Have you ever tried to escape from an IKEA store? Say you’re in bedding when you suddenly get a call of nature. And I mean the bodily function type, not a desire to see a crimson sunset or a raging Alpine river. Well don’t do the obvious thing and follow the exit signs. In English exit means leave, depart, escape. In Swedish it clearly means something different. Like “follow me into a maze of intrigue and mystery, a parallel universe with no beginning and no end, a shifted paradigm of consciousness”. Or more likely it means “This way for the three hour tour of our shop and a smorgasbord of delight as we force you to walk past every piece of our shoddy Scandinavian produce while we bombard you with the hits of Boney M and Shalimar.”
For a store that prides itself on its shopping experience, it certainly knows how to piss off its customers. Why else would they erect store maps that happily state “You are here”, while pointing out that the exit is 10 feet away (if you could walk through walls) or two miles away if follow their yellow bricked road.
I would normally avoid places like IKEA like I would avoid the plague, but I was surfing on the exhilaration of having finally found a place to live. Rental apartments in Australia are unfurnished, a throwback I believe to the days of transportation when convicts were given a bare cell and told to make the best of it. My enthusiasm was short lived however, when I realized that I would have to spend the rest of the week doing something that I hate more than work. And that’s shop. Worst than that, I had to shop for furniture. Picking something from the shelf and walking to a counter is painful enough for me. But furniture shopping is on a whole new level of suffering.
To begin with you have to find an “outlet” which are generally found in soulless suburbs in the part of town normally frequented by hoody wearing teenagers and carpet showrooms. Once you get there (which is an epic in itself) you have to join the throngs of happy young couples eager to kit out their first homes and slimy middle aged landlords trying to find some plywood to fill the rat infested tenements they have just bought.
After 20 minutes of testing the springiness of mattresses and the curvature of sofa cushions, I lost the will to shop. After and hour I had lost the will to live. After two hours I lost the will for anybody else to live. Give me a high-powered rifle and I would have climbed upon one of their maple wooded king sized beds and take out as many of the bastards as possible before the flock mattress and eiderdown pillows gave way.
I eventually found the exit. It was cunningly hidden in the door section. Once free, I needed relaxation and luckily every shopping centre in Australia provides this. I’ve said before that Melbourne is the most Asian city I’ve been in (and that’s saying something considering I’ve been in lots of cities that are actually in Asia). Apart from the obvious benefits to the culinary industry that this brings, it also means that a Chinese massage shop can be found in every shrine to consumer capitalism.
I perused the menu on offer and plumped for the shoulder, neck and back option. It seemed the sensible choice until Jiang (the lucky assistant chosen to receive the pleasure of kneading my fatty bits) asked me to take off my trousers. The thought suddenly struck me that in Ireland we seek out qualified physios whenever we have a bad back. We usually do so on the recommendation of a doctor and wait two weeks for an appointment that falls at the most inconvenient point in the working week.
Whereas when we Paddies travel overseas, we are quite happy to drop our trousers behind a flimsy curtain in a suburban shopping centre while a Chinese bloke we’ve just met massages our buttocks. Trust is important at times like this and I can tell you its sorely tested when a masseur searches out the most delicate part of your body and then digs his finger, elbow or knee into your flesh until the pain resembles child-birth. And before the female readers of this blog protest I am inexperienced in this matter, can I point out that I went through it once and I am still haunted by the memory.
But in fairness to Jiang, he found the parts that other fingers have only dreamed of. So I left in a dizzy mood (which I believe has something to do with the release of toxins into the bloodstream) and at one with the world. Shopping seemed so insignificant at that point. So I went and watched some footy. Carlton almost won, which for them is a huge leap forward. It was that sort of day.
Monday 30 July 2007
Monday 23 July 2007
Sport and other random acts of cruelty
Paulo Snr, Paulo Jnr and little Maurizio are first, second and third generation Italian and Melbourne to the core. And I don’t mean the City, I mean the Footy team. This is a City obsessed with Australian rules football. A City that provides 10 of the 16 teams in the league and where everyone, from descendents of Captain Cook to fresh off the boat immigrants like me have to have a team.
But in this cockpit of obsession, only one team gets to call itself by the City name and that is Melbourne Football Club. They reckon it’s the oldest football club of any code in the world. Which makes you wonder whom they played in the early days if they were set up before everyone else. They play at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is a little 90,000 seater place in the heart of the City and they have a huge fan base that covers all demographics. The only problem is, they are shit. I don’t mean a little shit. I mean worse than my team (Carlton) and that takes some doing, 15th in a league table of 16 teams and would have been prime relegation fodder for the past few years if the AFL hadn’t realized that relegation was a threat to their megalomaniac franchise building.
But that didn’t stop the two Paulos and little Maurizio from heading to the Telstra Stadium last night to see their team take on the North Melbourne Kangaroos. North Melbourne are in much better shape at the moment, with serious aspirations for the overall title. But you could see in the stadium that they have no history like Melbourne. And little or no support. It was their home game, but the stadium was less than one third full, which was partly due to their poor support and the fact that even ‘new to the game’ people like me knew it was a forgone conclusion. But the three Italians behind me kept shouting till the end, their cries getting more bitter and fatalistic as foregone conclusion became a stark reality on the pitch. Paulo Snr lapsed back into the mother tongue when he was at his most emotional, which was pretty much every time a Melbourne player touched the ball. His invective was directed entirely at the players from the team he professed to support. If they weren’t playing like old women, they had facieses in the cranium area. One particular player in the Melbourne defense was privileged to receive Paulo’s special attention. As the teams trotted off in front of us, Paulo rose from his seat to shout, “Godfrey, you even run like a bloody woman”. The look on young Godfrey’s face was enough to tell me that no greater insult can be hurled at a Melbournian.
Paulo Jnr on the other hand had only positive things to say about the Melbourne players, even when they were patently awful. He saved his abuse for the umpires. Nothing could lesson his astonishment as time after time the umpires would punish his team for minor indiscretions like kneeing somebody in the head (he was going for the bloody ball!) or taking their head off with a right hook (he pulled his shirt first, he’s entitled to defend himself!). Paulo Jnr sunk deeper into a pit of paranoid despair as the game went on as the three Umpires (hence the conspiracy theory) exacted increasing levels of injustice upon him that would have rivaled the case of the Birmingham Six.
It was hard to judge who was crazier. Paulo Snr for hating everything about the team he loved, or Paulo Jnr who thought that his team’s performance was caused by the refereeing and not by the fact that his team are rubbish. Young Maurizio, as it happened, was the only one wearing club colours. Paulo Snr probably hates the strip and Paulo Jnr doesn’t want to give himself away too soon when he mugs the umpires after the game. Maurizio made the mistake of cheering one of the Kangaroo’s goals, much to the disgust of father and grandfather. Like me, Maurizio was only interested in seeing a good game, but like me with Dundalk, he’ll soon have his love of football poisoned by the bitter pill of fate. And if that doesn’t work, a good slapping from Paulo Jnr on the way home will do the trick.
I walked to the match last night, which is pretty much the done thing here. If you have an hour or two to kill on a Saturday or a Sunday you can stroll down to the MCG or to the Telstra Dome (at 53,000 capacity, the newer but poorer cousin to the MCG). Both have train lines and tram stops beside them and tickets cost about 10 euros and can be bought at the gate. The comparison with the GAA could not be starker. You don’t have to contact an obscure number in Portloaise to get a ticket, you don’t have to set off at day-break with 3 day rations to watch a match in Thurles. You don’t have to stand on a muddy bank and you can buy beer at all the matches. Croke Park is a fine stadium but there’s only 1 suchlike in Ireland. Australia seems to have two or three per City.
But there are comparisons to the GAA as well, and this blog seems more about proving that the world is just one big ugly village with a Qiki mart on the edge of town and Irish pub on every corner. Louth played Cork on Saturday night in Portlaoise. I staggered the streets of Melbourne in a drunken haze, trying to find a pub with Setanta Sports. I failed and sat forlornly on a City bench wondering how my beloved team were doing all those miles away. I pictured the scene and in the Portloaise crowd, I could see Paul Snr, Paul Jnr and little Martin. Three generations from Hackballscross and Louth and Proud to the core. Paul Snr would spend the entire game questioning the talent, parentage and mental well-being of the Louth players. Paul Jnr would attack the ref and slyly make plans for an ambush in the car park after the match and a place in the boot of his car for the errant referee. Young Martin would make the mistake of applauding a particularly well taken Cork point, before retreating under his red and white hat as his father and grand father glared. He will learn ultimately that Sport is a cruel mistress. But like all mistresses, we keep going back for more punishment. As Paulo Snr said at the end of Sunday’s match. “ I’ve never seen such a useless shower of idiots in my life. Will we get the same seats for next week?”
But in this cockpit of obsession, only one team gets to call itself by the City name and that is Melbourne Football Club. They reckon it’s the oldest football club of any code in the world. Which makes you wonder whom they played in the early days if they were set up before everyone else. They play at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is a little 90,000 seater place in the heart of the City and they have a huge fan base that covers all demographics. The only problem is, they are shit. I don’t mean a little shit. I mean worse than my team (Carlton) and that takes some doing, 15th in a league table of 16 teams and would have been prime relegation fodder for the past few years if the AFL hadn’t realized that relegation was a threat to their megalomaniac franchise building.
But that didn’t stop the two Paulos and little Maurizio from heading to the Telstra Stadium last night to see their team take on the North Melbourne Kangaroos. North Melbourne are in much better shape at the moment, with serious aspirations for the overall title. But you could see in the stadium that they have no history like Melbourne. And little or no support. It was their home game, but the stadium was less than one third full, which was partly due to their poor support and the fact that even ‘new to the game’ people like me knew it was a forgone conclusion. But the three Italians behind me kept shouting till the end, their cries getting more bitter and fatalistic as foregone conclusion became a stark reality on the pitch. Paulo Snr lapsed back into the mother tongue when he was at his most emotional, which was pretty much every time a Melbourne player touched the ball. His invective was directed entirely at the players from the team he professed to support. If they weren’t playing like old women, they had facieses in the cranium area. One particular player in the Melbourne defense was privileged to receive Paulo’s special attention. As the teams trotted off in front of us, Paulo rose from his seat to shout, “Godfrey, you even run like a bloody woman”. The look on young Godfrey’s face was enough to tell me that no greater insult can be hurled at a Melbournian.
Paulo Jnr on the other hand had only positive things to say about the Melbourne players, even when they were patently awful. He saved his abuse for the umpires. Nothing could lesson his astonishment as time after time the umpires would punish his team for minor indiscretions like kneeing somebody in the head (he was going for the bloody ball!) or taking their head off with a right hook (he pulled his shirt first, he’s entitled to defend himself!). Paulo Jnr sunk deeper into a pit of paranoid despair as the game went on as the three Umpires (hence the conspiracy theory) exacted increasing levels of injustice upon him that would have rivaled the case of the Birmingham Six.
It was hard to judge who was crazier. Paulo Snr for hating everything about the team he loved, or Paulo Jnr who thought that his team’s performance was caused by the refereeing and not by the fact that his team are rubbish. Young Maurizio, as it happened, was the only one wearing club colours. Paulo Snr probably hates the strip and Paulo Jnr doesn’t want to give himself away too soon when he mugs the umpires after the game. Maurizio made the mistake of cheering one of the Kangaroo’s goals, much to the disgust of father and grandfather. Like me, Maurizio was only interested in seeing a good game, but like me with Dundalk, he’ll soon have his love of football poisoned by the bitter pill of fate. And if that doesn’t work, a good slapping from Paulo Jnr on the way home will do the trick.
I walked to the match last night, which is pretty much the done thing here. If you have an hour or two to kill on a Saturday or a Sunday you can stroll down to the MCG or to the Telstra Dome (at 53,000 capacity, the newer but poorer cousin to the MCG). Both have train lines and tram stops beside them and tickets cost about 10 euros and can be bought at the gate. The comparison with the GAA could not be starker. You don’t have to contact an obscure number in Portloaise to get a ticket, you don’t have to set off at day-break with 3 day rations to watch a match in Thurles. You don’t have to stand on a muddy bank and you can buy beer at all the matches. Croke Park is a fine stadium but there’s only 1 suchlike in Ireland. Australia seems to have two or three per City.
But there are comparisons to the GAA as well, and this blog seems more about proving that the world is just one big ugly village with a Qiki mart on the edge of town and Irish pub on every corner. Louth played Cork on Saturday night in Portlaoise. I staggered the streets of Melbourne in a drunken haze, trying to find a pub with Setanta Sports. I failed and sat forlornly on a City bench wondering how my beloved team were doing all those miles away. I pictured the scene and in the Portloaise crowd, I could see Paul Snr, Paul Jnr and little Martin. Three generations from Hackballscross and Louth and Proud to the core. Paul Snr would spend the entire game questioning the talent, parentage and mental well-being of the Louth players. Paul Jnr would attack the ref and slyly make plans for an ambush in the car park after the match and a place in the boot of his car for the errant referee. Young Martin would make the mistake of applauding a particularly well taken Cork point, before retreating under his red and white hat as his father and grand father glared. He will learn ultimately that Sport is a cruel mistress. But like all mistresses, we keep going back for more punishment. As Paulo Snr said at the end of Sunday’s match. “ I’ve never seen such a useless shower of idiots in my life. Will we get the same seats for next week?”
Tuesday 17 July 2007
Love Letter to Sydney
You have to admire the British and their ability to see triumph in disaster. Their greatest Military memories are when they charged down a hill in Crimea to be slaughtered by Russian cannon (who had clearly been told to make light of the charging brigade) and when they scampered from the beach at Dunkirk like a flock of Wildebeest before an advancing lion. Not even the admission by the Germans that they had let them escape because Hitler still saw hope in a coalition with Britain against the Soviets could dent their national pride. Or when they invent sports and then turn out to be rubbish at them.
But they also have an uncanny ability to see disaster in triumph. They have built a multi-cultural population that has provided the best curry and sports people in the world. They created a Universal Health Service that mocks the public/greed bilocation plans in Ireland. They have a transport system that carries people across a metropolis like London in minutes. And yet if you ask British people what’s wrong with their country they’ll tell you transport, health and immigration.
So it’s little wonder that a people such as that would create a penal colony in one of the most beautiful places on earth. The French picked desolate rocks in the Caribbean for theirs while the Russians picked the coldest province in what was already the coldest country. The British meanwhile sailed half way round the world to Sydney, a natural vista with clear blue seas and rolling fertile hills. And said “Yeah, this looks like a good place for a prison.” So they dragged a few thousand paddies from famine infested villages in Ireland, smacked them on the wrists for stealing food from the landlords who had stolen their land and sent them here. To Sydney, where the sun shines for 10 months of the year, where the sea is abundant with fish, where animals queued up for slaughter as they knew no different, where even your jailor would allow you to abuse the native women. This was Britain’s idea of torture. To bring people to a place that 2 million tourists now visit each year.
Of course those early colonists did not have the Opera House and Harbour Bridge to gaze at as they stumbled off the prison ship in their shackles. Neither did they have the welcoming arms of pubs along the Rocks or Fish and Chips in Manly. But they had fresh air and food and a potential ticket to freedom in an untapped land.
Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney was where those unfortunate prisoners were first brought to be processed. Today it is a wonderful museum dedicated to the hard life endured by those men and women who are the ancestors of many current day Aussies (not that you’ll find too many Aussies willing to admit it). Within that museum you’ll also find an exhibit that symbolises the wicked humour of the Irish and particularly the Haughey Government. In 1988, Australia celebrated it’s bi-centenary. Many countries provided gifts to recognise the bond that Australia has to the countries that provided its immigrant populations. The Dutch probably gave a giant cheese. The Italians an Aussie shaped Pizza.
The Haughey government gave a database of all Irish people sent to Australian penal colonies, with details of their ship, birthplace, age and crime (usually menial). As a research tool it is invaluable and you can wile away an hour or so in Hyde Park Barracks looking up your ancestors. But I can’t help thinking of Charlie Haughey signing the card that went with it while giggling to himself. “Happy 200th birthday. Here’s a list of all the criminals we sent you.”
I’m glad that I’m living in Melbourne and not Sydney because Sydney is one of my favourite places to visit and I think living there would steal some of that magic. I’d start to associate the City with traffic problems and poor services. And I’d rather think of it as those first European visitors must have thought as they rounded Sydney Heads and entered the vast harbour within. That they had stumbled upon beauty, majesty and glorious nature.
As Captain Cook docked at what is now Circular Quay, I’m sure his first thoughts were “if we can only figure out a way of stealing the land from the locals, we’re laughing.” Then Richards stood up at the back and said “Can’t we use the plan we used in Ireland in 1641?”.
And the rest as they say, is History.
But they also have an uncanny ability to see disaster in triumph. They have built a multi-cultural population that has provided the best curry and sports people in the world. They created a Universal Health Service that mocks the public/greed bilocation plans in Ireland. They have a transport system that carries people across a metropolis like London in minutes. And yet if you ask British people what’s wrong with their country they’ll tell you transport, health and immigration.
So it’s little wonder that a people such as that would create a penal colony in one of the most beautiful places on earth. The French picked desolate rocks in the Caribbean for theirs while the Russians picked the coldest province in what was already the coldest country. The British meanwhile sailed half way round the world to Sydney, a natural vista with clear blue seas and rolling fertile hills. And said “Yeah, this looks like a good place for a prison.” So they dragged a few thousand paddies from famine infested villages in Ireland, smacked them on the wrists for stealing food from the landlords who had stolen their land and sent them here. To Sydney, where the sun shines for 10 months of the year, where the sea is abundant with fish, where animals queued up for slaughter as they knew no different, where even your jailor would allow you to abuse the native women. This was Britain’s idea of torture. To bring people to a place that 2 million tourists now visit each year.
Of course those early colonists did not have the Opera House and Harbour Bridge to gaze at as they stumbled off the prison ship in their shackles. Neither did they have the welcoming arms of pubs along the Rocks or Fish and Chips in Manly. But they had fresh air and food and a potential ticket to freedom in an untapped land.
Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney was where those unfortunate prisoners were first brought to be processed. Today it is a wonderful museum dedicated to the hard life endured by those men and women who are the ancestors of many current day Aussies (not that you’ll find too many Aussies willing to admit it). Within that museum you’ll also find an exhibit that symbolises the wicked humour of the Irish and particularly the Haughey Government. In 1988, Australia celebrated it’s bi-centenary. Many countries provided gifts to recognise the bond that Australia has to the countries that provided its immigrant populations. The Dutch probably gave a giant cheese. The Italians an Aussie shaped Pizza.
The Haughey government gave a database of all Irish people sent to Australian penal colonies, with details of their ship, birthplace, age and crime (usually menial). As a research tool it is invaluable and you can wile away an hour or so in Hyde Park Barracks looking up your ancestors. But I can’t help thinking of Charlie Haughey signing the card that went with it while giggling to himself. “Happy 200th birthday. Here’s a list of all the criminals we sent you.”
I’m glad that I’m living in Melbourne and not Sydney because Sydney is one of my favourite places to visit and I think living there would steal some of that magic. I’d start to associate the City with traffic problems and poor services. And I’d rather think of it as those first European visitors must have thought as they rounded Sydney Heads and entered the vast harbour within. That they had stumbled upon beauty, majesty and glorious nature.
As Captain Cook docked at what is now Circular Quay, I’m sure his first thoughts were “if we can only figure out a way of stealing the land from the locals, we’re laughing.” Then Richards stood up at the back and said “Can’t we use the plan we used in Ireland in 1641?”.
And the rest as they say, is History.
Saturday 14 July 2007
The strange incident of the drunken Aussie in the night
It was the Garden of the Golden Apples
A half-way house where we had stopped a day
Before we took the west road to Australia
Where the sun was always setting on our play.
(with apologies to Patrick Kavanagh)
Singapore is a half-way house. It sets itself up as a transit point and an introduction to Asia. Some people call it "Asia Light" but I think this is unfair. It doesn't have open sewers running through the streets or emaciated waifs tugging at your Billabong T-Shirt and fumbling for your poorly concealed money-belt. But if that is "Real Asia", I'll take the curry of Little India and the Tiger Beer of Boat Quay anytime.
Singapore has also set itself up as a microcosm of what the globalised world will look like when Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates finally complete their evil plan. In a Chinese restaurant on Orchard Road, you can find an Indian guy gazing into the eyes of an Indonesian girl while sipping Australian Chardonnay and ordering their Irish coffees.
Yes, we Irish have also sold our soul to the whore of globalisation in the drive to turn the world into one big homogenised village. Walk into any bordello or speakeasy on this lonely planet and they'll offer you Baileys Irish cream poured over bacteria infested ice or Guinness mixed with a local sweetener to sooth the bitterness of the River Liffey to local palettes. And all the while, the dulcet tones of Enya will fill the background so that if you close your eyes, you won't know if you're in Dundalk, Dubrovnik or Delhi. Only the outside temperature will give you a clue as to where you are. And big business is doing it's best to control that as well.
I've always liked Singapore, mainly because of the food you can get there (which can neatly be described as any food you like) and the shameless pursuit of materialism which allows you to have any new gadget within 24 hours of it being pushed off the assembly line by an 8 year old in Cambodia. But mostly I like it because fat blokes like me are held in high esteem. Extra weight is considered a sign of wealth and nobility in Asia. You never see a skinny statue of Buddha for example. My resemblance to Buddha perhaps explains why so many Asian girls come up to me and rub my stomach (and there was me thinking I was attractive!). So I can stroll around in my baggy shorts, milk-white legs and beetroot head exposed to the elements and not receive the looks of derision that may arise on say Grafton Street.
I'd hoped to have a day and half in Singapore, but Singapore Airlines stole most of that. So I was left with 10 hours to kill. Luckily, Singapore Airport is perfectly geared up for this of thing. They offer showers and a quick massage (if you're that way inclined) and a shuttle into the City. I met a few mates for a couple of seriously expensive beers and a seriously cheap Indian. The Ying-yang of life as they say in Asia or the commingling of roundabouts and swings as they say in Ireland.
Then it was back to the Airport and a night flight to Sydney. My flight from London was packed with middle aged Kiwis. They had finished their 4 week tour of 17 European countries and used the 14 hour flight to relive memories of rain in Venice, food poisoning in Spain and the time they lost their wallet and dignity to a 12 year old Algerian under the Eiffel Tower. I felt like Saddam’s ambassador to the United Nations as I fruitlessly attempted to defend an entire continent. One that I too had decided to abandon.
Keen as I am to reduce entire nations to cultural stereo-types, can I say that all Kiwis are thoroughly decent and friendly people. And Aussies aren’t. It’s a bit unfair maybe and it may have something to do with the lateness of the flight. But the Singapore to Sydney leg was full of middle aged Australians determined to re-enforce stereo-types I had about their country. I sat beside a couple from Sydney. They didn’t bother to ask my name and I returned the compliment. So let’s call them Doug and Sheila. When I mentioned that I was from Ireland, Sheila’s friendly response was that the Irish were piss-heads who liked only one thing more than drinking and that was fighting with each other when they were drunk. She noticed a slightly hurt look on my face so in an effort to placate me she said “I suppose the Scottish are just as bad”. I nodded sagely and said we’d have a lot of work to do to catch up the Aussies. She was shocked, so I said “Well you know in the rest of World, the Aussies are considered massive beer vultures. Anyone who has seen them at the Munich beer festival would deduce that they are only race on earth who considers beer to be more important than oxegen”. Doug nodded and said “I suppose you’re right” and I couldn’t help but notice a glint of National Pride in his eye.
During the six and half hour flight to Sydney (which most of us slept through) Doug and Shelia got through 12 beers each. I just hate it when my dearly held stereo-types are destroyed before my eyes.
And so to Sydney, the City that God would have designed if he’d gone into Architecture and not theology. The man who killed my mojo wasn’t waiting for me at the airport but my sister was. And that’s the next best thing.
A half-way house where we had stopped a day
Before we took the west road to Australia
Where the sun was always setting on our play.
(with apologies to Patrick Kavanagh)
Singapore is a half-way house. It sets itself up as a transit point and an introduction to Asia. Some people call it "Asia Light" but I think this is unfair. It doesn't have open sewers running through the streets or emaciated waifs tugging at your Billabong T-Shirt and fumbling for your poorly concealed money-belt. But if that is "Real Asia", I'll take the curry of Little India and the Tiger Beer of Boat Quay anytime.
Singapore has also set itself up as a microcosm of what the globalised world will look like when Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates finally complete their evil plan. In a Chinese restaurant on Orchard Road, you can find an Indian guy gazing into the eyes of an Indonesian girl while sipping Australian Chardonnay and ordering their Irish coffees.
Yes, we Irish have also sold our soul to the whore of globalisation in the drive to turn the world into one big homogenised village. Walk into any bordello or speakeasy on this lonely planet and they'll offer you Baileys Irish cream poured over bacteria infested ice or Guinness mixed with a local sweetener to sooth the bitterness of the River Liffey to local palettes. And all the while, the dulcet tones of Enya will fill the background so that if you close your eyes, you won't know if you're in Dundalk, Dubrovnik or Delhi. Only the outside temperature will give you a clue as to where you are. And big business is doing it's best to control that as well.
I've always liked Singapore, mainly because of the food you can get there (which can neatly be described as any food you like) and the shameless pursuit of materialism which allows you to have any new gadget within 24 hours of it being pushed off the assembly line by an 8 year old in Cambodia. But mostly I like it because fat blokes like me are held in high esteem. Extra weight is considered a sign of wealth and nobility in Asia. You never see a skinny statue of Buddha for example. My resemblance to Buddha perhaps explains why so many Asian girls come up to me and rub my stomach (and there was me thinking I was attractive!). So I can stroll around in my baggy shorts, milk-white legs and beetroot head exposed to the elements and not receive the looks of derision that may arise on say Grafton Street.
I'd hoped to have a day and half in Singapore, but Singapore Airlines stole most of that. So I was left with 10 hours to kill. Luckily, Singapore Airport is perfectly geared up for this of thing. They offer showers and a quick massage (if you're that way inclined) and a shuttle into the City. I met a few mates for a couple of seriously expensive beers and a seriously cheap Indian. The Ying-yang of life as they say in Asia or the commingling of roundabouts and swings as they say in Ireland.
Then it was back to the Airport and a night flight to Sydney. My flight from London was packed with middle aged Kiwis. They had finished their 4 week tour of 17 European countries and used the 14 hour flight to relive memories of rain in Venice, food poisoning in Spain and the time they lost their wallet and dignity to a 12 year old Algerian under the Eiffel Tower. I felt like Saddam’s ambassador to the United Nations as I fruitlessly attempted to defend an entire continent. One that I too had decided to abandon.
Keen as I am to reduce entire nations to cultural stereo-types, can I say that all Kiwis are thoroughly decent and friendly people. And Aussies aren’t. It’s a bit unfair maybe and it may have something to do with the lateness of the flight. But the Singapore to Sydney leg was full of middle aged Australians determined to re-enforce stereo-types I had about their country. I sat beside a couple from Sydney. They didn’t bother to ask my name and I returned the compliment. So let’s call them Doug and Sheila. When I mentioned that I was from Ireland, Sheila’s friendly response was that the Irish were piss-heads who liked only one thing more than drinking and that was fighting with each other when they were drunk. She noticed a slightly hurt look on my face so in an effort to placate me she said “I suppose the Scottish are just as bad”. I nodded sagely and said we’d have a lot of work to do to catch up the Aussies. She was shocked, so I said “Well you know in the rest of World, the Aussies are considered massive beer vultures. Anyone who has seen them at the Munich beer festival would deduce that they are only race on earth who considers beer to be more important than oxegen”. Doug nodded and said “I suppose you’re right” and I couldn’t help but notice a glint of National Pride in his eye.
During the six and half hour flight to Sydney (which most of us slept through) Doug and Shelia got through 12 beers each. I just hate it when my dearly held stereo-types are destroyed before my eyes.
And so to Sydney, the City that God would have designed if he’d gone into Architecture and not theology. The man who killed my mojo wasn’t waiting for me at the airport but my sister was. And that’s the next best thing.
Monday 9 July 2007
Getting Here
I have often been on flights where the passengers have celebrated a safe landing by applauding the pilot for his skill in doing his job. This has usually been on package flights full of track-suited skangers, full of San Miguel and heat stroke and who are celebrating the fact that the 10,000 smuggled cigarettes they have hidden in their suitcase have made it safely back to Ireland.
I've never quite understood why certain people, such as Pilots or theatre announcers, get applauded for just doing their job. After all, nobody applauds me for balancing a cash reconciliation or figuring out how to password protect a spreadsheet. Buts that's just another excuse for me to feel sorry about myself, so we'll move on.
Last Tuesday, I had the novel experience of being on a flight where the passengers applauded on take-off. It felt like we had just escaped from a pursuing jeep load of Nazis which had chased us down the runway, or we were 400 celebrating Al Quieda operatives who had successfully eluded airport security (oblivious to the fact that our plan to wipe out 399 imperialist pig dogs was shared by the other 399 passengers on the flight).
We were in fact celebrating the fact that our plane had finally taken-off, just 27 hours behind schedule. Just over a day before we had stood at the end of the runway, engines throttling like the DC-3 at the end of Casablanca, all our romantic farewells left on the apron like Bogart and Bergman, when a 12 year old English girl noticed a piece hanging off the wing. Say what you like about the English education system (teaches them nothing about genocide in Ireland for example) but it does give them enough knowledge to know that a piece of metal hanging off a wing is not a good idea.
We made our lonely way back to the terminal, no doubt the laughing stock of the other 45 planes queuing for take-off in the madhouse that is Heathrow. After a desperate attempt to remedy the situation with sticky tape and some staples, they admitted defeat and bused us to a very nice Hotel in London. My attempt to track down the man who killed my mojo had only made it as far as London. But I would not be deterred. I was determined to make it to Australia, even if it took me as long as Captain Cook. So on Tuesday evening when SQ319 finally dragged it's sorry ass up into the clouds, I too was willing to ignore protocol and joined in the ovation to our glorious Skipper.
I've never quite understood why certain people, such as Pilots or theatre announcers, get applauded for just doing their job. After all, nobody applauds me for balancing a cash reconciliation or figuring out how to password protect a spreadsheet. Buts that's just another excuse for me to feel sorry about myself, so we'll move on.
Last Tuesday, I had the novel experience of being on a flight where the passengers applauded on take-off. It felt like we had just escaped from a pursuing jeep load of Nazis which had chased us down the runway, or we were 400 celebrating Al Quieda operatives who had successfully eluded airport security (oblivious to the fact that our plan to wipe out 399 imperialist pig dogs was shared by the other 399 passengers on the flight).
We were in fact celebrating the fact that our plane had finally taken-off, just 27 hours behind schedule. Just over a day before we had stood at the end of the runway, engines throttling like the DC-3 at the end of Casablanca, all our romantic farewells left on the apron like Bogart and Bergman, when a 12 year old English girl noticed a piece hanging off the wing. Say what you like about the English education system (teaches them nothing about genocide in Ireland for example) but it does give them enough knowledge to know that a piece of metal hanging off a wing is not a good idea.
We made our lonely way back to the terminal, no doubt the laughing stock of the other 45 planes queuing for take-off in the madhouse that is Heathrow. After a desperate attempt to remedy the situation with sticky tape and some staples, they admitted defeat and bused us to a very nice Hotel in London. My attempt to track down the man who killed my mojo had only made it as far as London. But I would not be deterred. I was determined to make it to Australia, even if it took me as long as Captain Cook. So on Tuesday evening when SQ319 finally dragged it's sorry ass up into the clouds, I too was willing to ignore protocol and joined in the ovation to our glorious Skipper.
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