‘70s porno-stars, something they surmise to be quite endearing to your average, modern, professional woman.

Well, lads, on behalf of those of us who don’t mind getting a bit of work done every now and then, I have a little message for you…

First of all, that pathetic, tufty protuberance below your schnoz isn’t making you the apple of every woman’s eye. You gotta understand that it was never the moustache that made Long Dong Silver and Johnny Holmes famous - it just happened to be the ‘70s when they were doing their thing, a decade synonymous with T-shades and the mo. So just ‘cause you work in IT, and therefore watch a fair bit of porn on the company’s time, that doesn’t necessarily make you a super stud in the sack.

And secondly, it’s pretty obvious that most women with any sort of taste don’t really go for moustaches these days, otherwise every bloke’d have one, or every gal would be married to a cop, dig?

So finally, with the end of a long, slow Movember now upon us, I can breathe a sigh of relief from all the grief and abuse I receive for being a Donkey who hasn’t decided to let himself go in the preening department this November.

It seems that, just because these selfish dudes who are doing something for charity for the first time in their lives (and let’s face it, the reality is that they’re not shaving for a month, which actually means they’re doing less!), they think it’s OK to judge those of us who choose to maintain minimal facial follicularity, and accuse us publically of not contributing to “the cause”; after all, they’re the ones growing the mo, so the least I could do is sling ‘em a donation.

“The cause”, hey? - and this is where Movember really gives me the shits. Usually, when someone does something for a cause, they tend to know something about that cause, but ask any of these judging bogans what the cause is, and they’ll tell you the stock, standard line,

“We’re raising funds and awareness about men’s health issues”, they parrot the Movember website.

“Oh really? That’s interesting…” offers Doubting Donkey, all smarmy and patronising, while at the same time, oozing sophistication, “and what health issues would they be?”.

“Um … men’s health issues”.

“Right”, says I, rapidly losing all patience and suave, “Now take you’re fucking ugly caterpillar lip, complete with crumbs from the Lunchtime Seafood Special, and get the fuck out of here!”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a good cause, and I really should be proud that one has come along that even selfish people who are only interested in silicon- and computer-enhanced women and football (and not necessarily in that order) can get into. But the thing about Movember is that no one really knows who or what they are raising money for, and the level of awareness of the “men’s health issues” that they’re raising awareness about, for the most part, seems to be remarkably absent.

I’m from the old school of alms-giving. If you want my cash, you gotta perform. Dress a monkey up in a vest and fez, and have him dance on a wire in front of my balcony while I drink chilled French champagne, and here’s a tenner. Have a young girl kidnapped at birth and sent to the circus to have ribs and vertebrae removed so she can perform all manner of contortions in front of myself and my fellows, and I’ll gladly sling her a fiver. Have an armless and legless man write an essay on pre-war European existentialism using only his mouth and blunt pencil, and I’ll shout “Bravo” while I shower him with loose change, or simply be able to tell me why you’re growing that ridiculous fungus on your upper lip, and I’ll gladly provide you with a modest, tax deductable donation. Anything less, my lazy, young, bogan, IT friends, and you can move your rattling tin on past ol’ Donkey.

That is of course, unless you can grow a real moustache like my two Rajasthani camel-riding friends (pictured above) in a single month. Now that’s manhood, and that, not the embarrassing wisps you’re sporting in this office, is what’ll drive the ladies wild with desire. Right girls?

Human Development 101

I guess I shouldda known that a hot-tempered, short, fat, Sri Lankan science teacher, who was renowned for violent outbursts at even the slightest snigger from a twelve year old wasn’t going to be the best Human Development teacher of all time. If not his nervous, embarrassed persona, then his near-fatal treatment of poor Mark Kennard who thought the 80s animation of a woman’s breasts growing through puberty was pretty funny, should have confirmed it.

Because of Mr Peters’ utterly inadequate delivery of the subject, I was completely taken by surprise when the wet dreams, curly hair and body odour arrived thirteen years later (OK, I’m a late bloomer), although I am still waiting for my Old Feller to grow, so he obviously got that message across alright - it was a triumphant night in the Donkey household that night, I can tell you! I can remember delivering victorious air punches all the way home from school … but I now realise it was just another betrayal of a pre-adolescent’s trust.

As was the complete lack of information of what was really going to happen to my body. Sure, they tell you you’re voice is going to break, your balls are gonna drop and grow to the size of footballs, that yer knob would become a raging python and that you’d get hair on yer chinny-chin-chin, but all those were supposed to make you sexy … were things to look forward to. But what about the rest of it?

No doubt some hot-shot lawyer for the Christian Brothers whose court-room skills had been honed for his clients thanks to an excess of other legal proceedings in the last decade, would say, “Well, my clients never actually told you any lies about what would happen to you”. Agreed. But what about all the info that they DIDN’T tell us?

I mean, not a week goes by now that I don’t recognise something new and unexpected about my body. “You’ll grow hair on your chest and face”, they told us – great, but what about my back, shoulders and nose? Before long I’ll have to sink to that depth where I am forced to whisper in the ear of an attractive young hair dresser, “Just give me ears and snoz a trim, too, would ya Love?”.

“Your voice and testicles will drop down”. Sure, that’s good to know, but why no mention of descending man boobs and huge, flaccid jowls?

“You’ll grow thick hairs around yer … um … thingies”. OK, that would have been a good lesson during which to have paid attention, but I’m sure I would have perked-up if someone had mentioned an Afghan carpet emerging from my arse! And why exactly does it have to have migrated from my scalp?

The lawyers may well be right; the Christian Brothers didn’t actually tell us any lies, but they certainly neglected to tell us that in a few years, we’d all be turning into our fathers! Bastids! No doubt the concealment of these many facts was some innovative form of youth suicide prevention, but just because people don’t throw themselves off a bridge on Brother So-and-so’s watch, doesn’t mean they aren’t going to try it later, when, at the age of 27, the realisation finally dawns.

Fortunately, the breakthroughs in male grooming technology and practices driven by the metro-sexual revolution can be employed to keep the wolves from the door for most manifestations of male aging; home nasal-hair kits can be used for most orifices, the front, back and crack wax, available from all good beauty salons, can have you looking like Thorpie in a matter of minutes, man-bras can be worn discreetly to the gym, and there are pills to correct those other unfortunate effects of gravity.

But this week I received yet another unexpected, crushing blow to my dwindling, youthful vigour, taking me just that one step closer to looking like my father, and this time, there’s not a gadget in Christendom which is gonna help me to stay looking young. This week my recent suspicions were confirmed when I discovered yet another change in my aging body. The change this time wasn’t my vocal chords, my balls, my willy, chest, back or arse. This time the change was in my ears.

What those bastards at the Christian Brothers school don’t tell you is that, as you get older, a blokes ears change so that every time he goes into the water; at the beach or at the pool, water gets in and doesn’t come out. So next time you’re down at the local pool, and you’ve had your swim, taken a shower, and are heading out to the car, don’t avert your eyes from all those sad old farts huddled together near the door, their torsos bent sideways so that their heads are parallel to the ground as they bounce up and down on one leg. You never know, one of ‘em could be yer old mate, Donkey!


Oh, and by the way, regarding the crappy 1980s breast-growing animation, it’s one of growing-up’s great releases to reach that age when you actually feel comfortable with saying that, “Yeah, Mark Kennard was right – it was farking hilarious!”. God rest your poor, maimed soul, Mark!


Ear hair - one of the unsung effects of male aging - very unattractive indeed. Pic: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/health_guinness_medical_record_breakers/img/1.jpg