Mamma bear and Aunty bears in Thailand - Lessons Learnt

Having your family visit is never easy. Having your family visit you in a crazy non-English speaking Asian country for two weeks is even neverer easy than that, but whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, na.

Lesson 1. There will be tears.

Whether they're coming from your completely overwhelmed and homesick aunty after nearly overdosing on your OTC generic brand stilnox or simultaneously with hysterical laughter from your hormonally unbalance mother as she sits on your makeshift couch bed after an exhausting day at Ayuttaya during which you left your brand-new seven-hundred dollar Nikon D40 on the tour bus, there will be the shedding of tears and possibly the renting of clothes and gnashing of teeth. Ready yourself.

Lesson 2. Everyone will get sick.

Sometimes from the airconditioning on the plane, sometimes from a strain of Aussie 'flu one of our relatives brought over with them, sometimes from that wedge of pineapple we're sure was soaking in dirty tap water for a month before being put in our mocktail, sometimes from the KFC we ate because we were sure the street food was going to give us the runs, sometimes from the one-hour of sitting in the tray of a tabletop ute 'taxi' after a night on local Thai turps (during which, incidentally, our older cousin was supposed to be monitoring our alcohol intake), but always, always at a different time to the others in the group, who will without exception believe their illness to have been far worse than ours and will accordingly show us no compassion whatsoever.

Lesson 3: Your cat will be more popular than you.

As per usual.

Lesson 4: It's hotter than you think.

Yes, it's winter here, it's only 25 at night and low thirties during the day but middle-aged European ladies have natural barometers built into them that compel them to comment every few seconds on the humidity and how it's a different kind of heat to their hometown, which at the time was experiencing temperatures in the FORTIES due to half of NSW spontaneously combusting.

Lesson 5: You will field at least infinity divided by zero questions. Many of them unanswerable by a mortal being.

Like:
- Will we be able to bring this (wooden elephant/paper photo album/tiny Buddha/fake Gucci bag/illegally copied DVD) home through customs?
- How much will the cab from ___ to ___ cost?
- Do I have to fill up the washing machine with the hose? (No) Then why is there a hose near it?
- Is there going to be a western toilet there?
- Are we still in Bangkok? (during a two-minute cab ride)
- Can you understand that thing they said really quickly in Thai?
- Why are there so many cars?
- What is the crime rate in Bangkok?
- Do I have to leave a tip?
- Will they sell shoes?
Etc.

Lesson 6: They will consider you to be the greatest Thai linguist of all time because you know how to say hello.

This is a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because even if the pinnacle of your Thai language skills is knowing how to say mai kao jai ('I don't understand'), they will regard you with awe for your superhuman brain. Bad, because for the whole trip you'll be expected to translate entire news reports, read Thai menus, understand what the Thai massage girls are giggling about behind your backs, ask for the paisley pashmina with the light pink fringed border but the one in a long rectangle shape, not the short rectangle shaped one and so on.

Lesson 7: You will miss them when they go.

No matter how intrusive, how frustrating, how toilet- and heat-obsessed, how just generally parental things get, the night you walk in from your first drinking binge after they leave and there's no mamma bear sitting on your pillow in her nightie doing a crossword, and no aunty bears ordering penang curry for every meal or repeatedly calling Thailand 'Taiwan' and asking you what today's exchange rate is, you'll be sad.

b.

they were the best of times, they were the worst of times

Happy 2007!

At this point one feels compelled to wrap up 2006 in a fully adequite (thanks Lindsay) fashion, so, two weeks nearly after the passing of last year, here's a wrap up of December - some good, some bad, none of them even remotely Dickensian.

Draino

Biddy and I saved a kitten from a drain but it died. Her rescue was miraculous - I lowered a torn-up curtain down the pipe she fell into (how do you fall into a pipe?) and she clung to it with her little front paws until I pulled her out. It was 5am and I was drunk, so I thought it best to take her to the vet the next day, which I did. However, the day after that visit (and a clean bill of health) she looked even worse so I took her back for a second opinion. Needless to say, she never came home, passing through the great drainpipe in the sky to a place where all rain water drainage hardwares are covered by grates and people respond to your constant pleas for help immediately, not after two days of waiting for you to shut up and die.

The vet had her cremated at the temple (which is much better than being buried in a shoebox) and asked me to come and get my deposit back. I cried for a week and now I feed her mum, who lives out the back with the two kittens she managed to not to kill through neglect.


the still alive ones with inattentive mum and similar blue drain in b/g

Bombs

Some bombs went off and killed some people on NYE. Is it ex-PM Thaksin's henchmen? Is it the southern Muslim separatists? Is it a faction of the Junta, either to consolidate their power or a shake up the opposing military group/s? Don't expect an answer any time soon.


Udon at Narita airport

Beckie was here

I'm sure this happened in November, but it's close enough. Beckie Mitchell of B2 fame came and crashed on my couch for two nights. We went to JJ markets, hit the late night pool hall scene, went swimming, tried to put little hats on the cat and suffered heat exhaustion almost constantly. It was fun. I tried to make her go to Laos but she didn't have enough time.

Tokyo

Rog and I went to Tokyo again. It was cold - thought maybe minus 50 or 100 but the meteorologists all said about plus 10 degrees Celcius. They weren't the ones out in Hachiko Square at 1am with only one glove on because they left the other one at home because they drank too many beers while packing their bag. The main reason we went there was to pick up a small, expensive computer from Langdon's cousin Scott but I also bought a camera. So far most of the pictures I've taken have been of cats, but obviously the quality of these has reinterpreted the benchmark of contemporary photography and I will be invited to exhibit at the Tate Modern soon, no doubt.

Xmas and NYE

Spent both eating and drinking and talking. Ate turkey, drank cheap Moet, got Wii, watched DVDs, slept and basically did a tango with liver disease for the entire festive period. Was great. I did miss the family but the lack of family was offset by the not having to wake up at 6am, the not having to do the sit in a circle and open presents thing and the biggest plus: no trace of Ray Martin, the Myer Music Bowl or Rhonda Birchmore doing high-kicks to a jazz rendition of Little Drummer Boy.


Christmas table

UBC

I got cable TV. So now I have an endless stream of Animal Planet, Discovery, NatGeo and AXN at my fingertips, meaning I know everything there possibly is to know about anything. I can perform a tracheotomy on a lizard, remove a one-kilo tumour from a boy's face, scare away marauding African elephants and diagnose most infectious diseases. I've even watched the Dark Crystal and The Blob in the last week. Things are looking good for 2007.

Mum & co

To kick the new year off with a parental, and therefore possibly pantsless vibe, my mum and two aunties and cousin are arriving here next week for two weeks. My 20 year old cousin is actually staying here for a while. I was worried before, about letting my young male cousin loose in a city so obviously skewed towards the "interests" of his demographic/gender but I think I just have to relax. He'll be fine. Once he's got the first completely batshit insane Thai girlfriend out of the way he'll find his feet. If he still has them.

Yes, so the mum and the aunties will be here and I'm very excited. I've already fielded such questions as: "should I bring coat hangers?" "will there be washing powder there?" (no, we bang our clothes against rocks down by the river), so the coming fortnight is going to be more awesome and head-explodingly frustrating than I can fathom. I can't wait.

In conclusion, I will be most likely be staying in Bangkok for another year. I'll make it back for a visit at some point but until then, keep in touch ie. keep leaving me messages on myspace.

xx

one year in bangkok - a shoe theme

Hellor kaa,

Welcome back to my blog - eaten by the google machine, by the way - one year into my four-month stint in Bangkok. I could get all misty-eyed and sentimental but that would require some time and effort and I just breezed in to say I'm still alive, still have a job, still sustain emo-like cuts to hands and legs thanks to expensive rodent pet and I still pronounce the Thai word for 'bottle' like the Thai word for 'cunt'. Makes for interesting times at the bar.

To commemorate being here one year, Rozhay took me to the Banyan Tree for dinner, which was just super. The part I enjoyed the most (apart from the company, fountains of Dom P and tray after tray of fine meats and fishes) was that they had a no flip-flop policy and made all the flip-flop wearing patrons wear white grandpa slippers.

I also commemorated myself being here by buying these shoes:



Oh, yes I did.

Still love you long time...

Toey.

a new orifice

Note: above is not the new office, it's the cat lamp and the cat.

So weeeeee back in Bangkok. Lots of things happening here and from all reports, my cousin is still happily married six whole weeks after my mum wore NO UNDERPANTS AT ALL for the entire wedding ceremony and reception.

Our British Airways flight made it clear that British travel standards haven't changed much since the First Fleet. They charged us four hundred dollars excess baggage then flagged me as a terrorist because somehow I was checked in as having no luggage. Four hundred dollars' worth of no luggage - WHAT?? The flight left an hour late because of bad weather, the toilet floor was covered with urine and smelled like the boys' toilet at school and they served us scurvy-flavoured bread rolls. Good times.

On another note, Suvarnabhumi airport is my new favourite thing. Thai national workers there are reassuringly unaffected by any level of professionalism. To wit: immigration check-in chick reading real estate brochure while checking passport; baggage handler fast asleep on seats; utterly nonsensical management of cabs out the front etc etc. Still, it's good to be home.

As 'he' announced on his myspace page, Ninja contracted ringworm while he was away at band camp. He's fine now - the black, crusty patches are regrowing hair and he seems to have regained the will to live. I did learn to never EVER shampoo him again and if I do to never ever EVER trust a man to responsibly wield the bath hose. I did specifically request that the water pressure be kept low and the stream to point at the cat's head only - the temptation to aim the water at high speed at both me and the cat proved too much for the man in question and the situation wound up at its natural conclusion: man laughing manically; woman screaming hysterically; cat scrambling, mewling, scratching, panicking frantically. End of scene.


Ninja post-hose: dark mood

Obviously we have moved, after a series of covert weekend removals, to a new office. It's in an old crumbly townhouse Rog is renting on soi 23. It had previously been a hair salon and a cafe and had been vacant for awhile, so was not expensive. Had two floors painted despite various Thai work-ethic-related delays. They started out enthusiastic enough, but interest petered after a few nights and they just stopped showing up. One whole guy arrived on the last night but after scooting in and grabbing his guitar (how anyone paints without a guitar is what i want to know), he handed over the final bits of the job to two random motorcycle taxi dudes he enlisted from the street. Thais are insanely superstitious, so who the fuck knows.

Anyhoo, after bleaching the bottom bathroom and most of the new towels and cleansing the fridge of Golden Staph and feeling like I'd dipped my face and hands in lye, we have a shiny new fully equipped orifice. All up there are four floors, the top one even has a small outdoor terrace that no one is allowed on. There's also a critter getting about - see? Grubby paw prints free!



So that's it for now. More on stuff later.

the welcome wagon

Time marches on neverending…

…tiiiime keeps its own time. That was a track called “Finally” by Kings of Tomorrow feat. Julie McKnight featured on, amongst other things, Yoshiesque 2 double CD by Deep Dish, something or other mix, few years old now, still quite relevant however, being that classic tunes by nature endure well past the stage of superficial enjoyment and, if prolific enough, imprint themselves in a lasting fashion on one’s psyche, to be regurgitated unprovoked by the brain some years later, long past the point where any thought about said tune had been consciously entertained.

So! Here I am back in Sydney. I’m not back for good, just for a bit, performing web producer like functions from a small cold room containing worryingly little stimuli. Rog, Jon and I are all living and working together in Sydney until we fly back on October 20 (o blessed, blessed, sweet, blessed day) so we can collaborate more closely with our design team, Collider, and periodically fantasise about bludgeoning one another to death with whatever object will produce the most pain.

My job is now a bit of everything but mostly being the fall girl for whenever shit gets heavy. It’s a thankless task because shit getting heavy is basically the theme of Dallus, but I don’t do it for the thanks, I do it for the embarrassingly extravagant salary. It would be tasteless of me to disclose the full amount, but I can say that I buy at least one gourmet sandwich from the deli up the road per day. That’s crazy money, my friends. Don’t let it come between us.

Aside from not really having mountains of cash (I was being sarcastic in the previous paragraph) and getting my ass chaffed for things that have only recently come under my jurisdiction there are beacons of the ridiculous in this chilly, superficial town that force me to crack my jaded face in a half-smile.

My cousin’s wedding for instance. She’s only 23, Christian to the power of infinity, a gorgeous ingénue and definitely too young to get married, but the ceremony itself was lovely. Rog likened it, with respect and awe, to Kip and LaFawndah’s wedding, for the following reasons:

- the attendance of the bride’s prodigal father, my uncle by marriage, a pox on my family. He’s basically a life-long love felon (see what I did there?) and since walking out on his kin earlier this year, we mention him not. He’s more or less interchangeable with Satan – Robert de Niro Satan, not Liz Hurley Satan – all charming and lovely but 100% Prince of Darkness. Anyway, he insisted on being there and doing the Father of the Bride speech. Icing on the cake (or chocolate on the profiterole tower in this case) was this joke: “There are three rings a woman gets in her life: an engagement ring… a wedding ring…… and suffer-ring.” Cue his arch nemesis aka mum very nearly combusting with pure rage.

- Oma having a nerve attack. My grandma is the type of person who, when you sleep in, puts a mirror above your mouth to check that you’re still breathing. [FYI that’s the official way to check if someone’s dead or not. Put a mirror in front of their face. All that heartbeat/pulse shenanigans you see in the movies is just done for the sake of drama; you’ll find real doctors use mirrors to determine death.] Anyway, it goes without saying that this wedding – the first of her grandchildren’s – was a cause of much anxiety. Long story short, my grandma lost control of her bowels just before the bride walked out, had to be ‘contained’ by mum, aunty and uncle, all of whom spent the entire ceremony in the bathroom. The pinnacle of this was mum surrendering her undies so Oma could have a clean pair. The gravity of this underpants thing can’t be fully appreciated if you’ve never met my mum, since she’s like the opposite of Sharon Stone or anyone else you could ever imagine going sans pants. She asked us not to tell anyone, which is like asking Johnny Depp not to be hot, so naturally we told everyone at the wedding plus some people driving by in cars and now you even know and you weren’t even there. Stop imagining my mum with no pants on, pervert!

- the father of the groom being actually the campest man to ever live. He wore a puffy pirate shirt and skinny leg trousers, rocked a curly moustache, cried almost constantly and played a piece on the piano as a gift to his son. It was really quite touching.

- we had fake champagne for the toasts because it was a Christian wedding.

And that’s just a five-hour snapshot of things since I’ve been back. The rest of the time has included: acquisition of mounted kangaroo’s head; awaiting call from Ray Martin for next Obese Pets: Are We Loving them to Death? segment now that cat practically spherical in shape; imbibing many norce worns; consuming brazillion courses that comprise tasting menu at food wonderland, Rockpool; stealing some Jenolan Cave, despite tour guide’s claims doing so will make caves fall in on head; catching up with everyone (almost there!); spotting middle-aged Aussie celebs (Margaret Pomeranz, Terrence Stamp and as-yet unidentified matriarch); getting five-year licence with pic of self sporting Hitler-esque side part; and shivering 'cause it's fucking cold.


At the wedding: me and the scarlet woman. Guess who's not wearing any undiiiieeessss?

So that’s it in a nutshell. See you soon – if you don’t see me first, natch.

yours sincerely,

bek

deadline came & went

Not that anyone knows what I'm doing over here anyway, but FYI we've been busy beavers bustin our junk trying to get Dallus up and online by yesterday and guess what didn't happen... We've been working so hard, worked our little fingers to bloody stumps, but we're not there yet. It's been eight long months of Shakespearean drama gestating this thing and still it would not diiiiieeeeee. DIIIEEEEEEEE!! DIIIIEEEEE!!

As Andromeda is visible to the naked eye, so, too, is the end of phase one. Don't misunderstand me - I love Dallus, I think it'll be the duck's crotch but I'm at the stage - as we all are - where I need to fuck it off for a week or two. To misuse a popular Air Supply analogy, it's time I pulled this ship into the shore and threw away the oars. Threw them away into a wood chipper.

There's not really any other news. The cat is still insane. He's yet pre-ballectomy, so expect things to calm down when his nuts are in a jar - sometime over the next fortnight. He could not be any more hyper right now if he was made entirely of Mexican jumping beans. And Mexican attacking-your-face-while-you-sleep-then-running-away beans. There were times - like at 4am this morning - when I considered doing the unballing myself in the kitchen with the bread knife, just to drive the point home, but that would only bring on The Howling.

The Howling occurs when any of the following happens: plastic tie toy not immediately visible; hungry; no one throwing plastic tie toy; not allowed in fridge; someone in shower; everyone sleeping; plastic tie toy under the cupboard; important part of movie happening; can't fit head through the crack in the couch; no one paying attention to howling etc etc. So I don't need to add another reason to the list.

Approaching time off (from Aug 11th, thank you sweet jesus), and beginning to think about where to go. Favouring chi chi hideaway at Hua Hin for sun and se... cough swimming or a trip to Tokyo. I have to do a visa run by the end of the month anyway, and don't feel like another death trip to Cambodia, so I dunno. What do you think? Hong Kong? Bali? Beuller? I gotta get outta this place.

Another exciting plot twist to my life, if the dizzying maelstrom of craziness doesn't overcome you - my new camera shat itself and died. Took it back to the appropriately disinterested sales woman, who, after a series of complex tests (putting a new battery in it, turning it on and off, looking at it up close then from far away) agreed that it was broken. She wrapped it up and told me it would be 'back' in four weeks' time. At which point I launched myself over the counter, grabbed her by the collar, brought her face right up to mine and said through gritted Clint Eastwood teeth, "Actually you'll replace the cunting camera right now AND give me a hundred thousand baht voucher for the electronics department or the last thing that goes through your mind will be my fist of fury". She emitted a feeble, "certainly, miss", I threw her back into the glass display cabinet behind her, smashing it, and she went to fulfill my demands. Sounds incredible, I know, but it's true.

Soooo everyone's in Europe now. Jo and Sarah came and went like sweet, sweet summer dreams. As far as I know, during my last week of work before vacation everyone will be in Ibiza but I'm not bitter one bit, nope, not me. I'm glad they're all enjoying theyselves even though I'm not there, I'm sure they're thinking of me as they hedonise around their private villa and gurn rampantly to twelve-hour sets by Danny Tenaglia. As I will be totally missing their asses when I'm getting my daily herbal massage and receiving my bottles of champagne hand-delivered by my private butler at Hua Hin and sucking back Sex On The Beaches while perpertrating the illest tan in Thailand.

Anyway, Dallus calls. Gotta go.

meep meep

cat more popular than me

What you see here is my stupid-ass cat on the front page of myspace. 'How?', you ask. How, indeed. I like to blame Roger. That's actually just a blanket statement, but I thought it was as good a place to start as any, plus I can twist shit around to make it applicable anyway (see how I do this later). I can also blame Nina, even though she’s in London. And I can blame the - at last count - 55,775 people who clicked on the link to the video of my cat attacking plastic bags and chasing a sock.

Y'see Nina and I, we trade cat stories. We titter over the Bengal breed like two women possessed (assuming said possession pertains mostly to growing old alone with only a knee-deep menagerie of cats as company). A while back I made a little video on the ninj jumping around and I sent it to her. She liked it. She asked for another one. This is where Roger comes in.

I'm hanging around at work waiting ZAEONS of years for him to finish something so after doing as much work as mentally possible (wink) I cut together another ninja vid. I 'borrow' some of the Bang Gang Cum & Sweat podcast – probably illegally – and upload the result to his myspace page and abraca-fucking-dabra the next day the ninj has had more hits than I've had… hot teas. People are commenting and emo kids are messaging him and other dogs and cats and even rats are asking to add him as a friend. Hyay-zoos, it’s a crazy, crazy time we live in.

What really comes to the fore, however, is how awash with trolls the intarwebs are (prepositions at the end of sentences starting to hurt…argh). I know puberty's hard, but Jesus on a jetski, at least these whippersnappers have the net to hide behind. When I was adolescing we just had to insult complete strangers the old-fashioned way - by public slander, written insults on toilet walls or complete ostracisation from the social circle. Anyway, the 400 or whatever comments divide into three distinct groups:

1) "AWWWWWW he's sooooo cute, I <3 kitties!!"
2) "GAY!" and;
3) "Get a life."

‘Gay’ is so blah it doesn’t even blip on my radar, but ‘Get a life?’ Ahem. Seventeen-year-old virgins typing from their mum's basement telling me to get a life? Why, because they wasted 55 seconds of precious masturbatory time watching my cat chase a sock (which is, btw, their only prospective sexual partner for the forseeable future)? Oh, the ironing.

Anyway. That's ninj's 15 minutes of dubious fame, bottom line being that he amassed more friends in 24 hours than I’ve managed to in months – and I’m real!*

Other exciting things that have happened of late: Roget SHAVED OFF HIS BEARD!!!!! A bad-haircut-related incident, this was front page news a week ago, but some stubble has grown back now, so I’ve stopped making a big deal out of it. Oh no, I didn’t take it well at all, so let’s gloss over it and move right along to…

A quick round-up of events:

- the mustang got driven through a flash flood and now has a flooded engine (or a blown gasket or sand in its vagina or something) and a puncture in the back tyre.
- Australia’s crushing football defeat has resulted in the loss of several brazillion braincells via consolatory inebriants and late nights. So, so many late nights.
- we booked some talent to star in some of our Dallus vids and two turned out to be ladyboys. Something we only realised after all the Thai nationals in the office told us. No matter what you think, you just. Can’t. Tell.
- I went for a casting for Ponds China. Me? As a skin module for Ponds CHINA? Unless they’ve started a product line involving Spakfilla and someone else’s face I do not expect a callback.
- Dom came to BKK and visited me for four whole hours. I took him to buy his 100 or so valiums then he had to go [sad face]
- Aarron, JT and Ben Morris arrived. We watched some football but then they went off to Koh Pangnagnangn (sp? Anyone? Bueller?) but they’ll be back for more frivolity next week.

And so will I. Happy new financial year. I’ll be celebrating by staying in and filming [Mrs Slocombe voice] mah pussy slide aall over mah floor. Actually, I’ll be burning the candle, but you knew that already (hear that, you 17 year-old virgins! Candle burning! Premature death through heart disease and liver damage!! HAH!!)

* 99 per cent, anyway.

bx



((Forgot to ask wonderboy – what did you think of Poseidon?))