Way too much information

Anyone whose worked in corporate customer service in the last 30 years has probably had to sit through a couple of those Gawd-awful, John Cleese-type training videos featuring starving, D-grade actors who’ve sold their Oscar dreams down the river for a couple of bucks performing two-dimensional skits for brain-dead desk jockeys and call centre clerks.

My introduction to this was straight out of school, when I took a job serving watery pots out of greasy glasses to hardened criminals in one of the Outer East’s more notorious bikie bars.  For me it was just a job; sure, I’d not learn anything useful, but provided I didn’t get glassed, king-hit or have a chair smashed over me in one of the weekly brawls, I would collect a steady, minimum wage pay-check with which to advance my own liver-destructing activities, and as an added bonus, catch front-row views of my topless colleagues between 4 and 6 on a Friday.

But that all changed when, shortly after commencing my employment, the pub was bought-out by a swanky, well-established real estate firm reading the urban expansion auguries and speculating on avant-garde gentrification of the establishment ahead of the arrival of an entirely new, upwardly mobile residential market.

Within days of the takeover, we were being drilled with phone-answering hooks which were so long and grammatically complicated that they would send our regular clientele packing long before they’d had a chance to talk,

“Good morning, welcome to The Astoria!  My name is Donkey and I am your friendly, enthusiastic and ready-to-help customer service agent on this bright, sunny morning.  Please take a moment to press 8# to hear about all of our amazing services and products, or feel free to simply request anything specific from me as soon as you are ready” [CLICK – beep-beep-beep].

Ahead of its time it certainly was!  And so too was another customer service approach which was strongly advocated for in the training videos, and soon adopted and directed by the new management.  This approach dictated that if there was to be even the slightest delay in meeting a customer’s demand, the staff were to communicate directly and often with the customer to update them on the progress of their product or service.

You can just imagine the response this got from ‘Crazy Shit’ McCauley, one of our friendly regulars, during my first shift after customer service training;

Donkey:    “I’m sorry about the delay in delivering your beverage, Sir.  We are having some trouble with the turnover of barrels in the chilling facility below stairs”.

CSMcC:    “Well why the f**k don’t you shut your poncey, pretty-boy d**k-trap and get on with swapping the f**king barrels over so I can get me f**king beer.  Stupid, lazy c**t!”.

As I said, ‘ahead of its time’.  These kinds of responses went on for well over two years, by which time I’d gotten jack of the daily abuse, projectile mucous and physical threats and took up a job sweeping the floor of a gay men’s hair salon (while dressed in red hot pants and with only a dustpan and brush to work with – obviously another story all together, but I can assure you the tips were incredible).

But the point is that while the customer service training videos and executive-level research might suggest that customers want to know the minutiae of why their meal/their bill/their statement is taking too long, my experiences at The Astoria suggest otherwise.  So too does another example which I experienced today, this time as the customer.

This afternoon, I was sitting aboard a jam-packed airliner awaiting take-off, fuming over delays which had us sitting motionless in the sweltering, tropical midday sun as the tarmac around us slowly baked into a sticky black mess.  The delay, we came to understand from the enthusiastic young Captain, was due to a malfunction in the air-conditioning system, which had been blowing-out scorching hot air for the better part of an hour. 

In his best FM radio jock voice, the Captain went into great detail about the debilitated cooling system, and ‘assured’ us that the service crew had all the parts out of the plane and strewn across the baking cement in an effort to isolate and fix the problem.  If the Captain’s intention here had been to make me feel more disposed to forgive the airline for the uncomfortable delay, then blowing the lid off my mistaken beliefs relating to meticulous airline service procedures wasn’t quite getting me there, and my anxiety was soon mirroring the cabin mercury.

About thirty minutes later, we roasting passengers were revived by the initial waft and later firm blast of cool air coming from the vents.  Our Captain then publically thanked John the Engineer for “…coming all the way out here on his day off to single-handedly fix the problem – you may not realise it,” confided the Captain, “but this is a job normally reserved for a team of three”. 

Again, admission of sub-regulatory airline safety protocols wasn’t helping me to excuse the yawning gap in our departure schedule, but the customer service pitch didn’t end there.  A short while later, the Captain again spoke over the intercom, “Sorry for the further delay here, folks; we’ve been having some trouble with the flight computer.  We’ve been trying a few things here and there, and wouldn’t you know?  It seems the best way to fix these things is the ol’ Control-Alt-Delete combination … Ha!  So we’re just re-booting the system and we’ll have the flight plan up in no time, and we should be right for take-off in about two minutes…”.

Are you getting my point here?  And just when one thought that all that might seem just a little unnerving to an anxious passenger, this near-final clanger from our Staff-Member-of-the-Month of a Captain, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologise again for that being the longest two minutes of your life; that’s because we had developed a different flight plan when we thought the air conditioner wasn’t going to work, but when it was fixed – thanks again John … that man really is amazing! – we were back onto the old flight plan but we accidentally sent the new one to Air Traffic Control and now we’re trying to sort it out.” 

“Right, that’s it!” screamed every fibre in my body, “I do not want to be here … disarm those bloody doors and get me the hell out of this thing”.  But my desperate attempt at escape proved unnecessary with the Captain’s next words.  By this time, we’d taxied onto the runway, and had been waiting in poll position when the Captain announced, “This seems to be taking too long I’m afraid.  We’ll have to taxi back to the apron now to make room for the Air Solomons plane to depart, and then we’ll have another go.  It won’t take long and we’ll soon be off.”  With that I gave a sigh of relief and looked forward to getting out of this ageing tin can, but at that moment, for the first time all afternoon, the Captain decided to act without passenger consultation, and in a complete contravening of his latest communication we hurtled down the runway and were off into the big blue!

As I clung to my seat for the next four hours, my knuckles getting whiter and shinier with every turbulent bump or shake, I reflected that I reckon the customer service industry R&D teams have got it completely wrong.  No customer really wants to know the whys, the wherefores or the what ifs.  Customers and service users choose to have others pour their drinks, fly their planes or re-insert their haemorrhoids because they are either too lazy, or prefer not to be bothered with the technicalities.  They choose not to be in the driver’s seat, and therefore they simply do not need to be part of the minutiae of decision-making or output progression.  Too much information just puts people on edge, or else highlights the service provider’s incompetence … and there’s no way in the world that either of those two outcomes are going to be good for business.

The only info that we passengers didn’t get was seeing this guy when he boarded the plane and took to the flight deck - all would have been instantly clear.  Pic: ww.123rf.com/photo_7259367_crazy-wwii-bomber-pilot-saluting.html

Radio Therapy

Say what you will of Western European nations as ruthless colonial oppressors and exploiters of some of the world’s most vulnerable people; indeed their legacy in many African, Southeast Asian and Pacific countries comprises physical and cultural displacement, racial and political power imbalance which frequently topples into bloody civil war, and economic ruin either through depletion, or forced signing-over of valuable natural resources.

But it’s not all bad.  The Western Europeans may have been a bit heavy-handed on the governance side of things (and possibly a little discriminatory in their national view and treatment of their colonial citizens), but they did leave behind a commitment to fine dining which is truly a welcome aspect of occupational exile in some of the world’s far-flung locales.

While some colonial powers set fire and/or bombed fields, towns and livestock as they made hasty retreats ahead of angry, spear-wielding mobs of pro-independence activists in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the French chose instead to throw toasty, golden baguettes, flaming crepes suzette and sugar-crusted crème brulee in their wake.  This seemed to do the trick in Vanuatu, as the satiated masses embraced this culinary legacy, and such delightful treats are available in every corner store, often at any time of the day or night.

Great news for Donkey in some respects, but not so great for the ol’ waste-line, as evidenced during a recent clothes shopping expedition with Mrs Donkey while on holiday back in Australia.  Mrs D was in the change room trying on some little black cocktail number while Donkey stood outside the closed door, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible amongst the frilly lace and tiny bows of women’s lingerie hanging all about him (why do they put the change rooms amongst the lingerie?).  As I stood stock still, embarrassingly avoiding aggressive, accusing eye contact from the other customers queuing to try on their garments, an attractive young sales assistant wandered-up behind me and enthusiastically asked when I was expecting.

That was it!  As soon as I got back to Port Vila, things were going to change.  No more hazelnut praline-filled baguettes for breakfast, no more pain au chocolat with chocolate ice cream and fudge on the side for morning tea, no more brie and bacon pies aux frites for lunch and definitely no more garlic snails followed by duck a l’orange for dinner.  True to my commitment, my life since returning to Vanuatu has become a thrice daily monotony of breadless lettuce sandwiches washed down with a straight glass of tepid water (the temperature being conducive, so the diet gurus tell me, to more frequent bowel movement).

On top of this gruelling feeding regime, in order to both divert my attention from my groaning abdomen, and to try to shorten the period of time I shall be subject to this dietary boredom, I have also embarked on a sustained exercise program which I must grudgingly admit, is finally starting to yield results.

But the selection of an appropriate form of exercise was not an easy process in this country where the roads and traffic are not conducive to safe cycling, and where the forty-eight-degrees-in-the-shade summer heat renders traditional, vigorous exercise such as sit-ups and push ups completely out of the question (after a single lift, the sweat pouring off one’s body makes it impossible to get any purchase on the floor, and one is left floundering on one’s back like an up-turned tortoise).

The only option left was swimming … in this country with not a single serviced swimming pool greater than ten metres in length.  I did give it a go, but after seventy-three strokes and as many tumble turns, I blacked-out from dizziness and had to be retrieved from the bottom by a burley construction worker and his heavy-duty crane with which he’d been laying building foundations nearby.

A week later, with the humiliation of front page local news behind me, I realised there was nothing for it; if I was going to lose this massive paunch, I was going to have to embrace the concept of living on an island, ignore all the horror stories and take to swimming in the ocean.

“What’s the big deal?” I thought to myself as I launched out from the sea wall one fine morning.  All about me was a kaleidoscope of blooming coral formations and a menagerie of brightly coloured tropical fish.  “This is fantastic … so peaceful.  I should have done this months ago”.  I pounded confidently out from the port and was still congratulating myself on having discovered this wonderful, submarine paradise which was going to turn me into a herculean specimen of manhood, when I suddenly came to my senses above a deep, blue, murky darkness.

I’d left the drop-off well behind and was now floating vulnerably above an abyss from which I imagined all manner of deep sea beasties zeroing-in on my fleshy white thighs.  My panicked brain convinced me that if I was desperate enough, I might just manage to outswim a giant squid, great white or whale shark, and feeling pretty desperate at that point, I set to pounding back towards what I thought was home.

Of course, one’s sense of direction in open water is never an easy concept to grasp, nor is one’s ability to stroke strong and true when driven by sheer panic.  In my desperation to get back to the reef, I was floundering like a harpooned killer whale (perhaps not a great analogy, given the circumstances), and heading in a completely different direction, towards the rocky headland at the opposite end of Port Vila harbour.

After a while, the forbidding black depths changed to a more palatable, murky blue, and I managed to reign in my debilitating terror.  My stroke improved and before long I was powering along; back into that monotonous trance one gets from the relentless plodding of right arm, left arm…

right arm, left arm…

right arm (“Oh how nice, Angel fish”)…

left arm (“Wow, coral trout”)…

right arm (“Gee, that’s a big fish…”)…

left arm (“Aaaaaaargh!”). 

Back in first year physiology, we learned about that basest of animal instincts, the ‘fight or flight’ response.  When an animal senses danger, their body reflexively gears-up for ‘fight’ or ‘flight’; the options for success are weighed-up and the decision made by the creature’s very fibres at near supersonic speed.  Obviously, ‘flight’ gets them out of danger, and ‘fight’ is the only alternative if the former is not possible.  The body’s essential systems fire-up for the selected action, and all extraneous functions shut down to preserve energy.

How is it then, that when Donkey looks down to see a massive tiger shark swimming towards him, his body’s fight or flight response includes the immediate release of two malodourous, bulky, fright nuggets into his Speedos?  How can that be fight or flight?  For a start, the extra drag from this oozing pouch would surely slow my flight to a messy, mortal end, but even if I did manage to get the jump on my sinister predator, if sharks really can smell blood like they say, then he’d have no trouble tracking my stinky wake all the way to shore.

Stewing in my own mess, then, I resigned myself to meeting my maker, and with calm resolve, I turned to face my toothy assailant.  It was then I noticed the horizontal, not vertical tail moving slowly up and down, and realised that rather than meeting my end in a bloody, mashy mess, I’d found myself with the rare privilege of an encounter with a peaceful dugong, slowly meandering along the sea bed, snuffling away at sea grass.

An hour later, I emerged from the sea before a crowd of alfresco diners tucking into breakfast in one of the town’s fashionable cafes.  Although my life was intact, my dignity before the shocked crowd was sagging lower than the saddle of my laden Speedos. 

Defeated and resigned to life as a fat bastard at that time, I now have Mrs Donkey to thank for helping me to get back in the water.  She did so thanks to the wonders of modern technology, which have enabled me to strap on a waterproof iPod and crank up the volume of power ballads enough to distract me in the water from mortal fear.  Now I churn along the coast three mornings a week to the spurring drums and guitar riffs of such fire-up classics as:

·  Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger [shark],

·  ELO’s Don't Bring Me Down [to the dark depths with your massive tentacles to chew off my head],

·  Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water [Humph],

·  Hunters and Collectors’ Throw Your Arms Around Me [and get me out of this school of killer jelly fish],

·  The Choirboys’ Run [for your freakin’ life here comes a manta ray] to Paradise, and of course

·   Great White’s Once bitten, twice shy.

The distraction seems to have worked, and everyone’s happy.  I’m happy because I look and feel great, and Mrs Donkey’s happy because she’s no longer getting around town with a pregnant hippo on her arm.  But the happiest person of all is Ms Nicole, the unfortunate soul who is tasked with doing my laundry – as she’s told me in no uncertain terms, any day without having to scrub the gusset of my Speedos is definitely a good day!

The Western Europeans may not have been the most culturally sensitive of masters, but they certainly managed a mean chocolate dessert.  Pic: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/12/11/belgian-court-rules-tintin-not-racist-just-gentle/

Gaol break … quite literally

There’s nothing like an election year to encourage fat, lazy politicians to get off their over-paid and over-fed arses and get on with doing something … anything for the electorate.

As the polls approach, every Minister worth his gargantuan weight in gold has had his (sic) disgusting snout in the public coffers and the nation’s constituencies are awash with bags of rice, three-course barbecues and upsized boxes of washing powder (something for the ladies).

On the prison-front, Prisoner Paul Shem was still at large following the March breakout, and the community was demanding results.  So with an election looming, some cashola was finally funnelled to the Corrections team, and a taxi was summoned to travel two suburbs across town to apprehend the villain, and to do so ‘with whatever force is necessary’.  In the event of his being brought to justice, they went in so hard that both of Mr Shem’s legs were accidentally broken in 15 places, and this later resulted in one leg needing to be amputated.

Ironically, the political focus groups down at Government HQ informed the pollies that this latter outcome was a little too strong, so Prisoner Shem (who’d been living with his folks in plain sight of the world for 3 months) was released on bail (and let’s face it, in this country with no capacity for manufacture and fitting of prostheses, he’s not likely to be skipping risk). 

Public opinion for the Minister rose considerably after this, but to seal the deal, he finally ordered the construction of a sturdy, extra high security fence around the prison.  It was all finished and unveiled with great fanfare this week, and will almost certainly give the Minister the green light for his return.

But the best bout of pre-election shenanigans to date would have to be from the outgoing Police Commissioner who, in an attempt to limit his outgoingness, has used his first week back from suspension to accuse his deputy (and acting Commissioner) of mutiny, a charge which carries a penalty of life imprisonment (and, for the first time ever, in a secure facility).

We’ve still got months to go before the big day, but already the electoral bunting is stained with blood and tainted with the stench of corruption – but while it may be bad for democracy, it’s great for development – the only two months, every five years, that anything gets done.

With the graffiti still fresh, Port Vila’s new prison wall looks set to securely house the mutineers ‘for the terms of their natural lives’.  Pic: http://prisonsociety.typepad.com

Trust me, I’m a doctor

There’s an old adage that gets bandied around bars across the Pacific which postulates that expatriate communities are made up of missionaries, mercenaries and misfits.  Usually there’s no doubt about who makes up the first two categories, but defining those who fall under the latter can be a little more tricky.

There are those amongst the ‘misfits’ who are really easy to pick; such as the skinny, long-haired, dope-smoking yachtie who washed-up on a bar stool in the late ‘80s and who never quite got it together to move on, but then there are those who might have arrived as missionary or mercenary, but who then fell -out with the missus and shacked-up with a local dame (and not necessarily in that order), who now have a couple of light brown kids but never quite crossed that line to being ‘local’.

But then there are the professionals; lawyers, stock-brokers, scientists, doctors.  Folk who, back in their home environment, have the run of the land, what with their six- or seven-figure income, their automatic social respect and their multiple dwellings and holiday homes.  But there are some amongst these professionals who don’t quite fit the mould, and they end up in some pretty out of the way places, no doubt having fallen through all types of social and professional cracks along the way.

One such example was a European doctor I once met who had voluntarily exiled himself on one of the most remote Pacific Islands he could find.  Here he used his significant medical and surgical qualifications to serve the local community out of the sparsely equipped, wall-less hospital, and in non-work periods, took long, naked runs around the island, drank fermented coconuts and embraced his ever-encroaching senility.  Why he was there, and not back home with his kin was never clear, but the last I heard he was still there, performing hysterectomies wearing nothing but a surgical gown and gloves.

More recently, I have come across a much younger European doctor who has found himself on a distant shore, serving well-healed expatriates and well-insured travellers from a small private hospital.  This short, skinny, bespectacled squib is friendly enough, but one might questions his commitment to the health of his patients, when he clearly has such little regard for his own. 

Arriving at his office for a consultation first thing in the morning, and you will be accosted by the stench of cigarette smoke wafting through his office door, or the repellent sight of a desk littered with burned-out cigarette stubs resting precariously on empty Coke cans, or two or three half empty coffee cups which, by the looks of their foaming, milky contents, look as though they have been curdling happily away through the sultry tropical evening.

Other than his questionable levels of personal and environmental hygiene, his obvious obsessive compulsive tendencies, his inability to remember a patient he may have seen only the day before, his rock-solid standard prescription of Penicillin V and his tendency to follow every patient out of the consulting room while lighting up a ciggie, this sickly-thin, weedy medico has a rather strange obsession with buff, male body-builders, and without exception, has a number of body-building websites open on his desktop every time I have entered his room.

Clearly there are reasons that this doctor has not quite fit the medical services environment of a big, European teaching hospital, nor even that of a small, suburban or provincial family medical clinic.  Why this misfit has found his way to tis part of the world is understandable, but why his current employers are happy to threaten their duty of care to their clients is a little more difficult to fathom.  Perhaps the reason so many misfits do end up stopping on the islands is because in a world where no one else will take them, the Pacific will always have something for someone to do … no matter how scary or weird they may be.

‘Would you like some Penicillin V with that?’.  Pic: http://cutcaster.com

Relapsed Hoof in Mouth

T'wouldn't be the first time Donkey's been in the shit for cracking wise about serious and sensitive matters. 

Once, as an insecure school boy trying to generate some social currency, I loudly remarked to my sniggering peers how much of a shame it had been that the doctors had sliced off Sister Kathleen's huge knockers because now there was nothing good to look at during Geography.  This appalling remark had been delivered whilst the Mother-Superior smouldered silently, menacingly, behind me.  When I'd finally noticed that the cackles of my peers had exceeded even my comedic abilities, I spun around and flinched at Sister Sophia's detesting face protruding from forbidding, mission-brown from eyebrows to 'obnails.

The hectic confusion of the school corridor suddenly plunged into silent slow-motion.  I cowered pathetically as her piercing stare damned me to the eternal inferno with a hatred one wouldn't have thought possible from a woman of the cloth, and after a deliberate, seemingly endless breath, things sped-up very suddenly with her launching into a violent rage of verbal abuse which actually damned me to the eternal inferno.

More recently, it has been my recent, blasé spray about escaped convicts in Vanuatu which has sent me diving for the self-flagellation stick.  Despite my treatment of the subject as just a big, harmless old joke, things have taken a nasty turn around these parts recently with the severe beating of a long-term, well-known and respected expatriate by intruders in his home, followed the next night with the brutal murder of an elderly expatriate couple in their beds.

It was immediately, generally understood that the perpetrators of both incidents were none other than six of the twelve escapees which, everyone soon discovered, were still on the run, some two months later. 

Confirmation of this fact from the sheepish Correctional Authorities a couple of days later saw egg on both their and my ugly mugs, but the latter was soon sizzling away fit to explode when it was confirmed by the police that the escapees really were the prime suspects in both incidents.

The town went into lock-down as the rumour mill, known locally as the 'coconut wireless' went haywire.  Everyone's brother's friend's dog had seen the escapees hiding-out in the bush behind their homes, and every other punter's house had been burgled in the space of a week as bored young people took advantage of the e-scape goats at large to break into the homes of every expatriate in their neighbourhood to make off with those enormous TVs they'd been eyeing off for the past year and a half.

Amidst this genuine fear and panic, the additional, extraordinary rumour went out that someone's husband/brother/aunt works in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Minister had just issued an edict that the Vanuatu Mobile Force (VMF) – the poorly-trained, trigger-happy paramilitary arm of the Vanuatu Police Force – had permission to take up arms after dark and to shoot anyone on suspicion.

You can just imagine what that led to; better six nut-bags with knives moving through the night than 70 with officially sanctioned automatic weapons! 

Crikey!  I'll know never to take the piss out of a serious situation again.  I never could have believed that this tuen of events could have become this dangerous.  I've definitely learned my lesson; there's nothing ... absolutely nothing funny about living in fear for your life every night.  No more making light of such issues ... ever ... again!

Oh by the way, on those first couple of nights during which the VMF were on the loose, only a few gun shots were heard, but they appear to have been well wide of the mark, 'cause a few days later the Government issued a warning to the (now seven) escapees – "Turn yourselves in by midday on Saturday, or else...". 

Or else what?  They've been on the run for two months! ... and judging by the location of these two crimes, they've not been very far away from the cops that whole time.  "Turn yourselves in by midday on Saturday, or else ... we're really going to start looking for you"?  Hmmph!

 

Vanuatu's 'coconut wireless' works even faster these days with the aid of Facebook and email.  These pics (2 of the 6) were in Donkey's inbox accompanied by versions of the murder long before any official news of the incident were released.

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

100 Miles and Runnin'

A return to rambling.

Although I may not have looked much like a gangster from the ghetto at the time, what with my blotchy, pimply skin and unmanageable red hair; a school uniform comprising a three-toned striped tie with matching cricket blazer, long shorts and long socks - back in the early '90s, sixteen year old Donkey and his private school chums, like their compatriots growing-up in 'The Projects', were pretty obsessed with hard core American rap music.

This was just before Las Angeles erupted into flames and was flooded with more military personnel and hardware than East Beirut.  It's by no means not clear why we were so fired-up by the likes of Public Enemy and Ice Cube – perhaps we'd somehow confused the neatly clipped lawns, white-washed mansions and European cars of Melbourne's Southeast suburbs with the boarded-up shopfronts of Southeast LA (for sure, an easy mistake to make).  Whatever the trigger, we'd become all consumed with pimps, bitches, ho's, drugs and drive-bys, and were on a head-on plunge down the amoral slope towards hard core sexism, racism and anti-authoritarianism (although to be fair the latter amounted to little more than one of us – and certainly not me – once pissing on the tyre of a parked, unmanned postal truck).

For me, personally, my biggest influence here had been NWA, the Niggaz With Attitude.  Sure, it was probably tracks with exciting, risqué names like Fuck the Police that got me listening in the first place, but what I really came to love was the theatrics of many of their tracks, and in particular, the great story telling.  My favourite was 100 Miles and Runnin', which took us on a super-paced, action-packed prison break following the 'Niggaz in Black' as they high-tailed it out of the Federal Penitentiary on their way, so FBI sources informed us, for their home base, Compton.  A fantastic, high-speed yarn indeed, although it did always seem strange to me that if the FBI knew where the Brothers were goin', they might have saved themselves the chase and just headed straight over to Compton to round them up...

The main event – Back in the Pac.

S'nice to be back in a small pond again; seeing the same faces in the stores, restaurants and bars each day; the same protruding butt cracks and flabby bellies crammed onto the only open, accessible beach on a Sunday afternoon; being privy to all the juicy social scandals within moments of an illicit wink, kiss or haphazard lover's retreat out the backdoor while one's partner walks in through the front. 

Even more enjoyable is returning to a place where, simply by virtue of the size and proximity of the population, one is so much closer to the [only slightly] higher brow happenings of Government and big business.  And Mrs Donkey is in her element with not one, but two Z-class local newspapers; she's resisted the urge thus far, but I can tell she's only one typo, sexist or racist remark away from a semi-publishable (but sure to be published), outraged letter under some translucently flimsy pseudonym.

But it's not all palm trees, pina coladas, tea-on-the-lawn and cucumber sandwiches.  In fact, even before The Donkeys - now with new edition completing the full nuclear configuration - left for the sunny skies of Port Vila, the pre-departure briefing notes supplied by Donkey's new employer flagged the following security concern:

Prison breakouts have occurred.  Crime rates may increase in the period following a breakout.  We advise you to pay close attention to your own security, monitor the media for events that may affect your safety and security and follow the instructions of local authorities.

Mrs D and I nearly choked on our daiquiris upon reading this - such an odd addition for something that 'has occurred', we laughed.  But we've now been here for two months, and there have been no less than three mass breakouts from the same prison.

Upon a breakout, the fun starts immediately.  First the rumours shoot through the town, followed by email warnings confirming the rumours, and successfully designed to spread abject panic amongst the expatriate citizenry (especially the yanks – they seem to absolutely lose it).

For the most part, at least for the casual, but very interested observer, I find these breakouts kinda fun.  Let's face it, we live on an island, and everyone knows each other, so where are they gonna go?  They bust out, find themselves with no long-term plan, so decide to go on a bender of wine, women and song, and the first thing they need to get them there is cash.  The houses immediately surrounding the prison get done-over for money, jewellery, phones and iPods within moments of the perpetrators having gained their liberty, and ten minutes later, the gear is sold for a song and the fugitives are at one of seven bars in town throwing back beer and whisky faster than country kids attending their first University O-Week. 

It's a game, and for the most part, is relatively harmless.  Just three weeks ago, about eight inmates went 'over the top' (I didn't mention that the high risk prison facility in town, known colloquially as 'Container City' consists of cells made out of converted shipping containers surrounded by a single, standard, rusting cyclone fence with gaps beneath as wide as those between the gates).  The authorities seemed thrown for days, being unable to work out where they could have escaped to, only to discover the answer when the fugitives all turned themselves in a week later. 

They'd been 'hiding out' ... with their families ... two suburbs away!  With the help of their community leaders, they released a statement to the press describing their whereabouts and explaining that their escape had been designed to draw attention to their poor living conditions and inadequate meals.  As I said, a game.

But things took an ugly turn this week when the latest mass escape saw twelve hardened criminals disappear into the urban expanse one evening.  As usual, the rumours started, then the disturbing emails; this one from a colleague;

Was on the bus with a policewoman this morning and she mentioned they were last seen early this morning around 4am at Beverly Hills area - Ples blong ol Man Ambrym [description of a location].

Beware, Beverly Hills and Belview residents! Stay safe, 

Ha!  Did I mention this feels like a game?  If it wasn't for the fact that the Donkeys had only just moved into a house at Bellevue and stocked it full of all our worldly possessions, I'd be pissing myself about the way this piece of intelligence was leaked to the community – not by official FBI-type sources, but by a police woman riding on a bus (note: there are not enough police cars).  And the other thing to note is that these suburbs are literally only a 5 minute drive away (OK, 10 minutes on the bus) for the cops to get there and round 'em up ... but I am getting ahead of myself here.  As I mentioned, immediately upon breakout, first come the rumours, then the panic-provoking emails, and eventually the press statements earnestly urging residents to be alert, not alarmed, and to be assured that Vanuatu Correctional Services will apprehend these felons lickety-split;

Good Morning all.

[Faithful translation] Just a short message to let you know that 12 high risk prisoners escaped from Container City at around 10pm last night.  Ensure your families and property are safe.  We will be deploying soon for a recapture operation.

You all have a nice day.

And I kid you not, that was the sign-off.  Uh-ha, oh-kay, now that I know for sure that they are high risk prisoners, and that after twelve hours, Correctional Services are still bumbling about trying to find a car with enough fuel to take them 5 minutes down the road, I feel much better about the situation.  Thanks, I will have a nice day, especially as I've also received the attached, angry-looking mug-shots of 'The Disgruntled Twelve' (as we're now calling them in our suddenly less-secure-feeling Bellevue house).

I guess that if the LAPD couldn't work it out to skip the chase and meet NWA at their known destination, I shouldn't be all that amazed that the Vanuatu Police Force remain the last people in town to know that The Disgruntled Twelve are at their mothers' homes right now chowing-down on some baked taro before hitting the town for some grog-fuelled booty action.  I guess this post going live is testament to my laptop remaining in my possession, so hopefully that means the VPF have finally wizened-up to the game ... it is good to be back.

Fortunately for the VPF, they'll not have to push much past 3 ... but still they probably won't make it.  Pic: http://www.nwaworld.com/lyrics/