Expat@Large

Bloggers, Blogging, Blogged, Buggered

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:13:00 +0000

I tend to forget that I am in Singapore sometimes. Yes, ambiguity intended. Sometimes I am in Singapore, and sometimes I forget this.

And so I don't keep up with many Singaporean blogs. Read zero. At least since Mr Brown moved on to pod-casting, still funny and controversial but not really blogging IMHO. Xenoboy and MollyMeek have essentially disappeared. Then, of course, SPG moved into my apartment (temporarily, for a few years) and I could see what was going on in her life without having to read about it or admire the pictures of it (always a five minute warning sent when I was coming back from the airport.) Mainey quit from Kinokinuya so there was no chance of getting discount books (met her sister last week). VirginPornstar moved to Sydney after losing her virgin status and shut her blog down. Valkyrie's spider's all passed on, so I only see her when she comes to our place for D&D games (a while ago now, when Izzy was still here. Lovely lady, nice tattoos.)

However the complete absence of the bloggers I know is not the only reason I haven't kept up with all local blogs that I know, There is one blogger I refuse to communicate with because of her criminally heartless treatment of one of my close friends. No names, no pack drill, as they say, and she is a lawyer so I'd probably get ripped a new arsehole if I linked to her after that comment.

~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not sure that there are any Singapore expat blogs I SHOULD be following, but there is nothing I need to know about bringing up babies, about local food or pet dogs or fashion or living advice for those on their first tour of duty.

I made an observation at the first/only Singapore Bloggers.sg.2005 bloggers meeting back in whenever, 2005 or so, about this, and the status hasn't changed, at least for the people I know or should know. The taxi driver guy hasn't published since April last year. Mike is now only talking about his burgeoning writing career (and you really should investigate his work - brilliant). Indy is back blogging under his Platypus moniker, but only about gaming and blowed if I can remember the link.

As a result, my blog is linked to by very few Singaporean expat bloggers. Read none. And it features on few of the lists that come up when you Google 'Expat Bloggers Singapore'. Read none.

OK, I know I have a dedicated bunch of readers, a humble hi-5 guys and gals, but the list of followers is not expanding and my hits are practically non-existent compared to one or fifteen of the local blogs here.

Mind you my blog is pretty specialised. Specialised in a negative space way, excluded, preterite, I am the dark matter and background radiation hum of Singapore blogging that no-one sees unless they use sophisticated equipment to find it.

In fact my blog is damn useless: A list of complaints about toast and coffee with the occasional sex adventure of Bruce in Orchard Towers or Bangkok. Boring, right? Specialised topics, right?

Sigh.

~~~~~~~~~~~

These thoughts were stimulated by a Chinese colleague - female - who says, yes, she glances at my blog every now and then but reads XiaXue every day. Every day. XiaXue gets the same hits per day as I have accumulated over the past 4 years, thanks to people like my colleague. I wish I could call her a dumb bitch, but she's not. She does the same job as I do, so she's obviously a genius.

But why the fuck do 380,000 people a week got to XiaXue's blog? I'm not going to link to it because no matter what I say, if she finds out, she is bound to rip me a new arsehole. (I have met her once, briefly, seemed nice, completely ignored me.)

OK, new arsehole coming. It is completely beyond me what the pull is to her vacuous, narcissistic, rude and abusive tripe.

Completely. Beyond. Me.

As is popularity.

E@L

(Bit fretful of further damage to my arsehole it seems.)

Snow Days

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:33:00 +0000

Up for a piss at 4am, the demands of the fascist prostate are fearfully compelling, E@L negotiates the dim outline of the low table in his room (banged thrice already in four nights) and sneaks a glance out from behind the double blinds, through the double-glazed windows at the snow still falling, falling on the living and the dead tired, lit orange by the streetlights. Condensation has beaded the window with inside rain. (Dumb Q: 'Is it raining outside?' Smart-arse A:- 'Wll it sure ain't raining INside!')

Piss done, "Shit," he says, as he ponders on the politics of how to hide his pleasure at this closed-in weather from his buddies.

Back to bed and up again at 8am. It is snowing even more heavily. A grader is growling through the drifts on his road. It has been snowing continually for three days now. Around the trees, the snow has banked up perhaps four metres. The powder up top must be waist high, two of three feet since Tuesday.

E@L wonders if he should return to bed? The others will be at the lift soon, ready for the first uncut powder runs when the gondola starts at 8:30. It is -8deg at the nearby town of Kutchan, according to weather.com.

Same temperature as last night when they went wandering from restaurant to restaurant, bit of food here, bit of alcohol there.

Bruce is stuffed up with a head-cold, sinuses completely blocked and he wants some Sudafed for legitimate purposes this time. They find a drug-store. The sales assistant produces a laminated A4 sheet with drawings of common symptoms and their names in a variety of languages. Bruce points at 'cough' and 'runny nose'. An old man, wizened (aren't all sources of wisdom?), bad-teeth grin - the pharmacist presumably - takes us to a shelf and indicates one box of pills. Fortunately it has the drugs it contains written in English. None of the others do. E@L manages to read ????-ephedrine HCL in tiny font-size, and tells Bruce to take the pharmacist's advice.

E@L's nose is also clogged but not so severely, maybe tyhe CPAP in the dry air. He pops a Sudafed just in case.

'No alcohollo,' says the pharmacist to E@L, obviously considering him the father figure to these 40 year old kids. He swipes at his chest-length pure-white goatee, shakes his head and says again, 'no alcohollo.'

Two hours later. Bruce: 'Suntory, make it a double!' He is almost asleep, pissed, in a bed-lounge bar, (BangBang?) lying closest the wall. Only the observation from a cigarette smoker who is returning from his nicotine hit on a upstairs balcony that a group of older guys are toking on some whacky-baccie on the balcony upstairs stirs him. In fact Bruce is up to his knees instantly, rolls over two people, crushes E@L's bad feet without noticing and therefore not apologising, pulls on his new Wellington boots and rushes to the stairs.

He comes back, sheepishly avoiding E@L's sore feet again. They had finished their joint already.

E@L

Your Favorite Immigrant Song Video Is...

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:34:00 +0000

Try playing them all at once if that will help you decide...

E@L

Just To Say "Hi"

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:27:00 +0000

Hi.

Out the window at my Niseko hotel, Mount Yōtei with a morning cloud on its head. Hokkaido Japan, last Saturday in fact, not today. Hotel? Pop-out, modernistic, serviced-apartment type. You could not find a less authentic rustic Japanese ambiance, except perhaps in an Ikea showroom. Bloody Australians running the place (properties all seem to be owned LJ Hooker, the slopes by Packer's group I am guessing.) Often, as one travels the world, one's pleasant Aussie accent is greeted with a smile and the risorial imitation of a kangaroo (or a T-rex?, Small paws, curled up in front?). But not here. The locals hate Australians. It's like being in New Zealand.

Snow was brilliant but E@L wimped out for a variety of ~~excuses~~ reasons, primarily those of being unfit and old and unwell and having a prolonged anxiety attack (fear of falling over) that only subsided when he was submerged in a steaming onsen.

~~~~~~~~

E@L is at home now, but unwell - chest infection from a generally hale and hearty ski-fellow who came down with it on Wednesday last and passed it on, the generous bastard, and today yet another burst of something unmentionable -- sorry must rush to the toilet for another squitter...

He can't get over the fact that he made it through a poverty porn tour of the Indochine and survived, yet has been knocked to his haunches by gastro twice in the last ten days, firstly in Japan (bad can of coffee from a vending machine?) and now in Singapore (Korean restaurant in United Square - a friend who dined with me is also suffering ["The world fell out of my arse this morning!"]).

~~~~~~~~

Maybe will finish writing something tomorrow, have many things in draft (you don't need to know this), gods of blog spontaneity be damned, but I was re-re-reading some of the very early posts on my old blog and now am feeling depressed. Not only were they funnier, they were less pretentious (and yet - eyebrow raised - strangely, MORE pretentious) while still exuding the wanky, boyish and arrogant charms of the truly insecure dilettante...

E@L

No Accident - Tea With WSB

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Speaking of William S Burroughs (we were?), E@L has been chuckling and ruminating by turns through the publishable snippets of Philip Willey's WIP (novel, autobiography? who the fuck can tell). Other snippets have be seen occasionally at Dick Headley's blog.

Dick sent E@L a copy of his alter-ego's small text, printed on real paper, kindly signed by someone called Winston and dedicated to someone called Josef, all in exchange for a line of finely printed text on E@L's Mastercard statement. You too can join the select community - a copy may be purchased from the link on the link above. [Full disclosure: E@L has had beers with the man in various globetrotting locations, he seemed harmful enough.]

Naked Tea - The Burroughs Bits. Philip Willey. Ahndai Books 2011. ISBN: 97809734021 1 7

The typewriter font, love it. The illustrations, superb - videlicet, above.

And text, as E@L expected. Self-indulgent and dense stream-of-consciousness gonzo. Just way I like it.

~~~~~~~

Is this autobiographical? The introduction says it partly is. Then you think no, he's made this all up, including the introduction, he's pulling our legs. Then, once again you think this is real stuff, this is close to what happened, close to the core; PW was there, being as gonzo as he possibly could.

There are four sections, three written by PW, some (all?) of these are on the DH blog somewhere. No don't go looking for them! Buy the book. Like, PW needs the money.

First there is titular cup of Naked Tea with WSB at Fortnum and Masons, where Simon (who in the third section becomes Phil) conducts an interview that turns into an excellent, sardonic lecture on modern literature and life and the compulsion to write that non-linear "pastiche of drug-induced prose poems, essays, routines, dramatic fragments and therapeutic ramblings." WSB's observations, and Simon's reflection on them, clearly concern the greater novel we are reading a part of now (or perhaps the squandered talent in Chuck Woww's efforts) as much as WSB's own novels.

Then comes William at the the 1970's Phun City rock festival. Burroughs was there, as was JG Ballard (thanks Google), but was PW? It is from Burroughs' point of view (stoned - being raped by a giant cockroach) and is funny. Does he work his tapes into something later? I am not familiar enough with the compete works to know. Or is it PW doing the work here?

Thirdly, PW sits in a cafe in Morocco and writes a letter to the late Burroughs. He is talking with the ghost of WSB - who is observing and commenting on the writing of the letter, ("I find the times changes a little confusing") - and to describe Tangier as it is now, how low PW has sunk, how the world is now and then lets him have the last word: "Facebook sounds terrifying."

In the fourth section, the epitaph, there is a reprint of an online essay by one George Laughead about WSB obliquely confessing that the shooting of Joan was no accident. Interesting...

~~~~~~~~~

This is humour from the inside. As in our favorite parts of his blog, where Dick is sailing the BVI with a pair of Thai babes, or mixing it with the hoi-rock-polloi of the 60's (maybe some pre-reading is required?), there is a sense of complete but utterly casual immersion in the events and zeitgeist (of the times, man!).

This is the technique, the theme, perhaps the point. Being there.

Cleverly self-aware anachronisms, true-ish facts, throw-away name-dropping (where to start with a list of names!), invented voices on authentic vices, and the result is that you cannot help but find yourself in the midst of it. In the thick of the chaos, on the edge of notoriety and perhaps a hastily-unweighted decision away from fame and fortune yourself, as was Phil/Simon/Dick/Chuck himself, the rumour has it. Yes, that's it in the end, to have them (the soon to rich, the already infamous) as part of your story, but you are not of theirs. Imagine Rozencrantz and Guildenstern with AAA passes to the 60's and 70's. Sigh.

You couldn't imagine that all the serious fun of these times - the frighteningly new music and all this self-parodying art and literature happening around you - would become legend. While you took notice because it was your life, you didn't take notes for the same reason, and instead sat down to think over things in your life and called for a nice cup of tea.

With none other than Bill Burroughs. Well you might as well take notes now, because you are here to interview the man, make a name for yourself, perhaps succeeding, perhaps failing at both/either task(s). Unreliable narrator interviewing an unreliable character. What can go wrong? Nothing! Just as long as you hold that glass still on your head Joan, darling.

~~~~~~~

"Shoot the bitch and write a book! That's what I did! … There are no accidents." WSB (allegedly).

~~~~~~~

E@L

Poverty Porn II

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:25:00 +0000

E@L stands amid a mass of well-on-the-way-to-drunken banker-wankers and schmarmy lawyers at Stormies, near the top of Lan Kwai Fong lane. The crowd from Big Al's Diner merges, the revelers form a bridge of beer-swilling expat humanity across the lane. E@L is not ashamed to be amongst them. Sure, why not? Look at him. He is the fat, bald, leering drunken lecher at the street-corner; why not live up to the stereotype that everyone takes him for anyway. It is his shout. He calls the harassed Filipina waitress over from where she is taking an order from someone else, passing change onto another pin-stripe suited.

"Six Coronas, cheers." He taps her on the bum to cheer her up.

It is Friday night and this is what you do in Hong Kong. Work hard (well not E@L so much, great job even then), play like an alcoholic.

"Look at that," says Justin.

"Fucking hell."

"Fucking Chinese."

"Take my photograph, will you? Asshat. What the fuck, get out of my face." He flips a posse of mainlanders the finger. (Whatever happened to the two-fingers? Justin is British. But everyone is American these days when it comes to hand gestures, to swearing. Cultural imperialism. Thank you television, thank you movies.)

"Mother-fucking mainland tourists, there's the one with the yellow flag. Fucking sheep, lemmings. Why don't they get on with their own life?"

E@L mimics a coolie accent:"Follow my little flag, we come from Beijing, you follow me, we go to darkest den of the natives. Watch the strange epxats in native habitat. See how they live. This is the foreigner in a zoo. Watch them eat and drink and abuse each other.."

"Ha ha. Take another photo, you plick and I jam you flucking camela up you flucking arse."

"Where the fuck do they get those clothes? All the fucking same."

After a while we ignore them. They look at us, we don't look at them. They are mildly annoying, and when you come to think of it, superfluous. We don't need to think about them. We don't even see them after a while as troupe after troupe go past. We have our own lives to destroy.

Another busload of Chinese climb the steps (temporary, steel, still a lot of work to go to make LKF the way it is today) to Wellington St.

We continue where we left off.

"Buy me a beer, and I'll let you keep standing next to me," says Justin.

"Fuck off," says E@L. "Are we going to Wanchai, or not?"

The pulse of our expat tradition beats on and on and on...

E@L

[Just in case someone doesn't get it - this post is meant to be read in conjunction with the the previous post, Poverty Porn.]

Poverty Porn

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:23:00 +0000

"Can we get WiFi there?" asks E@L, worried that his Words With Friends games might expire. He has already put up a holiday block on both his work email and his Gameknot chess matches. Priorities.

"They don't even have electricity," replies D4 in his mild Slavov Zizec accent. He even clutches at his nostrils quite a lot. E@L is not sure if he is joking. "I'm joking!" guffaws D4. How can you tell D4 is joking? Moving mouth.

~~~~~~~~~

The rooms in the "restored" French colonial guesthouse are large, there is enough space for the two king size beds for the platonic share with Odette. There are electricity outlets, one for E@L's CPAP, several for charging all his devices (modern life is a series of battery depletion crises). There IS WiFi, for 10hrs a day. There is aircon, there are bedside lamps, there are mosquito nets - E@L doesn't need his though, as mentioned previously Asian mosquitoes find him tasteless (not Robinson Crusoe there) - there is hot water.

There is, should be, will be, hot water. A dribble, a gurgle, a cough then a spurt and then all of a sudden the water is scalding. Cold on a bit, it's freezing. Cold down a bit, it's freezing for a few seconds, then scalding. What is going on here? To get the temperature right for the shower is like playng a pinball machine, you need Tommy the wizard. It's a shifting playing ground, it's a struggle. E@L gives up and showers lukewarmly.

Your turn Odette, good luck.

~~~~~~~~~

Breakfast is nothing much and you know how E@L appreciates his Aussie version of a continental petit dejeuner. Vegemite on toast, muesli wth fruit and yoghurt, a LARGE cup of coffee. Nah, not likely.

A few skimpy pieces of fruit, the best of the bananas gone to the gibbon under E@L's window, black liquid in a thermos dispenser mislabelled as coffee, stale baguettes sliced and toasted on a small grill. Only one type of jam. No ao khun, E@L does not want eggs.

~~~~~~~~~

This part of Laos, Si Phan Don, is very dry, not monsoon time. VERY dry: dust: puff powder mist floats up fine fine particles with each step, like underfoot explosions, ha ha. We walk almost the circumference of the island over the two days, from the waterfall on this side (sunset, awesome, 20,000kip for the pathway) to the waterfall, more a cascade, on the other side midday on day two. We could have hired bicycles (he'd say pushbikes but no-one would have a clue what E@L was talking about) and it's not that they were too expensive at 10,000 kip per day- $1.50 - but D4's lanky knees would bash against the handlebars.

So we walked along the paths slowly, heat and dust, chatting and joking, watching the Laos islanders go about their daily business. This seemed to be mostly lounging and talking. And looking at us as we ambled along. They had stopped talking. A nod and E@L's poorly pronounced sabai dee was met most often with a blank stare. Even as we headed straight at people walking towards us, there was the blank look or there was averted eyes, as if we weren't really there. E@L had a hint that even though we weren't interfering but just watching them, they might have resented out presence. That blank expression was not one of indifference but slight annoyance, as one might dismiss without looking at a chicken that walked on your path. You and the chicken have differnet agends, you live in different, occasionally intersecting worlds. We are superfluous.

A middle-aged man squatted in the shade of a copse of straggly trees and banged something made of wood with a something made of rusted steel into a chunk of bleached wood for some purpose, next to a circle of smoking ashes and a parked motorcycle. He looked up at us for a second at E@L's greeting, then turned his deeply creased face back to his mysterious task.

A pregnant woman perched on stool, one leg under her bum the other swinging, in a structure something like a shop. Goddam it, it was a shop. Small toys, minor doing-things instruments and cheap tools hung by the entrance. Food, biscuits, cigarettes. There was a refrigerator with drinks. We asked her for two bottles of chilled water. She did not move, perhaps did not understand. Izzy shrugged, opened the door anyway and took them out, held them up and asked how much. The pregnant woman slowly stood and brought over a LCD solar-powered calculator with a large screen. 10,000 kip, same as a day of bicycling. Izzy had no kip and the lady would not accept her $5 note. E@L had amongst the six currencies in his wallet, enough smokey-tintedkip to cover the drinks.

Everywhere bustling around us, up and down the path kids of two/three, five/seven ran amok (not the delicious local fish dish), played all sorts of games incomprehensible to adults and generally had fun independant of the control of whomever were their parents. The kids would generally respond to our waves, sometimes enthusiastically sometimes less so, and our "sabai dee" greeting would often elicit a muted reply. But they kept running past us intent on their own lives.

"Well at least the next generation will be more friendly," says E@L

However, there was one girl, perhaps five or six. She stopped as we walked past, put her clenched fingers to her mouth and pulled them away in familiar gesture, to the side and down. "Kung pao," she said. "Kung pao." Chinese red packets. Money.

~~~~~~~~~

Waterfalls. Done, tick. Local inhabitants, however. Not yet completely done, unticked.

~~~~~~~~~

The round-the-island-tour boat was set to go at four. We tramped back along the road to our gibbon friendly guesthouse with only 15mins to have a rinse down, a partial de-dusting. D4 decided to crash; bad knee even without the bicycle handlebars, and a sore hip. E@L medicated him with some cox-II inhibitor NSAIDs. Deadly, sure, but fuck they work well.

Our boat was slightly more river-worthy than the floating village long-tail, it even had cushions on the planks and removable back-boards for support. Luxury. The roof a bit dodgy, and a splash too much water in the gunwales, bilge, cargo-hold, whatever - under the boards - but it didn't break down. The tour was timed to coincide with sunset over the river. We pulled up-stream towards the beach where we had boarded the day before. We passed it by though, and came down on the other side of another island, again with the stream. Negotiated some whirlpools, watched the bubbling scum of waste outleyts and thanked whatever gods may be that we didn't have to swim in it. Half submerged trees and semi-erect spears of dead branches reared out to impale our boat.

The captain, took us towards the embankments on the far side of this branch of the river. Here the wooden shacks did not stand with half their stilts in the river. That was what we had seen earlier, in the part of the Mekong we were staying. Instead many of the houses here were built with their foundations in solid ground, still on stilts, many leaning askew, not so solidly implanted. Other houses had their river-side walls halfway down the embankment, where their not-necessarily sea-worthy canoes were dry docked.

Dry boards for walls, curved and peeling off, nailed back, that or thatched rattan, and thatched or corrugated tin roofs. The embankments were quite steep, and many families had planted vegetables gardens - E@L saw rows of staked tomato vines. The more river-worthy boats were beached at small landings.

~~~~~~~~

But now, here at the edge of the water, was the point of our visit. Here the timing of the cruise was perfectly coordinated. Now we were to get what was most crucial for our holiday, what we had come for, what we had paid for.

The families were bathing. They were washing themselves, doing their ablutions in the muddy Mekong. Water niether cold nor hot, always the same. Slightly chilly, no fiddling with taps required.

Splashing all over their bodies the polluted flow. The froth of scum we had chugged through, from all the waste outlets upstream, their waste outlets going downstream. Bacteria (e-Coli in particular du'h), viruses, parsites. Little children are naked, mother in a sarong, rinsing them over, wiping the dust away with one hand while the other held her child still enough. A women rinsing her hair, twisting it at her shoulder sees us and stops. Old men with their lower bodies covered by their short sarongs are throwing water up into their groins, then rubbing through the wet cloth. Young men, old women, children, teenagers, the girls shyly covering up when they hear us approach, the women turning away, the men staring hard. No-one returns our first timid waves. No-one sabai dee's back to our timorous calls.

The show kept going, more people up ahead at the bottom of their embankements, more traditionally shy people publicly exposed for fun and profit. On show like circus freaks. Like a zoo.

E@L turned away. He didn't look again. That was enough. He didn't want to see any more, didn't want to invade any more, didn't want to oppress any more, didn't want to exploit anymore.

~~~~~~~~~~

It wasn't so long since these people had to run from the French colonialists who needed free labour. To hide from the bombings, the napalm, the agent orange of the Americans who needed to send a message to China. Except for when they couldn't run at all, when they had to stand still or die, when their uncontrollable children, their farming families and loved partners were fenced in by thousands of live, plastic (purposely unfindable), permantly present, plane-scattered land-mines. When they were blown apart, dismemebered, legs lost. When their cattle, often their only resource, were blown apart.

So what that these people are bathing in the river? It wasn't so long either, a mere few centuries, that Europeans were living essentially the same way, even worse. Leave them alone for pity's sake. It cultural pornography. We are rich, they are what we would call poor. Stop these poverty porn cruises. Make some money here and there with some other tourist scam, but not this way, not boating past your families in their shower, in their bathroom.

E@L shudders.

~~~~~~~~~~

D4 was in the restaurant when we returned. His iPad was on the table, fully charged, and he was chatting with a Dutch fellow tousist.

The tourist had a martini glass in front of him. He smiled and pointed at it. Consciously ironic, he said: "I asked for a dry martini, look at it. It's almost opaque, almost entirely vermouth. Sweet as anything I have ever tasted."

D4 countered with: "What's the point of paying $40 a night if the place can't even make a decent dry martini?"

E@L was not in the mood to be amused. He has no hard-on for this poverty porn.

E@L

Cambodia - Laos

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:54:00 +0000

(Sorry, this post disappeared into draft for some reason.)

Templed-out in Cambodia.

We climbed the temples that were available to climb, but the vertiginous staircases at Angkor Wat were closed, maybe too many fractured skulls from the giddy adventurous and over-confident adrenalin junkies. We did the jump-meme every now and then. Pulled faces at the Apocalypse Now faces in the Bayon temple, got lost, got found, took photos at the pile of modern bricks, the future's ruins. Were as anti-tourist as possible, made concerted efforts to be in as many of other people's photos as we could, stand in the way of the perfectshoot as long as possible - as they all did to us. Perhaps unintenionally.

We were up at 5am one morning, tuk-tukked to the site, saw Angkor Wat at sunrise, silhouettes mainly, nice but, and we watched the ambitious Japanese use flash cameras to capture the rosy-fingered dawn. By the third day however, when our promised sunset shoot was scheduled (much more dramatic, with the golden-hued temple looking magnificent - E@L can confirm that from last time he was here, in 2000) we were too buggered to fufil our goals, promised ourselves instead to look at the sunset from our balcony, and so we crashed, gin&tonic exhausted, by the pool or back in the room. When E@L awoke poolside, three Melvyn Bragg podcats past, the sunset was in its final radiance, so he went upstairs and knocked on Izzy's room. She came to the door, all groggy and disoriented.

"What?"

"Sunset!"

Pause. "O, fuck off!" door slams.

E@L laughs, good joke.

~~~~~~~~~~~

In the floating village at Tone Loc, I mean at Tonle Sap, we head downstream (towards the lake) in a long-tail boat which keeps breaking down, to the floating house/restaurant that is the canoe trip base, with a, E@L thanks christ, toilet.

But the bilge-pipe spouts smoke instead of water. Not good. Our 12 year old captin hands the wheel over to the 7 year old first mate and leans over the back for the rest of the trip, holding smoething onto something or away from something near the waterline so that the engine can run. Looks of blank-faced concern.

The canoe trip is not as we had imagined it - instead of us paddling yellow plastic things, a strong young lady is doing all the paddling in our creaking wooden canoe. But we weave through the mangroves, dappled in shadow and sunlight, lotus-seated in a spiritual silence, only the plash of the paddle, the soft chirruping call of some waterbirds and the ripping roar of the long-tail boats... E@L sits up front and holds a contemplative buddha pose, thumb to middle fingers on his knees, eyes closed, as his canoe returns across the river to the restaurant/canoe berth.

"You're not fooling anyone," says D.

Heading back upstream, more trouble and we circle back to the floating house at the canoe berth, and our long-tail breaks down completely just as we edge up to it. Our captain is shouting something angrily to the four of five people who stand, unimpressed, watching our approach. He yells again and one of the women reluctantly goes into the back-room, presumably the kitchen, and returns with a meat cleaver. We raise out eyebrows and look at each other again. However, all he decapitates is a water bottle. The upper part is useful it appears, and after some repairs, obviously involving the introduction of some fluid or other, we are off. No more issues. With bumps, grinds and pushes and a great rearrangement of boats already berthed, we negogiate with the other returning long-tails and larger boats into a rare berth on the crowded sand.

~~~~~~~~~

Planes, vans and a rickety "ferry" (another, even less sturdy, but mechanically sound long-tail) and we arrived at Si Phan Don. The road from the airport to the "ferry terminal" was paved but poorly macadamised, rolling with unintenional and ignored speed-bumps. The bridge aproaches were typical for the rural areas here - so sudden and steep and obviously made without the road's height in consideration - and the iPodded, sleeping E@L's head hit the ceiling each time. Melvyn Bragg, in midsentence. The driver had no concerns at this and did not slow except for cattle, broods of chickens (why DO they cross the road?) and dogs. Thirsty, E@L asks up front for water. D passes back a bottle upside down. E@L looks at it, tries to drink from the base, gestures to D for a meat cleaver. Hilarity ensues.

We turn around a small island, first we head upstream, then downstream back into fast moving river which brings up quickly to a "berth" -another beaching, but this time by steps that lead up the bank to our hotel reception.

We are shown our rooms. "Over there," they point. Next to the gibbon's cage.

It is a French colonial villa, although that word is exaggerates the impression we first obtain. The yellow walls are indeed of the traditional French style. The place was built in 1896. Auberge Sala Done Khone. Cool. There are some floating rooms we could have taken, done below the restuarant. They are available on the next night, but hey, we are set already.

The most interesting thing about our fellow adventurers - the average age is about 75. Very few backbacker types. In fact none. We do not expect to see many Happy Pizza places or opium dens.

E@L

Teacher

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:41:00 +0000

In the small village of Au Laok in the Roulus group of temples, volunteer teacher Mr Suang finishes his work as an assistant worker on the temple restoration projects and comes back to his empty home. His wife has "gone away" and they are divorced.

When the sun is on the way down and the day cooling off at 5;30, a bunch of 20 dusty kids arrive at an open air school. Rows of traditional classroom seats face the whiteboards. Mr. Suang walks across the road.

E@L

Up river a few clicks...

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:28:00 +0000

In Cambodia at the moment. Angkor and what else?

With Izzy and the Croatia crew. No time to write or think... There are gins & tonic to be consumed!

Will get back to you all later.

E@L

Happy Circumcision Day!

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:30:00 +0000

Why today? Why tomorrow? Why is THIS new year for us?

It isn't for the Chinese, the Sinhalese, the Thai (except for business purposes), nor for dozens of other regions, countries, and religions who have their New Year all over the place (in a temporal sense as well as the physical one).

For example, for both the Tamil in India and many of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, Jan 14 is considered New Year. But for different reasons. The EOC of "Georgia, Jerusalem, Russia, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Ukraine still use the Julian Calendar", (Wiki, above link). Since 2008, the state of Tamil Nadu has adjusted the New Year to an allegedly more secular date. People don't like governments fiddling with their holidays (unless it is to add more) so, meanwhile, many objecting Tamils continue to celebrate New Year in... mid-April, the time of the advent of Spring!

~~~~~~~

I grew accustomed to thinking that the West's (the so-called christian world) New Year, Jan 1st, was arbitrary; a relatively random date, stolen from the Romans, close enough to the summer equinox and to the saturnalia festival to be like, hey, why not now? As it doesn't correspond directly to any celestial timing landmark, nothing lunar or solar - no equinox, solstice, full moon, new moon or alignment of the planets exactly on that day - I was a tad confused, but not overly concerned.

But I was brought up Catholic. I went to Church and pretended to listen, giggled uncontrollably when the priest said "virgin", etc... At school we had Religious Education every day at noon, twenty minutes of unanswerable questions fobbed of with answers that amounted to, essentially, "because!" Some of this must have sunk in for, despite evidence to the contrary such as this blog, I am quite moralistic in many ways. Fortunately for my sanity, most of the contradictory details and ridiculous assertions of the Bible and the attendant accumulation of mythology, the suspect explanations and circular arguments in the explications upon it, washed off my back and flew through my ears. But as I once had a terrific memory (when? I've forgotten) certain factoids must have become lodged in an otherwise inconsequential matrix of neural firings. So I knew deep down somewhere in the amygdala (the cerebellum? I've forgotten), that momentous knowledge, the significance of the great and holy feast we get pissed at tonight, but I had forgotten-slash(as it were)-suppressed it.

As Christmas allegedly celebrates the birthday of Jesus, and his being Jewish, he had to be circumcised* on the eight day of His precious and not-inconsequential life. Penis? Chop chop mistah.

Presuming the male infant (miraculously delivered from a virgin who obviously lost her hymen from the inside out) survived to that venerable age of course.

~~~~~~~

Why wait? Weeeeeeell... You know how it is with closed communities, when cousins marry sort of thing: birth defects like renal agenesis and inborn errors of metabolism like Gaucher's disease, glycogen storage disease, thalassaemia, etc... Many are fatal in about four to five days, some even sooner. Seen it only a few times thankfully, when I was (really) working. Sad.

~~~~~~~

So they waited, and we wait, eight (8, count 'em) days.

Yes, on that day, on THIS day (i.e. tomorrow), the prepuce** of the penis of Our Lord was stretched out, perhaps over an infibulator***, and snipped off. The bris, tossed to the cats. Foreskin for the pussens, mmrrrgniaow.

The 1st of January way back when. Ow.

Hurt? Hurt so much He couldn't walk on water for nearly a year!

~~~~~~~

This is why we (you) celebrate New Year today. I know that you too needed to be reminded of this.

It is the Day Of The Newly Exposed Glans Penis!

Jesus was therefore on target for the Covenant of Abraham. Remember how it goes? I'll give you a land of milk and honey, life eternal in heaven, etc... if your males remove some redundant skin from their genitalia. Simple as that. Snip your way to Jewish Nirvana.

Notice how religions have this obsession with all things genitalian and reproductive? (See above re: inbreeding.)

~~~~~~~

I wonder if, perhaps, the goal of many young men like myself back when, in our post-pubertal teens when the hormones were raging, was to be "in" (as in penis-in-vaginated) on the stroke (as it were) of midnight. I kid you not, it was a big goal in our town. Some instances of this carnal celebration even involved women.

~~~~~~~

New Year is Jan 1st and Jan 1st is New Year because of a circumcision.

Yes, you may not have realized it, but New Year is a religious holiday. Please tune your mind to that dubious and concerned (and damn ugly) baby Jesus above, about to lose part of its Godly schlong (a micro-penis, plus microcephaly and a touch of the Benjamin Button about the face, according to this pic - see above re: birth defects) so that the world could later be redeemed (redeemed? I'm not seeing that) from its sins by His cruci-fiction and death, as you pop the cork (not a metaphor) tonight.

E@L

* For those of you uncertain of the technique of this insane religious torture, there are some nice illustrations here. Yada yada, incidence of AIDS is lower, but Jesus was not a fag, allegedly, so why?

** The Holy Umbilical Cord is a first class Catholic relic (that which is composed of a body part) of Christ. Christian teaching generally states that Christ was assumed into heaven corporeally. Therefore the only parts of his body available for veneration are parts he had lost prior—hair, blood, fingernails, milk teeth, his prepuce and the umbilicus remaining from his birth. Wiki. Not his lymph, shit, piss, vomit, snot, tears, sweat, phlegm or ejaculate however.

*** Infibulation and Infibulators

Infubulation may refer to the tying up of the male foreskin to some device, like a cloth belt, to prevent masturbation. IKYN.

It is also a practice by those fucking butchers who perform radical female circumcision to stitch closed the labia to prevent normal intercourse and the enjoyment of sex by women.

Many African Muslims believe that female circumcision is required by Islam. In fact the practice is mentioned nowhere in the Quran, although the Sunnah contains several references to the custom. In particular, Mohammed instructed one infibulator, "Yes, it is allowed. Come closer so I can teach you: if you cut, do not overdo it, because it brings more radiance to the face and it is more pleasant for the husband."via

An infibulator is person who performs the infibulation.

For the purposes of this blog post however the infibulator is a small metal conic device for protecting the glans penis. The foreskin is draped over it so that religious or medical excision can be performed without danger to the rest of the poor kid's tiny little dicky-bird.

Never heard of it? Me neither until I heard the following story --

It concerns the late Australian billionaire Kerry Packer. He was having one of his monthly heart attacks at a race track (or was it a cricket match? whatever) and someone called urgently for an infibulator! He lifted his head and hoarsely called out with what might have been his last breath (we should have been so lucky) that he was having a fuckin' heart attack, not a fuckin' circumcision! Get me a defibrillator! The emergency helicopter ambulance arrived and did not have either, but Packer survived. He later gave #insert large sum of money# to the ambulance service to place defibrillators in all medical evacuation helicopters. Allegedly true (ish).

Return Of Piss Of The Ghost Cat Story - The Exorcism!

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:18:00 +0000

The origin of the previously described mysterious noisome aromatic residue of a long dead tabby tom in the childhood bedroom of E@L has been sourced. Sleep easy one and all. It used to be that whenever (usually Christmas) E@L arrived from his sojourn in the Far Orient, he would be ensconced in this room and instantly his presence would stir the unmistakable stench of a crusty old cat intent on ensuring his domain was marked with a copious burst of pungent you-rine. Pee-you indeed! The fact that this tom had been long deceased - we are talking many, many years, like six, seven, eight - did little to diminish the olfactory memory of his attraction to E@L's den of repose.

E@L's maternal mother, frantic, embarrassed, had washed, aired, dry-cleaned and steam-cleaned every item in the room, failing one, the guilty party. A blue acrylic pseudo-lambswool blanket of which E@L would have considered obvious and of primary suspectivity. He had assumed that Mumsy would have attacked that item of his bedclothes first, or at least immediately after the doona (duvet) and its cover had proven innocent, but it was not so.

E@L's preferred option of sleeping in the third bedroom (that of his sole sibling) has become so entrenched that this was no longer a problem, and E@L leaves the room for his cousins when they come for Boxing Day - perhaps once they resented this usurping.

They have no cause any longer to complain. The long haunting of the piss of the ghost cat has finally ended. It has been exorcised.

E@L

NYR or NRA - You Decide!

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:04:00 +0000

Time is fast approaching for the solipsistic solstice soliloquy in which our hero, troubled soul, fatal flaw, bad luck / bad management, harangues the crowd around the Tannenbaum of ancient myth and metaphor on their dismal failings and on his exhuberant successings in the course of the previous solar cycle. The 10 Things I Did This Year But You Didn't Ha Ha speech.

Thankfully it is not here yet. Time, E@L means. It will be here soon though, he is semi-reliably informed by the voices inside his head (they obviously have nowhere more pleasant to spend their holidays).

~~~~~~~~~

However, E@L is using this absence of Time advantageously and is planning ahead (ahead? before? now? - what does this temporary absence of temporality mean? What, indeed, does 'temporary' mean in such a situation) for his New Year Resolutions (NYR).

They are thus: get fatter, become less fit and be more morose.

For, as one never keeps one's NYR, E@L is a shoo-in for being a Slimmer, Fitter, Happier blogger/facebooker/porn-downloader for 2012. (FUCK! 2000 and fucking twelve and he's still alive!) The psychological ploy being, um, employed, you will have indubitably inferred, is that of the Reverse Type.

Not that E@L hasn't had a lot to smile about in the preceding thirteen full moons (see below, re: medications) but, as mentioned above, the Time has not yet arrived to enumerate and discuss these... Hang-on, there's a (conveniently timed) knock at the door. Nope, still not Time, it's one of those otherwise unemployable telephone company salesman, wants to know if E@L would care to buy Telstra. E@L told him if he didn't leave he'd shoot a kitten.

Yep, gone, see? Reverse psychology!

~~~~~~~~~

Another tactic he has appropriated, more of a rethinking than a theft really, is one he heard first on some public radio interview on the way to Melbourne for dinner last night (not at Rockpool, will complain later when the meds wear off). There was this crazy Yank (Canuck? who can tell? who cares?) going on about denial. (E@L wished the man wasn't talking denial, seriously, he doesn't need to listen to people speaking about denial. He doesn't want to hear about it. It doesn't concern him. There is most emfatically, nothing to deny! Who, what, me? Another slice of Christmas pudding, more cream, custard, ice-cream, sure! Bring it on!)

Well, if you listened to the podcast linked to, or read the book you will know that Paul Barclay is more on about self-control than denial, but hey, yes, same thing, the tactic he suggested you see is to scare yourself straight, to anti-bribe yourself, in a way. Here is a foolproof technique to guarantee that you will keep (or not keep, if that is your cunning plan) your NYR.

How? you feebly entreat.

Answer. Set-up a truly negative incentive for yourself. Not a disincentive, that's different, that's how the ~~Philip's Healthcare~~ Cosmodemonic Healthcare Company's annual bonus system used to work. Not just just something of the hey, you don't want to do that sort of thing, not the "she wants to make love but the football is on" sort of don't-want-to-do, but something you really... REALLY... DON'T... WANT... TO... DO.

Such as live-donate BOTH kidneys to an ailing pedophile or a large amount of money to a cause you find completely untenable. Say Scientology, some Nazi skinhead thugs christmas booze and knuckle-duster the fags party, The National Rifle Association, or the poor.

And when he says set up, E@L doesn't mean the "Yeah, I promise I'll do that," sort of set up, but no, get serious, hand over complete control of the forfeit to a third party, such as your evil half-brother (your Nazi, Scots heritage, creepy pedophile, gun-toting Scientologist with no ready cash half-brother who is on dialysis.) Choose a person who is just dying [oops, bad unintentional joke] for you to fail so he can abscond to another state of mind with your cash or your urinary tract, that sort of set up. Your bank-manager would also fit the bill, a lawyer, your ex-wife, your current wife. E@L is prepared to hold large sums of cash on your behalf if you are in extremis.

Yep. Negative consequences for the world if you break your NYR. You fail your task(s) and bang, your money/kidneys are gone, your children are no longer safe, George W Bush is wearing a swastika (and no he hasn't gone Buddhist) and running for re-election and all stem-cell research grinds to a mushy halt.

Once it becomes apparent that you have blown it, there will be no changing your mind, no altering your plan, no rescinding of your Last Will and Testicle. It is done. You just made the world a worse place to live for several cuddly endangered species. Happy with yourself loser? We all should hope not. But we'd love to hear what The Authorities will says about your $10,000 donation to the Get Some Anthrax* And Put It In Richard Dawkins Tea Society... (Um... they'd probably facilitate it!)

~~~~~~~

E@L, on pain meds for neuropathy that stabilise his moods (as a side-effect only), really is in a happy(ish) state most of the time nowadays (not counting the explosive issue of $80 for an undercooked here, overcooked there tri-partite collection of gristle and tendon they called a steak at Neil Perry's Rockpool Grill at Crown Casino last Sunday - sorry couldn't wait for the next blog post), so he has to try hard to think of some crucial issue, some key cause, some misguided belief system that he will find sufficiently abhorrent, in-your-face wrong and cruelly harmful enough to fire up strong negative feelings in his serotonin re-uptake modified existence... There must be something other than bad steak or the usual pub conversations with his friends that will get him riled and angry.

There must be something he would just oh-so hate to happen that he is compelled to stop it, some idea so against his ingrained world-view that he would hate to see it advance, something so completely bad that he MUST complete his NYR and do good things (good things? E@L don't need no stinking good things!) instead. (Reversely or forwardly.)

But nothing really... creative comes to mind...

Any suggestions?

Please, everybody, help E@L achieve/not achieve, forgotten which, his NYR.

or we'll shoot this kitten.

E@L

* There are real, genuine anthrax spores in a biological research facility just a few kms from where E@L sits, IKYN. Muhaha!

Hey Nineteen

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:28:00 +0000

Taxi driver (female): Where you go?

E@L: G******* Rd

Taxi Driver: Ah yes,, G****** Rd.

E@L *thinks*: She knows G****** Rd?

E@L: Yes. Off N****** Rd

Taxi Driver: What number, No 19?

E@L: No, number 11.

E@L *thinks*: She knows G****** Rd in detail!

E@L *thinks again: Why did she say 19? Do I look like a No 19 person?

~~~~~~~~~~~

E@L ambles back from the N****** shopping centre carrying two plastic bags of shopping (full grain bread, full cream milk, full of potassium bananas, full of pulp orange juice - his staples) with the handles wrapped over his hands so that weight falls on the back of his wrist, a new technique after fifty-four years that takes the pressure off his fingers (can't teach an old dogs new tricks? - Hah!), up a slght hill, puffing as he tries to whistle some Audioslave rocking beat, thinking of things he has done and said in the past, and occasionally sprouting a "fuck" out loud or "you fucking idiot" as he recalls the stupid and reckless and damaging words he has uttered to girls over the years while trying to make them understand his urgent desires, often ensuring that they would not come anywhere near him and that they now consider him a lech and a creep, thereby exploding whatever trusting and friendly relationship he might imagine they had established over the period (long or short) of their acquaintance. Expressions of interest [e.g. "let's fuck"] that work in OT at 2am ("you don't need to try hard, it's 2am," Bruce once told him) do not work on pretty girls he has the hots for at 10pm in pubs and wine-bars along Robertson Walk. Why does he not know how to woo girls? Why is he a fuckwit? Even with guys he has no skills at small talk, nothing except deeper conversations at his call and even they only come out after a few alcoholic drinks, when everyone starts feeling philosophical as well. He sits silent around the table listening to others chat about topics he has zero interest in, zero knowledge about, or probably has forgotten about (he blames the medications). Cars, football, cricket, blokie things. Why is it so hard?

He looks around to see if there is anyone walking near him who might have overheard his expletive ejaculation, and if there is (he doesn't notice them because he is listening to the music and day-dreaming about the stupidity that has plagued his existence and, not a bad thing, kept him single these last twenty years) and if there is anyone there, he awkwardly attempts to sing a few muted words of the song in his ears, or whistle them away, hey, these are the lyrics I am calling out, E@L is not a lunatic wandering the streets mumbling foul words for no reason whatsoever. He has reasons for mumbling rude words - he is a fuckwit, a stumbling tongue-tied failure with women.

He blames his mum for not marrying again, not giving him a male role-model. He blames not being much good at sports, or not interested in sports as he matured from a high skill level in primary school to not giving a fuck, and so not getting into the change-room banter and stories of what works and what doesn't in the picking up and making out with the horny Catholic girls from the convent school down the road (it's muscles mainly that seem to work). He blames the solitary pursuits of surfing and playing the guitar (never remembering the chords, even when he was young - maybe it's not the meds) and reading on his poor socialisation. Then getting married at nineteen. Nineteen. So young, fresh out of school, or one year out actually, not so much a gap year year as a pit year, a year spent fucking up an Arts course (poetry, what the fuck does Dylan Thomas mean to him, the wind is from the north-west, Southside - the left-hander behind Bell's Beach [remember point Break?] would be pumping, well it would it there was any swell) and there was the surfing trip to Queensland and New South Wales in a car with six bald tyres (lots of stories about that trip, if he had the time to tell them) and the job at Fords engine plant, fettling (yes it's a word) away some part of a lifter, or bashing camshafts out of their hot sand molds, face black and gritty at the end of a shift.

And so incompetent at the accurate and reliable deployment of condoms, so young, so fucking stupid. First ever girlfriend (No 1 son though, what a marvelous lad) too. Out came the moral shotgun and that was it for E@L. So E@L never went through those years of pick-up lines, never learnt the chat-up process, never played the game. He never learned what is nice too say, what is amusing, what is endearing, what shows understanding and interest, what opens a girls legs. No wonder he fucks up. He only became single, really independent when No 1 one son went to live in England. That's when E@L moved to his career in the Cosmo-Incompetent Medical Company, was stationed in Hong Kong and there, in Wanchai at 2am, there was no need to try so hard.

He checked out the numbers of the houses on the street. They seemed to jump enormously from house/condo to condo/house. 55, 47, 33. And he was almost at his front gate. Where was No 19 going to be? How is it going to fit in here, there were only two plots to go, semi-detached units. The first was 27, the second, even though it was on the same plot jumped down to 23. Then he was at his gate. 11. There was no 19. What the fuck was that taxi driver talking about?

His 19-ness was all in her head.

Nineteen, he thought again. Is he a nineteen person? Is there something of his nineteen history that she saw inside him as she glanced in the rear-view mirror??

~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~

E@L

Cancer? I do not want. I do not have.

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:47:00 +0000

As a medical worker (when I DO work) obviously I see a lot of people with a lot of health problems, not counting when I look in the mirror. Cancer is the Big C. I am not sure what the C stands for, perhaps it's what people scream when they get the diagnosis, but we'll move on.

As a WESTERN medical worker, a free-thinker (mild-mannered antichrist) and skeptic, I do not have a lot of time for alternative medicines. No time for most of the new-age ****-therapy things involving herbs, oils or rocks, nor for chiropractic, nor for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) which is killing endangered species faster than deforestation and global warming and moon-sized meteorites put together. There is so much blatant quackery, snake-oils and pseudo-science here, so many un-testable therapies offered, and so many contestable therapies proven wrong when contested. (Check Ben Goldacre's blog and tweets. Read Simon Sigh's books and his blog.) I groan, sometimes I kick back.

~~~~~~~~~

I receive each week (or is it month?) a medical newsletter from a service called DocCheckNews. Last week one of their articles caught my attention - it was about cancer denial and Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs. Evil exponent of that worst sort of capitalism that is anti-competition and wants to monopolize its product type. Great acceptor of other people's great designs. Great acceptor of praise that should have been given to those others. Rich dude.

Alternative medical treatment FAIL.

~~~~~~~~~

Patients in state of shock

Things began for the Apple guru not that badly: Jobs' cancer was discovered more or less accidentally, but still in its early stages. As the CEO of Apple was being examined because of kidney stones, medical staff found indicators of a neuroendocrine tumor. Their good news: "This is one of those slow-growing pancreatic cancers that can actually be cured." Jobs nevertheless decided against surgery and chemo. Instead, he tried to treat the disease with diet, turned to spiritual healers and tested macrobiotic approaches. Nine months later, the tumor had spread considerably. "How could such a clever man then be merely so stupid", many journalists are now asking.

But the refusal of truth didn't end there: For months, the Apple-Star stated in several interviews that he had been healed – and gave other patients apparent hope. The people believed it – wanted to believe it, until Jobs' condition was no longer able to go by unnoticed. A charismatic marketing star on the one hand, unable to speak publicly about his illness on the other: such was the conclusion of the press. Then there was no turning back: A liver transplant – necessary due to numerous metastases – was considered the last chance. Steve Jobs stood at the top of the waiting list at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, such was the extent of his disease. In the medium term his surgeons were successful, yet he died on 5 October 2011.

The soul suffers, and the therapy suffers alongside in sympathy

Steve Jobs story, in general terms, is not an unusual one: after cancer diagnoses have been given, medical staff report existentiality-based fears – patients lose the ground under their feet, feel fear, helplessness, despair and rage. Others in turn suppress acknowledgement of their illness completely. The doctors have surely been wrong, data samples or data were switched: common lies pulled out as self-defending cover. And some flee into the hands of supposed healers with promises of alternative therapy. The social environment also often reacts completely wrongly: "Self-blame" is the dominant tone of terse declarations about patients with lung cancer ("That comes from smoking too much") or liver cancer ("Should've drunk less"). Those affected benefit precious little from this, they sink ever further into a black hole.
Dipl.-Chem. Michael van den Heuvel
Medical Journalist

~~~~~~~~~

Point being: If Steve Jobs had taken the course of conventional Western medicine straight away, he would, for better or worse, still be alive today. And most probably cured, most likely very healthy.

~~~~~~~~~

Rich or poor, under stress we are vulnerable to quackery. Be on your guard, for the clouds of ignorance and, worse, denial are gathering.

Be skeptical.

~~~~~~~~~

Or cook meth.

E@L

Not My Idea

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:53:00 +0000

Lays and gennermen, preeeeesenting... Charlotte... Rampling!!

In the nudie. (Someone drop a hat?)

In Melancholia, a dreadful, dreadful fillum.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

She has that expression down pat, as you'd expect after all these years practising it.

E@L

The Numbers Game

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:18:00 +0000

Wow! How bored (i.e. looking for way to avoid doing what he should be doing) is E@L! While cutting and pasting the pictures for the antecedent blog post, E@L noticed that with the new format of the behind-the-scenes pages of Blogger, you can list all your posts and it gives a view count for each of them! Kewl... E@L looks and ... Sad...

Aiyah, so few. Some posts have, like, 0 hits. Not even E@L read those ones.

Fuck, E@L hopes the three people reading his blog are getting royally entertained, because no-one else could be fucked with this circus... All his efforts are for you. #bows#

708 posts. 709 now. Since Oct 2008, that's about 19 posts a month. Average number of words... No lets not get into that futile and depressing stat. According to Sitemeter, about 40 hits per day over the last year. That's about what Izzy used to get per minute. Well, I guess I haven't been blogging about my sex life recently. In fact, not about anything at all... Not sure why not. Just can't muster up energy, free time, wakefulness, sobriety...

But hey, mr brightside! - 30 of those 709 posts have had 100 or more views, woo-hoo! (Over three years, remember.)

Here are the numbers. You can chase these links to see what people other than yourselves have been wrongly directed to by Google and Yahoo. You can get the gist of what visitors are reading, skimming, hunting for pictures in, getting shocked and scared when they realize that this wasn't what they wanted to find at all, no, not at all...

~~~~~~~~~~

856
527
516
492
433
387
342
318
308
307
305
255
254
248
237
235
215
179
177
176
174
173
162
138
129
124
121
117
107
101

~~~~~~~

Note the completely statistically irrelevant clustering effect at 308, 307 & 305 and then again 179, 177, 176, 174 & 173. The universe is random and randomness creates clusters. If the universe were regular, it wouldn't be random, would it? As James Stephens said in The Crock Of Gold, "It has lumps in it."

One can only assume that the surprise number one hit ("Water Sign") is due to a bunch of lunatic New-Agers looking to match an Aries with a Capricorn or something... As expected Bruce figures highly at number two, while Andrew McGregor Marshall's story of his Reuters fiasco is number three, perhaps because it is linked-to on a Wikipedia page. I like that number four is "Shrine", in which I tried to follow as meticulously as I could a woman placing your typical Buddhist offerings on a weathered, lichen-covered stone shrine next to where I was lounging by the pool in Ubud, Bali. A better writer would have taken either 15 pages to do this, or 15 words.

E@L

Anal Retentively arranged Things (AR'T)

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:30:00 +0000

~~~~~~~~

The fact that I got these on email means they must be doing the rounds.

E@L

Warning To Us All

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 07:58:00 +0000

E@L can stop writing now. The Bludger tells it all.

It's probably best to start from here to get the background briefing or you could jump to his most recent trip - the one he regaled us with at lunch last week-end... There are few more posts to come.

The Bludger blogs of his trips to Vietnam in search of romance. He is most emphatically NOT a sex-tourist, you are thinking of E@L there, but just someone who met someone he liked and who seemed to like him and not surprisingly he wanted to follow up on that.

Here we have a beautiful country, fascinating culture, great food, welcoming people. What could possibly go wrong? Ah, that's right, she's just a poor girl from a poor family...

~~~~~~~

It's almost like The Bludger has been reading all the Expat misadventure books ever written (and E@L's blog) concerning the depths and dangers one's erect penis can drag one to in Asia, and then decided to follow the DON'T part of their advice, rather than the DO.

He's a good friend of E@L from the Sydney days, and he does not make things up. In this case he wouldn't have needed to.

~~~~~~~

E@L knows of several couples, friends of his, European and Asian, who have been in long and mutually loving relationships. He knows of dozens more who haven't, but hey.

E@L

Champagne pop, BBQ sizzle

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 14:55:00 +0000

My best Texan buddy, Mercermachine and his lovely friend Bell tied the knot today! Woohoo! Low-key ceremony at East coast Parkway, yours truly honoured to be one of the witnesses.

Please go over and wish them the best...

~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~

E@L

p.s. and please buy, read and enjoy his excellent stories. He needs that $0.99 to pay for the honeymoon! Oh, and tell a million of your closest friends to do likewise because he wants to have that honeymoon in the Bahamas over a period of a year or two.

Don't Wake Me If I'm Busy!

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:04:00 +0000

E@L came out with this one just before lunch today. Even the boss thought it was funny.

E@L

Andre

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:57:00 +0000

The butter. It was superb: unsalted, unpasteurized, from contented cows basking in the sun and grazing on organic grass just south of Alsace (in France, you ignorant cochons!), and it was hand-churned. IKYN. E@L doesn't know which he was more impressed by, the butter itself or the twenty(ish) minutes of description that came with it - but you had to ask about it to get Stepan (we have his card), our Czech waiter, to start spouting forth. And he was thrilled to exposit; he'd been keeping this knowledge in his head and not sharing it until someone like E@L was inquisitive enough to ask.

Why/who would you ask about the butter? Someone like E@L? That would be no-one.

Because Andre is not the type of guy who would merely toss some freshly shaved truffle into a pan of warming (organic, etc...) butter and pour them both over some perfectly al dente spaghetti. No no no, he is the guy who would seep the butter in said shaved Tasmanian - off season in Europe - truffles for two weeks prior pouring that warmed, aromatic butter over the hot pasta. Then he'd come out himself and shave more truffle on top.

Butter. Lots of people, not just Andre, are genuinely pernickety about their emulsified triglycerides. In E@L's cholesterol-rich days of his head-strong youth, his family always used Western Star butter; giant impersonal machinery-churned from the giant machinery-sucked teats of grumpy, kick-you-if-they-could cows, huddled in the chilly breezes, grazing on the organic (50% cow shit) grass in the environs of Colac and the Western District of Victoria. E@L's flatmate eats New Zealand butter - he is an escapee from the East Isles of Australia. Some people like Danish butter, there's a lot of it in the supermarket.

Butter. Important.

The bread rolls were nice too. E@L won't start.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stepan, by the way, used to work with Gordon fucking Ramsay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Andre Chiang, Taiwanese, married to a stunning Singaporean(?) lady who officiated on our seat placements, is obviously food-obsessed to a degree well beyond sanity. His molecular-food (as opposed to atomic-food? elementary-particle food?) restaurant is in the Hotel Majestic, in fucked-if-the-taxidriver-can-find-it Bukit Pasoh (ah, pronounced PAY-so, not PAR-so), near to Maxwell Rd, Duxton Hill, that area...

He offered a ten-course degustation dinner last night for Amex card-holders who needed to max out their cards on the one evening.

Yes, dinner cost the equivalent of Greece's national debt and it was allegedly wine matched to various drops from a French vineyard that best remain nameless. (E@L has the marketing manager's card. He is called Stephane, no wonder E@L was confused). The buzz word here is biodynamic (antonym: biostatic?). Only a short time in oak, none of this micro-oxygenation bullsheeeet. Just the grape, the terroir and the wine-maker. Baumé? Why the fuck? We have winemakers with tongues, palates, with noses. Get them to blow them clear, thinks E@L.

Three different types of shiraz. One was called a Syrah, one a Hermitage and the last one an 'Ermitage thank you very much, and this last one decanted. Stephane informed us that to decant the other wines would make them - purses lips, raises eyebrows, rolls hand over hand, shrugs - change too quickly (into a more potent poison one assumes). A little bit of oenological engineering might have helped these ones, they were nice, they were OK, but... The viognier (that'd be white wine) was a more interesting drop, but the 100% Grenache could have done with some shiraz and mondeuse. Sweet red at the end, Hungarian style. Tattinger champagne at the start, that was nice. Somelier Ken-san was, E@L thinks, a tad stingy, but luckily, as we are all quite aware of having had some drink by the end, so he was a wise uncle to us unruly kids. Kids who had paid a shitload of money to get drunk...

Not a completely bad set of wines, but was there any one that stood out as stunning, exceptional, memorable? No way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As is to be expected in the El Bulli, chemically-inspired restaurants, things were never quite as they seem: what looked like ice-cream was once tomato, the crisp-breads were previously mushroom, that clear gel was once a strawberry or two... That thing poking out what seems to be earth is a carrot-shaped carved fish, wrapped in its skin and quickly fried (E@L thinks) - it was called deconstructed fish and chips. That earthy stuff the fish and the "chips" were sitting in was made of garlic and grated chocolate - OMG, E@L could eat that all night. Already forgotten a lot of the other stuff, oh, yeah, is that popcorn asks E@L - Yes! was the surprised answer, good guess seeing as how you are not wearing your glasses, sir - vanilla mousse and coarsely chopped popcorn. But the truffle spaghetti was E@L's highlight. (btw, what is an octaphilosophy? - check the website.)

Small servings of course: like bikinis, the less material, the more they charge. The steak, about the size of a meat chunk you might get in a Four-And-Twenty pie, was paired to the decanted 'Ermitage. E@L didn't mention it last night, but Andre did managed to squeeze a small chewy bit of gristle into his thumbnail of meat. The fourteen grains of mustard were exquisitely placed however, IKYN. Meh. The single flat spot of the food menu was the unfortunate piece of gristle - E@L was expecting butter-soft wagyu meat, but, OK, move on...

Coffee or tea? Latte for E@L. Black sambucca, no only Pastis, ok, all around. Green tea and a hot chocolate, please, say the others. Hot chocolate? (What the hell is E@L doing with these people? Just accept what's on the menu, FGS.)

Hot chocolate? Stepan hesitated for a second. But when the cogs linked in, he smiled, sweet boy that he is. We shall find some hot chocolate for you sir, he says, certain that this can done. Somebody downstairs (Andre was chatting with Stephane and his guests on their table) grated some of that chocolate used in the earth mixture (not with the garlic hopefully), melted it in warming milk and brought it up in a wonky-shaped cup. You gotta try this guys, says our mate Wally. Bruce and E@L ordered our own wonky cups. Good move. It was sublime. We were, naturally enough, the last to leave.

Change the highlight - not the truffle spaghetti, it was the ex-tempore hot chocolate!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Would E@L go back? Not for a quick, greasy brunch as a Saturday morning hangover cure ($180 for lunch), but for a special occasion, sure. Really, really special.

Bruce had been on the verge of ringing in to ask if he might bring a bottle of his own plonk in (it was a )Relic), but E@L talked him out of making such a fool of himself. Now he wishes he had let Bruce bring it.

He didn't see a wine menu (obviously, this was a pairing) but E@L would be interested to see if anything better, biodynamic or not, was on offer.

Brilliantly interesting food; Andre is a complete wizard and it is not without good reason that this place always rates in the top restaurants in Asia. There is no Michelin ratings in Singapore (Miele Guide -#4 in Asia), but if there was...

Last night, sadly, Stephane's wines let it down - they were just too... pedestrian? Boring? What a pity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight E@L might whip up some vegemite on toast with a poached egg on top and crack a bottle of Hill of Grace.

Quickly becoming a foodie/wino, what?

E@L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had some of the fancy dishes photographed here, but certainly not all as Andre cooks/deconstructs whatever he fancies each time.

No Sleep Till CPAP

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:55:00 +0000

I dreamt that I went to bed earlier than I did. Then I woke and it was earlier than I wanted it to be.

E@L

New Economy, New Wealth

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:38:00 +0000

No idea if I agree or not with the politics and economics displayed here, but it's a fucking slick presentation.

Copy of New Economy, New Wealth on Prezi

E@L

Laos Trip - And Cambodia or Not?

noreply@blogger.com (expat@large) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:59:00 +0000

Early next year The Croatia Backpacking Team (TCBT) (+1) are planning on a reunion tour of Cambodia and Laos. Izzy and The Tall Man will be crashing at E@LGHQ over New Years Eve.

I am concerned about the timing of this however, as it means I will be out town for close to 6 weeks, from the week before Xmas in Australia (at home with the FLOs), OK, NYE in Singapore (yawn), then there is the Indochine trip, and finally I am booked (and paid up) for a ski trip to Sapporo over Chinese New Year.

Yes, I hear you crying for me. Life's a bitch for Expats.

In order not to upset the people who pay me so outrageously, I have been thinking that I really should be available at least sometime in that period, so I was pushing lips close together, scrunching up my shoulders and 99% decided to be somewhere near the office in the first week of the year. This means that I would be forced (by my own decision) to skip the Cambodia section of the tour and only meet up with the TCBT in Luang Prabang in southern Laos on the 10th. Have never been to Laos, so...

Part of my reasoning for not being too concerned about missing Angkor Wat, etc... is that I had a holiday in Cambodia 11 years ago. We (my friend Homey and I) had a mildly happy pizza, stayed at the Sharaton[sic] hotel and I paid way to much for a worker in the AEI from the 'Disco Club' in the basement (immensely gross and amusing story about this), and we had a great time overall. Got a $5 shopping bag of dope, looked for AK-47s in the market but didn't see any, were stunned into silence by the horror, the horror of the Tuol Sleng museum.

At Siem Reap we were hijacked from the airport by a taxi-driver called No-one (his parents were killed in the Killing Fields, no reason to dispute this, and he was never named), and I say hijacked as I saw, as we drove away, three other cardboard greeting signs with my name on them. This was back in 2000, just as the new tourist hotels were under construction. We did the usual circuit of temples with No-name as a guide, stared the Bayon faces, stood next to the wall swallowing roots of the giant figs. In those days elephants were walking across the bricks of certain temples, you had to clamber up muddy slopes and grasp at exposed tree roots to get up to the Wat across the way from Angkor, the road across the river was only partly restored and Angeline Jolie hadn't yet raced through the non-existent water-market on a jet-ski (or whatever)...

But I'm having second thoughts about my conscientious inclinations, my loyal employee guilts. This is because I have been re-reading the notes from a friend of mine who did an extensive trip into Cambodia and Vietnam in August. Due to work commitments (new product cross-training, couldn't avoid it!) I missed his 50th birthday party in Sihanoukville. He had a great time, met his current girlfriend in Vietnam, and did some fascinating travel writing - he loves his food in case you don't notice - and this has whet my appetite for repeating the trip to Cambodia after all. (As has looking back at the astoundingly poor quality of my old photos - nts: bring the good camera this time!) And then there's something about the prospect of 50c beers and $1 massages...

So, sigh, thinking seriously of dropping the idea of the lone week at work after all and taking the entire month off for a trip with my dearly beloved TCBT.

E@L