Christmas Update

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Santa's Precis:
- I started and ended the year in Australia but did a heap in between
- I've been back in Perth for five months now without travelling which must be some sort of record
- hence the lack of travel emails
- Its been a big year for the family, beginning with an engagement party and ending with a wedding
- Curse my lack of creativity in buying presents
- Not surprisingly I have travels planned for 2009

Fear not my involuntary groupies, I don't have long so I'd better be quick. I've just had a massive Christmas lunch which included quite a bit of turkey. It's only a matter of time before the chemicals hit me and I pass out at the keyboard. It's already knocked out three of us so it's only a matter of time. If I don't make it you'll notice: one of my mates was fighting off sleep when writing a while ago and lost the battle. The result was 5 pages of the letter E.

I hope you'll notice anyway.

Not wanting to sound like Eddie McGuire, It's been a big year in 2008. I began down in Margaret River to celebrate the wedding on Emmanuel and Mel. That was in the middle of a 17-day binge which undid a lot of the good work I did in London gyms for two years. And it certainly undid the Delhi belly I'd recently suffered.

After celebrating the Engagement of my only sister to Dave (I don't want to ruin the ending but he's now my brother-in-law) in a Bollywood themed extravaganza in February, and a few nights of mayhem at the Beck's Music Box I jetted back to London, hoping to get a new visa and continue there for a couple of years. I got a job very quickly and beavered away to save money (to apply for a visa costs 1500 squid, plus a flight back home while you wait for entry clearance, so about 3k in total). But it wasn't to be. I did the sums and was about 1500 squid short of my income requirements. I was of course very sad but decided to use the funds to travel for about eight weeks in Europe. I wont further bore you with details of that - I managed to send out 16 blog entries during that trip: 8 weekly updates and 8 stories from the road. I may have mentioned that there are plenty of places I'd return to, specifically Paris, Freiberg and Istanbul. I followed that with a whirlwind tour of the UK which relied on the special generosity of Shane Balzan who lent me his car, and a good chunk of the Tucker family (who are pretty much my UK family). Thanks again for all your generosity, it was really wonderful!

So I arrived home on July 26, went to a wedding celebration that very night (to drown my sorrows at the Saints losing to the Eagles at Subiaco), and started work back at DPI on July 28. That's right, your taxes paid for my jetlag.

And really it's been pretty quiet since. In fact I don't think I've left the metropolitan area of Perth. I'm surprised at how difficult it is to stay still actually as I definitely have the travel bug.

The only travelling I've done since then has been lingual: I started learning French again at the Alliance Francaise in Nedlands. I've always wanted to learn another language and French is my second language at the moment (second by a long, long way mind you). I wanted a second language for a number of reasons, not least because it makes you think about English a bit more and hopefully allows me to be a bit more articulate (which isn't difficult). I have found it really enjoyable actually. For those in the know, I start at Intermediate level next year (which is level A2 in EU classification). Thanks also must go to Ines, who has been good enough to give me additional tips and clarification on a weekly basis with the benefit of being a native speaker.

At about the same time I moved into new digs in a great location in Subiaco, with two old friends, Nick and Kate. They've both been really great housemates so far - certainly they've been tolerant of my temper tantrums when I can't connect to the bloody internet for some reason. The house is awesome, as those who attended the housewarming a few weeks ago could attest.

We also had guests for two weeks: Mark "Chop" Leslie and his lovely girlfriend Nao crashed in the room next to me. They were involved in two memorable meals while they were here: the Hungry Jacks Quad-Stacker demolition and also some incredible Japanese food cooked as a thankyou to us. It was our pleasure!

December 13 was a particularly important day - Kristy and Dave's wedding. Aside from a minor scare with the wedding venue on he day (predictable when Dave said earlier in the day that he wasn't nervous at all), it seemed to go off without a hitch. I was honoured to be the MC for the reception, even if it did mean I couldn't drink much until my speaking duties were done. It was a wonderful celebration and was a great way to kick off a long and successful marriage, no doubt.

A week later (last Saturday) we did it all again, with Sleepy and Vanya getting married. Another excellent wedding and seven and a half hours of reception we ended up at the casino again.

Which is great because it will be good practice for my next trip, which starts tonight! There are seven of us jetting off to Melbourne on the red-eye to watch the Boxing Day test, and (hopefully) three of us will then head to NZ for New Years and a few days after. It should be fantastic!

Before that I have the rest of today to get through (must... fight... sleep). It's been a very relaxed day with great company and fantastic food. The only problem is that I am cursing the laziness of my purchasing choices for presents: so many rectangular presents (books, DVDs, CDs etc) - I really dislike buying them as I feel I can do better, but each year I fall into that trap. I'll do better next year.

In fact I hope to do better on a number of fronts next year: 2009 already involves trips to Broome (April), UK and France (July) and Sydney (September), so plenty of opportunities to get into interesting situations and then bore you with the details. The first such email will probably arrive in a couple of weeks from my travels to NZ and Melbourne.

In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to say thank you for listening to my rants during the year. I hope Christmas has been wonderful for you and that 2009 is just as exciting! I wish I could email or call you all individually but for now you'll have to make do with this!

Anyways, enough about me. How about you? What did 2008 hold for you? And what about 2009?

Take care and enjoy yourself,

Rosco

PS. I am still to put up pics of some of my travels in Europe but will do so as soon as I can!

The Pits

I came back from lunch today to the familiar guffaws of my neighbouring cubicle farm occupants, making the usual jokes about when I'd sign up for Iraq etc.

They were making the jokes as I'd got a haircut, and the jokes were familiar because I always get this haircut nowadays: No 2 on top and No 1 on the sides. While the guffaws (there's something about the word guffaw that's appropriate here - maybe because it reminds me of the laughter of Cletus, the Yokel from the Simpsons) were many, I was happy to be self-effacing also, calling myself Jarhead etc.

While this was all good fun, the experience of the haircut itself was a touch more worrying. First of all the price of the haircut was pretty exorbitant at $18. While many people, women in particular, will scoff -or perhaps guffaw - at my complaint at this price, a few things need to be borne in mind. Specifically:

(i) With a haircut like mine, which a blind man could do while hungover, there isn't that much variation in quality

(ii) Bearing that in mind, my barber is one of the old school establishments. By "old school" I mean mediocre. And by "establishments" I mean unisex salon.

(iii) Last time I got my hair cut there (September) it was $15, and the time before that (February) it was $12

Accepting this - because I was too lazy to go around the corner and check out the other old school establishment in the area - I walked in sat down and the lady started with the clippers. I don't understand how, no matter where on your head they're cutting your hair, you only ever
seems to be looking in the armpit or at the jowls of your barber. I honestly wonder whether it's some sort of geisha-like secret art form taught at barber college, but it's remarkable.

Needless to say, on such a humid day, it wasn't pleasant. It's quite possible that the only things less attractive than dinner lady arms are dinner lady armpits.

No wonder I get my hair cut so short - it makes for a long time between visits.

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.