Big Trouble in Little China

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Originally uploaded by DrBenway.

I’m so unprepared to go to China next week I’ve started having bad dreams about it – vague maelstroms of foreboding with me standing in the middle of Beijing, wondering why I didn’t bother to learn ANY Chinese before I came over. Also wondering why playing World of Warcraft seemed like a preferable idea to doing any planning over the weekend. The main fear involves not actually being allowed into the country – a very real fear after leaving my visa application to the last minute. This wasn’t entirely my fault. The Australian Government travel site has a dead link to the Chinese Embassy site which always crashed my com, but leaving it until two weeks before sending off your passport for a trip is pretty bloody stupid. I’m at work on a public holiday which on a public holiday is about as exciting as laundry. I have a nice nicotine withdrawal thing going on though which is keeping me nice and edgy. I have the last of about 12 reviews I’ve done for the Adelaide Fringe Festival on tonight. I never though I’d get sick of free live theatre and comedy, but I’m pushing it – not being able to choose what I see probably plays into this.

Today I actually set myself up with a hostel in Beijing for the first night and cracked the seal on my Lonely Planet Guide. One read of a potential itinerary and my nerves have pretty much settled down. I figure I’ll do what I did in Vietnam – find a group of friendly travellers and slipstream them while popping off for lone side trips to increase the fear occasionally, then sliding back into the slipstream. Three hours of work to go…12 minutes of work to do…

Not your average Sunday night

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Originally uploaded by DrBenway.

It's always been a mystery to me as to why old people, who are inherently unstable, always get up just as a bus begins to decelerate, thereby throwing them wildly off balance and into extreme hip damage territory, while everyone who still retains their bone strength are happy to sit until the bus actually stops, before bothering to get up. Are they worried about missing the stop? And what's with that Sudanese guy on my bus who wears the suit with the football boots, but looks otherwise normal?

Last night a friend and I went for a wander up what once was First Creek in Adelaide. It has been covered over almost all the way to the foothills and for most of the way it's possible to walk upright through the drainage tunnels where there is some great graffiti art, and some pretty large cockroaches. More details later.

Not your average thursday night...

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Originally uploaded by DrBenway.

Climbing around building sites is exhilirating. It's like skydiving on the cheap, but with a slow steady rush. This one overlooks Adelaide - it's an old hotel which myself and a friend climbed to the top of. The lift engine room was particularly cool, but for some reason we failed to photograph the really interesting stuff there. Somebody was too busy trying to climb out of the window. Walking through the abandoned ballrooms and function areas, watching the cars whizz by oblivious a few stories below gave an interesting feeling of disconnection. Oh, and according to the graffiti in one of the rooms, Dave takes it in the arse. Not your average Thursday night.

Ennui...

Things have been weird since I’ve been back from Vietnam. Not bad exactly, just odd. I haven’t been shopping in more than three months. I’m not quite sure what I’ve been eating at home. The washing machine has broken down and not been fixed and somehow I’ve made it through the last two months in a relatively presentable fashion. Things are fraying at the edges, yet the overall façade is bearing up.

Last week I fell off the handle bars of my friend’s bike at 3am, drunk, wearing a $700 suit and carrying a briefcase. A low rent Superman on the way home. It’s no longer a super suit however.

I’ve started breaking into building sites for kicks, alone. Climbing up into the waste at night. It’s a cheaper thirll than skydiving, but fuflifls the same thirst for danger. I’m waiting for a Gollum-like junky to burst from an emopty room and bleed me dry.

I chucked a sickie on the last work day of the year to go jet-skiing. The significance was lost on me at thee time. I just don’t care about work any more. But it hasn’t been replaced with something I do care for.

I think this year I’ll resolve, once again, to stop wasting so much time. It’s hard. Even to define what is waste.

An ode to bird flu...

Chicken Chicken
Made me sicken
Cu Cu Cu choo, I've got the bird flu.

Duck Duck
I'm out of luck
Cu Cu Cu Choo,
I've got the bird flu.

Yesterday was a pretty wild day. One of the benefits of being alone is that you end up in some pretty random situations. I wanted to go on a hike through Cuc Phoung National Park. Beacuse it was just me, my hotel convinced me to go on the back of a motorbike. That was wicked enough - 1.5 hours zooming thru small-town vietnam wondering how much it really would hurt to be hit in the knee by a truck coming the opposite way. A lot, I figured out. The area is populated with thse limestone peaks that thrust up amongst the rice paddies and are reflected in them. The effect was somehwat spoiled by the quarry where they were rapidly turning one of these to, of all thigs, gravel, but i don't think tourists were supposed to see that. On the way back, after the most boring hike in the history of my feet, I noticed my guide was looking around at the sides of the road. We stopped at some litle tea joint, one of those myriad shops at the side of the road - god forbid Vietnam gets supermarkets or half the economy will be fucked - and had some tea. As I picked a piece of scum from the side of my glass I reflected on the joys of eruptive intestinal tract disorders and acepte some more liquid poison. My guide, Mr Dung, told me his cousin, who he hadn't seen for 25 years, lived just around the corner, and could we go see him? So we followedthe tea shop dude's daughter around to this place, in the middle of nowhere, and happy reunion ensued. We sat in their one-room cement house - the other is under construction, and talked about old times, while I accepted still more tea, teaming with amoeba in my mind. Then I went for a walk - my vietnamese rural dialects being a built rusty these days. Grandma, who had two black teeth left and was about 5 feet tall, kept wittering on to me, saying either "Check out our cassavas, they'rë the bomb" or "We like so wiped you guys in the war dude". I wnt for a walk one way dowmn the street - Saw a pretty girl making clothes in her window on an ancient singer sewing machine. Cute. And lots of cattle. Less cute. A few locals took the opportunity to bamboozle me wiht rapid fire Vietnamese delivered with a smile, before I turned back the other way. I passed the house again, and though I could hear a school. Sure I enough, I wandered past the school where the cute little tots, all with red neck scarves on, god bless their little commie hearts seemed to be enjoyiong afternoon recess. A couple of boys playing outside the gates raced up and had a mild freak out when I tooktheir photo and showed it to them on the LCD on the back of the camera. Then they screamed out something like "One of those dudes our dads used to humiliate guerilla-warfare-style is here in all his pink skinned blue eyed glory!" Cue about 100 tiny little dudes and dudettes screaming out of the school and just star howling with delight. I had to stop taking photos because they would all demand to see the camera and I was woried I'd just disappear into the mas. And once they'd calmed down if I pointed it at them they'd fire up again and start chasing me. Then purple haze started playing and I was giving out sweets from the top of my tank - no, that was Good Morning Vietnam. Anyway I was also a bit worried by this stage. Most teachers don't take kindly to that sort of chaos outside their school, and we seemed to be next to the local communist party headquarters. They would like me less than the children, was my guess. I wandered back to the Dung household, told grandma I had a phd in tomfoolery and was hoping to be a UN ambassador for happiness while she mocked our military might - it was a good two way thing we had going, then we went home and I wrote a much better version of this story while drinking beer. You guys get the ï'm waiting for my room in Hue to be cleaned"version.

Our bus broke down on the way here last night. An english-speaking vietnamese told us a story of the time his minsk bike ran out of gas and he had to sleep on the side of the road. No great feat considering the temperate climate. The israeli guy Phil had a much better story. About his tank driver running out of gas after taking a wrong turn in Jenin, and them waiting for three hours until 6am when people woke up and started pelting them with rocks, then bullets, then finally light artillery. Those crazy israelis - hey, that's a good name for a sitcom. Check out some pics on my flickr site...

The Genesis of Our Pain

An Autumn wedding. What a wonderful thought. Perhaps a bite to eat before we go? But Babcock thought she’d just feed the cat before we went to meet Brown, her spouse to be."Hey PB, did you just…?"Yes I did just lock the door behind us.And Brown’s mobile phone was out of batteries. He had been to ninjutsu, and was likely to be having lunch at the Oxford. Luckily I had my phone."Hi, this is the Oxford.""Hi, I’m looking for a friend, he’s probably dressed all in black, and is with a bunch of other guys all in black. They’ve just come from training."Hmm, sorry, I can’t see anyone like that."How about a guy with a beard" Everyone knows only paedophiles and chinless freaks have beards these days. And Brown."Actually there’s a guy with a beard right in front of me buying a beer with a beard."Could you ask him if his name’s Ben?>"En?""Ben.""En?’"Ben.Muffled. "Hey is your name En?…"Ben"."Was it Ben or En"What the fuck do you think?"That’s him."Brown had just ordered a beer, so Babcock and I did Hug the Tree until he swung back on his motorbike with the keys. We all went back to the Oxford, on O’Connell street, where I bought "En" a beer for racing to our rescue.We ordered food, and beer. She forgot to charge us for the beer. We insisted. And noticed that despite having a touch-screen point of sale system, our dishevelled bar girl was more interested in discussing shift swaps with someone named after a flower than dragging a digit over the screen.The Oxford prides itself on its burger. Apparently this day it was priding itself on managing to serve five to our table before the two serves of calamari, estimated cooking time – 3 minutes.I wandered inside, noting the chef reclining with a winsome gaze against his grill."Excuse me, we’ve been waiting for awhile outside, I was just wondering when our calamari might come out?’’ I asked."It’s coming mate." Mate?"It’s just that we’ve been waiting a while and we have a wedding to go to.""Look dude, I’ve been busy."Don’t call me dude. B. Waitresses do not cook, and by the way, 12 customers on a lazy Saturday arvo is not busy. C. You fucked up, don’t give me grief about it.Seething with incredulity I seated myself back outside, hearing the welcome splash of Calamari in hot oil minutes later."Babcock, she called me dude.""Dude? DUDE?"It was now 2.40 pm. We had been waiting about an hour. I was now a dude, and we would have to force down our food in record time, race home and change, then race to the wedding. We were going to be late. I despise being late."Babcock?""Yes PB?""Shitlisted.""Okay baby, shitlisted."And so that afternoon, word did spread far and wide through the wedding guests, that the heretofore respectable Oxford Hotel had been shitlisted by the whymyfoodbad posse. The power of the disgruntled customer displayed in all its viral glory.The Oxford’s only hope. Redemption. Coming soon…

ENGRISH

Recently I shelled out a generous portion of my hard-earned on a shiny silver music-making gadget so miniaturised as to make a bee's generative organs seem large by comparison.Since I am afflicted with an inability to take direction, and a staunch belief that such devices should be designed for intuitive use, I mangled the controls on my new toy for a good hour before admitting defeat and turning to the manual.``Before the MP3 explorer don't operate , connect the Data In/Data Out cable to MP3 player and PC.'' Hmmm, so that's what I was doing wrong.``Before downing files to your MP3 player and connect the MP3 player to PC using the Data In/Out cable.''I threw the manual against the wall and pondered the whether calling the helpline would result in a similar fate for the telephone.It seems rather odd that a company which presumably employs hundreds of able technicians to produce these devices, assembles them in high-tech, dust-free environments, ships them to Australia and successfully markets them to yours truly can't put a simple sentence together.Surely it can't be a service provided simply for the amusement of the English speaking world, or perhaps a subtle revenge for Titanic and The Crocodile Hunter.If putting a manual together is such a challenge, should I have similar doubts about the company's proficiency in other areas? If so, at least the device is not mains-powered.The woeful errors which abound in technical writing assure me there is no editing process whatsoever.The average eight year old, nay, a below average eight year old, would be able to tell me that ``Before the MP3 explorer don't operate'' is a bit suspect.But despair not, I have a plan. I offer the services of our year seven primary school students.Every Friday, as an after-lunch wind-down, they can sub-edit manuals for technology companies, thereby earning valuable income for the State school system, improving their grammar, and giving me some hope that my mother will someday learn to program the VCR.I have a sneaking suspicion the particular manual which ushered me more swiftly down the road to stress-related breakdown had its origin in probably the greatest bastion of battered English in the world, Japan.In a previous incarnation I was an English teacher in the Land of the Rising Sun.There I witnessed the wholesale massacre of our fine language, via a variety of ill-advised t-shirt slogans and advertising campaigns, with unfailingly hilarious results.A favourite was a student's jacket emblazoned with the declaration, ``I have the dream of both hands fullness''.I wholeheartedly concur young man. Full of what is the question, presumably.I assume the Japanese are similarly amused by the plethora of young Australians tattooed with Chinese characters, which as far as they and the bikie who penned them know, could mean ``I am a happy fish''.In order to further the cause of international goodwill and understanding, I offer my plan to the technology sectors of the north-east Asian region and, for a small fee, will oversee it.One has to do something to help out. For as my favourite Japanese t-shirt says, ``It is tired only to watch it''.