So it's come to this: Brown Ponchos

APEC is an unusual institution: its members share the attribute that they border the most vast expanse of water in the world. Hardly a unifying factor. It's surely not surprising then that APEC is most known for its shocking fashion sense. All leaders dress in some vaguely national vestments from the host country and force smiles - even more so than usual. It's right up there with spirited economic negotiations, posturing on the environment and the Alexander Downer Perpetual Trophy for Karaoke.

We've sat through these images year after year - usually it's the only vision of a tedious conference that makes it to the TV. And they've mostly been the same: loud, silk numbers from Korea, Thailand or Vietnam showing how poor the world's leaders manage to look in loud, formless attire. That was the case in during boom times anyway.

Last year, however, the cracks started to appear: in Australia the world leaders wore dodgy knock-offs of Driza-bone coats, the always cringe-worthy and staple Olympic Opening Ceremony clothing of Australia that seems to please pensioners and those with a romantic ideal of The Man from Snowy River, but make the rest of us cringe. Unlike the previous attire, these were only made in Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

Signs were there that things were going downhill. The sheen and lustre normally associated with gatherings of world leaders had been replaced by a dash for the bargain bin at Big W. And everyone came out with the same clothes. It's almost like the pending economic doom demanded some cutback in discretionary spending.

It shouldn't surprise us, then, that this year in Peru they all donned brown ponchos. If, as Samuel Johnson said, patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, then surely ponchos are the last refuge of the under-dressed.

It is not just this blogger that thinks they look like potato sacks - the conservative media agrees with me. It might be a nod to the tough economic times we are in at the moment, or it might be a case of diplomatic tit-for-tat, where, after a sleight early in the history of APEC which saw leaders wearing alfoil or curtains or whatever, each host country now tries to make other leaders look like complete tits by wearing tat.

I wonder how much further it can go, but I guess we will find out next year, when Singapore hosts the conference. If they're wearing barrels, the jig will be up.

The perils of a small tea-spoon

Two things I find about caffeine:

(i) You easily build up a resistance to its effects

(ii) It's quite easy to become dependent on its effects

For me, as a creature of habit I can regulate this. I only have two cups of coffee per day, one in the morning (about 8am) and one in the afternoon, about 2:30 or so. It's therefore difficult for me to up the dosage and increase my caffeine dependence.

Or so I thought.

As befits the pubic sector, we only have instant coffee, and perhaps more amusingly we only have one teaspoon in our kitchen. I don't know if this is some malicious attempt by Mabel, the tea lady, to limit the rate at which cuppas can be produced, or if it's simply that everyone else has nicked our spoons, but it's what we're stuck with.

Worse still, it's a small spoon, much smaller than your stock-standard 5ml teaspoon (check it out in the photo, with my snazzy St Kilda Hall Of Fame mug). Therefore it represents something of a watershed for caffeine addicts: do I accept the restriction of less coffee in one teaspoon (and perhaps tacitly concede that I have an addiction to caffeine and need the intervention of a smaller spoon), or do I "stick it to the man" (or Mabel) and have an extra half tea-spoon anyway, maintaining my caffeine intake (or possibly increasing it through semi-accidentally scooping too much)?

For me it's a no-brainer. I come to the kitchen when most in need of caffeine, and I'll be damned if some quanta-nazi is going to deny me a single milligram of stimulant. To be honest I'd be surprised if work expected anything different from me: they know I need all the stimulus I can get, and there's no money in the budget for me to head to a strip club.

The Fanatics Do It Again

It's been a while, and it's taken a significant event to get me out of blog-hibernation. But you can always trust the Fanatics to raise my ire.

My contempt for the Fanatics is a matter of public record. See the Orange Roughy in my Caribbean blog entry. If you can't be bothered wading through that diatribe (fair enough: you're already reading one diatribe), suffice to say that the Fanatics tend to coopt Autralian patriotism for their own private purposes and make a profit by exploting it. Nothing illustrates this better than the "ANZAC Fanatics" beanies on display.

Not content with befouling their own national icons with their "brand", it seems they have taken it a bit further with an utterly offensive t-shirt made for the tour which had a couple of Fanatics locked up for wearing them.

See the story here.

But this story is about more than schadenfreude (but not much more). There is a bit of humour to be gleaned from the responses to the accusations that the Fanatics were offending the sensibilities of Indians. Have a look:

The slogans written were 'Beer with Mahatma, Bets with Gupta, Dancing with Indira and still getting runs'.

Noone could reasonably argue that Mahatma and Indira in that sentence do not refer to the Gandhis, both icons in modern Indian history. But who said the Fanatics argue reasonably?

"one of the Australians fans defended the slogan, arguing it referred to former SBS and ABC TV newsreader Indira Naidoo, rather than the former Indian PM"

Yeah, all the Aussies get that reference - let alone Indians, but not many of them will see that t-shirt in India.

Another report said quoted Exploiter-in-chief of the Fanatics, Warren Livingstone, saying that "Mahatma referred to the former Test cricketer Greg Ritchie's "Mahatma Coat" Character".

As hard as that is to believe, even if it were true it's hardly less offensive to say you're gonna have a drink with a knob in blackface taking the mickey out of Indians.

The funniest of the defences of the Fanatics is this:

The fans said the slogan had been given to them by one of their Sri Lankan friends.

i.e. Its OK because someone with skin as dark as you said it's OK.

I'm surprised they didn't go to Pakistan to get permission. They're near enough aren't they?

Livingstone was also incorrect when he stated that "the Fanatics had sailed through their three previous tours to India without any such controversies." Actually that's not true. On their previous tour of India in 2004 they got into hot water for depicting Ganesh, one of Hindu's most loved gods, holding a beer. A big no-no.

Good to see you learn your lessons. Morons.

Sometimes, there isn't enough brown in the world

I have a tie you see. It's my lucky brown tie. I don't think I've told the story of the brown tie on the blog but many of you have heard it. You can see it above - look at it! It's magnificent! And don't worry, I centred that knot before I walked out the door. I'm not a philistine.

My lucky brown tie, or LBT, is in my "A-rotation" for ties, which is to say I wear it once a week. I talk about LBT regularly with my colleagues, even when I'm not wearing it. It's fair to say it's a highlight.

See - the week-to-week existence of a desk-bound bureaucrat can be exciting. I don;t know why people only want my travel emails.

Anyways, I wear it when I need the most luck - the day when I have the biggest issue to deal with or the most to do. But I only wear it once a week. Ever.

But this week I'm stuck in a rut. Today I had some very important work to do, so I wore LBT. And it worked a treat. The meeting I had was over in a jiffy - in, out, got what I wanted.

But there's a hitch.

On Monday an urgent matter landed on my desk. Actually it had been on my desk for a while, but it suddenly became extremely urgent. I have a heap of stuff I need to do by Wednesday morning, and I also need to be in the zone for a very important meeting on Wednesday itself.

Really, I need LBT again.

But I am committed to using the luck infused in LBT in a sustainable manner - once a week. I don't want to use it all up. So what to do, what to do?

After doing as much as I could today (i.e. while wearing LBT), I think I have to trust in my own abilities.

F*ck me, that's a scary prospect.

The upshot of this is, with a new promotion comes new responsibility. And with new responsibility comes an inevitable need for more luck to deal adequately with the tasks foisted upon you.

So maybe I'm in the market for another LBT (pish posh - as if there could ever be another!), or other equally lucky item of clothing in order to deal with my added workload and complexities.

Of course, in hindsight I shoulda worn LBT on Monday to avoid this conflict altogether.

Credit where it's due...

OK after lashing out at the Worst Pub In Subiaco (Paddy Maguires) last week, and being roundly criticised by my friends for doing so, I have to admit that I headed back last night.

While some of my mates threatened to "sort me out" if they ever saw me in Paddy's again (with friends like these...), I still popped in there are a nice Japanese meal last night. The same mediocre band was playing but there were a couple of pleasant surprises:

- as soon as I walked in there I saw an old mate who I'd assumed was still in Canada (Walshie - thats actually the second time in a fortnight I've run into a friend I thought was in Canada). He was there with another mate, Ben.

- Ben and Walshie pointed me to the "best performed" girl in the pub, a lass who must've started drinking at lunch time as she was three sheets to the wind, but when she started dancing she had all the moves. Can-can, grinding into her man friend(s), flailing arms ... pretty much everything except Elaine Benes' thumbs and kicking. And what's more, she was a Sarah Palin lookalike. Who woulda thought the Republican VP nominee had such a sense of rhythm?

- While Sarah had literally all of the pub looking at her out of the corner of their collective eye when she hit the dancefloor (and outright pointing and laughing when they realised she wastoo smashed to know/care that others were looking at her), eight blokes wearing green ties (looking like they'd just knocked off from Woolies) night shift rocked in. They were mates of mine from my cricket club, celebrating their win in an Indoor Cricket comp the night before. And they were on the lash alright.

So while only about six of us turned up and expected a relatively quiet night at Paddy's, perhaps punctuated by cringing as the band tried to hit the high notes, it actually ended up being a decent night. Despite not drinking (coz of my tooth) I came away with a hoarse voice, so much was I talking!

So credit where it's due, it seems that Paddy's isn't a completely useless pub.

Turns out it is, in fact, where everybody knows your name.

Then again, it could still be rubbish, and last night was just a reflection on me...