The only fly in the ointment

In recent years, Reality TV has taken over the airways as broadcasters have sought to make programs with unpaid members of “the public” rather than the previously extravagant practice of employing professionals to make professional productions. One characteristic of these programs is that they are designed to inspire you to do something better. To change the way your house looks, to change the way your body looks or in extreme cases to change the country you live in. They play on the insecurities of modern life, where materialism has led us to believe that everyone else is living a better life and that we live in a crap house in a crap country and are unfit and unable to play the piano into the bargain.

One of the most popular such shows in the UK is “Get a New Life” where the British Government financed BBC, sets out to convince people that Britain is a dive and that you would be a mug not to emigrate. Australia is a favorite destination for this show, perhaps because the British still think they own the place. The format is repetitive; overworked English couple with young kids, seeking a sun and sand lifestyle and the opportunity to cash in the equity on their over-priced London home. The program generally takes them to the Gold Coast or the English colony in Western Australia known as Perth. The closing credits will feature jaunty music on a didgeridoo while the happy family strolls down a beach into an Australian sunset.

The odd thing is that in this closing shot, you will never see the family waving their arms in front of their faces like every other beach walker in Australia does. Because in TV land, there are no flies! Those of us who have come to Australia know that reality is different. That one thing at least will not be as advertised on the “Come to Australia” seduction videos. Once the temperature goes above 16c, the flies will emerge to partake in their daily battle with humanity. It’s not as though we Europeans haven’t seen flies before, we’re just used to the more passive variety. Australian flies have a mission to get into your mouth, nostrils, ear cavity, eyes, or any other slightly liquid cavity you choose to expose. And they attack in groups, so that when you are dealing with one that has burrowed his way under your eye-lid and is merrily dancing a foxtrot on your retina, his friend will be busy depositing his fly pooh on your tongue.

A stroll down the beach on a warm day will provide the spectacle of thousands of tourists engaging in a semaphore type dance as they wave their hands manically before their contorted faces. The locals on the other hand, are much more serene to this annual insect invasion. They have long since learned that resistance in futile and that arm waving only creates sweat, which is the elixir of life to the ravenous flies. As a result, the locals tend to look like wilder beast at an African wadi with an army of flies resting contentedly and unmolested on their heads while they plan their next attack on the sweating and naïve foreigners.

One wonders why the flies here are more aggressive than elsewhere. Perhaps they are as affected by the drought as everyone else and their search for moisture on the bodies of humans is just the last throws of desperation. Or maybe Australian flies are just like Australian people, inquisitive, hungry for liquid refreshment and reluctant to stand on ceremony in their quest for personal satisfaction.

There are the occasional positives from this insect epidemic. Australians are naturally competitive and have developed the game of “Fly Tennis” to obtain some measure of enjoyment from this nuisance. The normal court of play is the opposing seats on trams and trains. The server waits for a fly to enter the arena and with as much extravagance as the packed commuter carriage will allow, he will wave his hand vigorously in a forward motion. This will cause the startled fly to turn their attention to the passenger sitting opposite. With perfect timing they will swat the fly as he arrives on their side of the court causing it to hurtle back in the direction of the server. Rallies will last until one or other passenger disembarks, which can often be 20 minutes after the game began. Players are expected to glare at each other furiously in the somewhat quaint belief that the fly belongs to one or other of them and they have no right to try and pass it on to somebody else.

The other pleasure to be taken from flies on public transport is to watch the defensive actions of passengers, who are already multi-tasking, when it comes to insect repelling. Take for example those clever souls who can talk on a mobile phone while reading the celebrity gossip in the free newspapers littered across trains. When a fly appears, the natural reaction is to wave the newspaper (to the great annoyance of the people sitting either side) or if space is tight to use their head as some sort of battering ram against the buzzing nuisance. There are few things funnier at 8am than watching a sharp suited businesswoman talking rapidly into a mobile phone while reading MX and trying to head butt a fly.

One day perhaps it will all become too much and ABC will commission a program encouraging people to emigrate to Britain. There won’t be lingering shots of families strolling down an English beach but at least you’ll be safe in the knowledge that the cold will have dealt with the flies in a way that a million flaying Australian arms never could.

Movember

When I came to Australia, I arrived not just with a backpack and jet lag, but with some well enforced prejudices. I believed that the mullet was the most common hairstyle, that all Australian men were six feet plus, that Fosters was the beer of choice and that people ate kangaroo with the regularity that we Irish eat potatoes. Of course, I have found that none of this is true.

The mullet has disappeared into history alongside Jason Donavan’s acting career and is only found these days on Pacific Islanders with biker fetishes. The traditional mullet wearer was the Australian Football League player, but they all wear tight haircuts now so that they can slip into nightclubs unnoticed and indulge in their drug taking habits. In the globalised modern world, you won’t see many differences in hairstyles between Melbourne, Montreal and Milan. Brad Pitt or David Beckham set the trend and we all follow like sheep. A number of years ago (probably around the time that Beckham decided to shave his head) barbers changed their process from suggesting a style to suggesting a number. This made visiting the barber a similar experience to visiting you local Chinese take-away. You would ask for a 3 on top and a 2 on the side or an all over 1 if you were feeling minimalist. This only works for men of course who see hair as an unavoidable nuisance (until we start loosing it of course, when it suddenly becomes the most important thing in the world). Women have a different approach and would never dream of choosing hair-styles by numbers. Which is why hair dressers can charge women ten times as much as they charge men. There is a world of difference between having your hair cut and having your hair “done” after all.

Facial hair is making a comeback here however with the introduction of “Movember”. This is a charity driven event to encourage men to grow moustaches during November and transport themselves back to the 1970’s of flairs and fast cars. It seems to have caught on, although some people are more productive than others. I insulted one guy at the weekend who told me he was taking part, by asking him when he planned to start. Thankfully, I am in a play until the end of November and the Director has left strict instructions that I am to be clean shaven until then. This saves me the embarrassment of displaying my follically challenged facial hair. On the few occasions when I’ve tried to grow beards, my chin has resembled the scrublands of centre Australia, with the occasional spurt of hair surrounded by an ocean of virgin skin. My attempts at growing a moustache have occurred during long absence from work, such as study leave. Lack of food and sleep during these times turned me into a twitchy nervous wreck, which was never helped by the emaciated caterpillar sitting on my lip.

I am also haunted by the memory of a girl I “shifted” when I was 19. Her name escapes me as several years of therapy have helped me to erase most of the memories of that faithful night. I walked her 3 kms back to her house and was invited in for tea. After the tea and the Mikado biscuits, I thought I was safe to move my move. The lights were dim and her lips beckoned me like the Sirens beckoned Odysseus. I moved in for the kill but found that an assassin was already waiting and my lust was her target. When lips met lips, I detected something previously undiscovered in my humble, heterosexual upbringing. Stubble! I was pretty sure it wasn’t mine as I had barely discovered shaving by then and all sorts of fears raced through my head. Was this a “Crying Game” moment? Should I check for an Adam’s apple or do the Paul Hogan test (when I was 19, that was known as “3rd Base” and I was far too shy for that kind of thing). In the end, I made my excuses and left, but my relationship with facial hair took an irredeemable turn for the worst that night and has never recovered.

Movember works as a popular fund raising event, purely because facial hair is so rare in Australia. Clean shaven and tight haircuts are the fashion here. The climate no doubt contributes to this, as walking around with a Karl Mark beard would be pretty uncomfortably in 40c heat. I think Australians also have a desire to escape from their tragic fashion status of the 1980s. In the years before the Internet and global telecommunications, Australia was starved of modern fashion trends. So leggings and big hair found a retirement home in Australia when the rest of the world had moved. These days, Australians are far more fashion conscious and they will maintain a neat and tidy state until the next trend becomes available.

As a result, I expect most moustaches to be shaved off as soon as the Movember Ball is out of the way and the young ladies of Australia have had the chance of snogging Tom Selleck look-alikes. If my experiences as a 19 year old are anything to go by, those ladies will be aching for some smooth skin after they have recovered from the beard rash. World stock markets are going through turbulent times at the moment with the collapse of sub prime debt and rising oil prices. However, if you want a sure fire stock tip, put your house on Gillette because the sales of razors (in Australia at least) are going to rocket in early December.

Unless of course, David Beckham grows a tashe. If that happened, I might even think of growing one myself.

Great Things the Australians have Invented - Part 1

Stubbie Holders

I’d put this up there with the discovery of fire and the wheel. The man who invented Stubbie holders, should be lauded in the company of Einstein and Newton. Like most great inventions, it is deceptively simple. A small flexible cup made from rubber based products and usually sporting a garish picture advertising a beer company or football team. It is designed to hold a bottle of beer (known as a Stubbie, as everything in Australia has to end in “ie”) or can of beer (if you’ve been paying attention you’ll know this is called a tinnie). The purpose is to keep the beer cold until its final sip. I had originally assumed that this marvellous invention was designed for the sultry climes of Queensland or the Northern Territories, where temperatures sometimes reach the levels of an Arab’s armpit, 3 hours into his interview in Abu Ghraib prison. But in fact, the humble Stubbie holder is useful in all beer drinking scenarios. To be scientific for a moment, glass is a medium level conductor of heat. Not as bad as metal and somewhat worse than wood. The simple act of clutching a bottle or glass while engaging in weighty conversation on the prospects of Carlton winning the flag in 2008 will cause heat to pass from your body into the clutched liquid. In much the same way as Jesus enters into bread and wine during a Mass. Well maybe not like that but beer is as important to me as God, so you’ll have to excuse the comparison.

The net effect is that the start of the beer will taste crisp and refreshing, while the dregs will taste like, well dregs. Cunning scientists employed by the Australian Beer industry realised that people drink cold beer faster than they drink warm beer (there’s a lesson to the English there). So the race was on to find the solution. While the rest of the world was busy splitting atoms and untangling the web of DNA, Aussie Scientists were busy trying to figure out how to keep beer cold. And God bless them, I say. In Melbourne, they came up with an Interim solution called “The Pot”. This involves serving beer in such a ridiculously small glass that it’s drunk before you leave the bar, thus preventing it from getting warm. But bar service is so unbelievably poor in Melbourne that this was never a long term solution. And so the Stubbie holder was born. After you get over the initial embarrassment of clutching a small rubber cup with a picture of a Koala Bear on the front, you release yourself to a night of drinking cold beer in the manner of the guests at the wedding of Cana. The last will be as good as the first. It’s nothing short of a miracle.

Kath and Kim

Kath and Kim is not the funniest thing on TV, it's not the best written or the most risky. But it captures a nation's soul in a self-deprecating manner like no other. When Father Ted was in its pomp, we Irish marvelled at its ability to dissect the sacred cows of Irish culture and serve them up to us as juicy steaks. We recognised all the caricatures as fundamental truths from our childhoods. The alcoholic priest, the murderous married couple whose mouths wouldn't melt butter when seen in public and the bishop and his mistresses. Father Ted was famously made and broadcast in Britain and while we laughed at our recent past as it was dressed in pantomime costume before us, we also hid behind our cultural cringe and only peeked over it to see if the British were laughing with us or at us!

Kath and Kim has a similar impact on Australians and Melbournians in particular. They recognise the accents as being a not so distant stretch from the average voice you’ll hear in suburban malls. The garish clothes are the sort you see on a sunny day in St Kilda and the social phopahs are indicative of a country where money and wealth are racing ahead and manners are lagging behind. The attraction of Kath and Kim is that they are materially rich enough to indulge in all of the pastimes of modern living. The big house, the plasma TV, the endless supply of Chardonnay and fake tanning. But they don’t have the “breeding” to enjoy it properly. We, the viewing public, feel that we have this breeding which allows the program to portray us as our uneducated selves. There are many countries that have experienced a similar economic boom in recent years and created a new class of people with money and pretensions. Australia has offered a ready made template to make fun of this development and Ireland in particular could make use of it. “Mary and Margaret” sounds good, not least because I could write it and base it on my two sisters.

It’s also the most popular comedy in New Zealand, but I’m pretty sure they’re not laughing with them.

Beetroot on Hamburgers

Sometimes you have to wonder who the first person to discover something was and how he came across it. What sort of experimentation was somebody doing when they discovered that a plastic bag over your head and an amyl nitrate soaked orange in your mouth would deliver higher sexual enjoyment (although presumably not for your partner who has to look at you at the time)? Or what could that person have been up to when they discovered that licking a particular frog would give you hallucination fits?

I have the same thoughts about the man that discovered that beetroot goes with hamburgers. I suspect he’s related to the idiot that invented pickles in Big Macs. But the beetroot is genius. It adds flavour and provides unwashable colouring to your hands, providing instant evidence in the morning of your previous nights dining habits. The Aussies take the beetroot thing a bit far though. You can get an Aussie Pizza here, which includes kangaroo or emu meat (this being the only country in the world that eats the animals depicted on their national emblem) and a large dollop of beetroot. It’s just wrong.

But when you’ve had a skinful of stubbies at an afternoon Barbie and you’re trying to sober up before Kath and Kim, then an Aussie burger with a large slice of beetroot is your only man.

Tonight's Menu

A picture of Bill Clinton adorns the wall of Fagan’s pub in Dublin. Tucked between a GAA jersey and the results of the pub’s golf society, Bill’s cheesy Indiana smile sits atop a creamy pint of Guinness. This holds his gaze as though he were a World War II ambulance driver who had just crossed the Sahara to Alexandria to be met by a pint of Carlsberg.

In Melbourne, there is a picture of Bill in the Meekong Vietnamese restaurant. Bill is tucking into his second bowl of Rice Noodle Soup. I mention second, because finishing one is a feat in itself. The noodles expand as they sit in the soup, so while eating it, the dish just seems to grow to the point where you give in and hand back something bigger than that which you received. It’s a bit like the Irish and the English language. It was forced upon us, but being the good-natured people we are, we gave it back to the English in a better state than we had received it.

If you want to know the heart and soul of a City and it’s appeal to foreigners, then look for a picture of Bill. You’ll find it everywhere. Drinking a glass of vodka in Moscow, nibbling cheese in Amsterdam and wearing tight leather shorts and a Tom Selleck moustache in San Francisco. Bill sums up a City better than Lonely Planet. Dublin is rightly known for it’s pubs, whose appeal increases the further away you get from them. Despite their surly staff and over priced produce, they are still the best in the world. And I should know, I’ve spent the last four months checking.

Melbourne, as Mr. Clinton testifies, is much more about Asian food. Chinatown here has a natural feel to it and services mainly the large local Asian community. All parts of Asia are represented with rice the common constituent. Chinese is the dominant cuisine, although even that splits between Cantonese and Hokkien and every other province that produces a curry. I am reminded of my mother’s comments that she wanted to stop after she had her second child, because she heard that every third child born in the world is Chinese. And Mam didn’t want a Chinese baby. When it was explained to her that this statistic applied to the world in general and not her specifically, she relented and let Dad back in the bedroom. This was a subject of great annoyance to me, because as the second child I had obtained a modicum of affection, which is reserved for the youngest in the family. Once the third child came along, I lost all that. And I’ve been jealous of my sister Lai Ling ever since.

Everybody has their favorite ethnic restaurants in Melbourne. I’ve only been here 4 months, but I already know where to go for the best Indonesian Nasi Goreng, the best Malay Satay and the best Indian Butter Chicken. I’m still assessing the Chinese places. My biggest problem is that the specialise in Dim Sum, a veritable lucky dip wrapped in a dumpling dough. Take a bite and you could be chewing down on Pork, Chicken, Beef or Prawns. Or pretty much anything else that Granny Tan found in the fridge that morning. As I have the fussy eating habits of a spoilt 5 year old, I normally avoid this type of food, less my delicate palate be disturbed by flavors richer than processed chicken. I have a similar problem with that great staple of Australian Food, the Meat Pie. These are tasty little buggers, but one is strongly advised to eat them with your eyes closed. The term “meat” in the description seems to cover a multitude.

As it’s cheaper to eat out than to cook in Melbourne, it’s not surprising that there are so many fantastic restaurants. When the locals do decide to cook, it will generally be a Barbie. Aussies have this down to a fine art and a ritual. Literally anything can be cooked on the Barbie from fried eggs to birthday cakes and the occasion itself is subject to more decorum than a ball in a Jane Austen novel. It is appropriate to bring as much beer as you intend to drink yourself. And among old Melbournians, this will be VB stubbies. You should also bring a bottle of something along for the host. Ladies should bring a desert or salad but no meat. That is the preserve of the host. The season begins on November 1st and invites start flooding in from September onwards. You will invariably end up with two or three on each Saturday and Sunday during summer. And that will involve eating an awful lot of meat, or seriously disappointing some of your friends.

Shorts are allowed, but Speedos are frowned upon, even if the hosts have a pool (which are more common than indoor toilets in Ireland). Flip flops or sandals are encouraged, but not the ones you wear to the beach. So locals will invest in a pair of Birkenstocks just for the BBQ season.

Being Irish, I’ve never quite gotten the Barbeque thing. Fair enough, our climate doesn’t really suit and Barbies at the beach or sports events are the only way of getting hot food. But 99% of Barbies are held in people’s back gardens, 3 meters or so from a perfectly working kitchen. Why people prefer smoky, half burned pork chops, to a nice piece of grilled chicken is beyond me. I guess standing around drinking beer and watching somebody cook on a stove in the kitchen is not as much fun. And I’m in Australia now and if I don’t go to Barbeques, I won’t be going out on Saturdays and Sundays during summer. Onwards and upwards, that’s what it’s all about. As somebody said to me last week, “Fish can only see to the side, flies can see all around, but humans can only look forward.” That’s my new motto and I’m sure Bill Clinton would agree. He comes from a town called Hope after all.