Another political shit-fight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Undercover Donkey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These old folk in big pyjama pants deserve better! 

These homeless folk in poorly-fastened gowns deserve better! 

And these recovery nurses definitely deserve better! 

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

Ministers finger fags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mose:     Fuck off!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... wait for it ...

Homosexuals!  Ha!

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

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

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

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

Give ‘em an inch…

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

“What am I, hard-of-smelling?”

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

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

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

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

Strange misconceptions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

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

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

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

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

Lord Voldemort in a Penis Gourd?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bae mi laek fo drinkem wan fala cofi no moa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beaten by reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign...

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

Five Man Electrical Band

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

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

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

She stopped asking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the label read;

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

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