There have been quite a few times in my life where I have wished that I could replay the previous 5 or 10 seconds. It has happened a few times when I bumped into things with my car.  That horrible feeling of “oh no what have I done?” You get out of the car and have a look at the damage and you think to yourself, gee, I wish I could have that few seconds over again.

When I smashed my car in the desert, I kept wishing that I could somehow miraculously have the recent past back again. It seemed like such a small thing to ask for, I was actually surprised that I didn’t get my wish.

But… but… if only?

As the wise old Omar Khayyam once said:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

Or as my old grandmother used to say:

“If, ifs and and were pots and pans there’d be no need for tinkers.”

Back in 1983 I was in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, walking along the shoreline at night when I saw this truck backing up on a pier to unload its cargo onto a boat. A couple of guys were behind the truck guiding it as it backed down the pier, when it suddenly broke through the timber decking.

It’s a pretty sure bet that the truck driver wished he could have had those few seconds over again.

I had to change the washers in my shower taps today and it got me thinking about how we take household running water for granted.

Back in 1982 tool I stayed in Morocco for about three or four months and one of the things that I really hated doing was getting water from wells. Many of the places I stayed didn’t have running water. Because Morocco is quite a dry place most of the wells are very deep, and it takes quite a bit of effort to haul up a bucket (about 4 L or a gallon) of water  50 m (about 150 feet). I never saw a well in Morocco with a windlass and the water in a bucket on the end of a slimy rope had to be pulled up by hand.

The people in Morocco wipe their backsides with their left hand (no paper) and one has to use both hands to pull up a rope. You can’t drink un-boiled water from the wells for the reason that they are all contaminated with E.coli.

In the town of Tarrazout where I stayed for about a month and a half it was always such a drag to go and get water, because there was only one well, and there would always be plenty of other people in front of you. It was usually women that had to haul the water and to me, it seemed to be quite a social event for them. Everybody would take their time just yakking away with each other, and quite often it would take me about an hour or two just to fetch one jerry can (25 L) of water.

What made matters worse in Tarrazout was that the village idiot used to turn up with a donkey, loaded with very big barrels and spent about an hour or two filling them up. Every time he turned up at the well all the women’s eyes used to roll.  They couldn’t stand him and you could tell it wasn’t because he was retarded.  It was because they had waited so long on so many occasions in the past, while he filled up his barrels.

I took the picture above when I was travelling between Tarrazout and Goulimine. The women were pulling up water from a well out in the middle of nowhere.  I couldn’t see any buildings nearby, they must have walked for miles and a very hot wind was blowing.

I’ve recently bought myself a new single lens reflex camera, and I’ve been itching to try it out.  So I went down town to photograph the young Catholic pilgrims that have come to Sydney for World Youth Day.

Let me state right now that I’m not a religious person, and that I’m not anti-religious either.  I wanted to photograph the pilgrims, because I knew that they would be colourful subject matter due to the fact that many of them had wrapped themselves in their country’s flags, and it would be interesting to document the phenomenon.

I have to admit that my preconceived ideas, led me to believe that I could go and look at the pilgrims dispassionately as though they were just some picturesque folk who follow some anachronistic dogma rather than decent people with deeply held beliefs.

On the television news, I had seen a few reports showing the pilgrims playing music and it all looked a bit lame. So when I went down to Hyde Park near St Mary’s Cathedral in downtown Sydney it came as quite a surprise to me, how much I enjoyed the music and watching the people dance to it. 

As I was watching a Spanish group of pilgrims playing the guitar and singing while about 50 people danced in a circle around them, a young neatly dressed Spanish woman came up to me and told me in broken English, that she was part of that group and that she wanted me to know that Jesus loved me the way how I was. I have a standard reply that I tell such people so that I don’t get involved in some long and tedious discussion about the Bible.  I always say, ” thank you, I know”. That always puts a smile on their faces, and they leave me alone because they think I’m one of them. All the same, it did it gave me a warm feeling that someone wanted to share some joy.

Strangely enough, later on, I found myself thinking about why she had said what she had, to me, and the thought occurred to me that maybe because I was unshaven and sporting the generally unkempt look that I cultivate, she might have thought I was some kind of bum, full of despair and she wanted to up-lift my spirits. 

This thought occurred to me because I know that in Europe most people take pride and care in the way how they look and they tend to dress a lot more fashionably and neatly than many people here in Australia. To compound matters, I tend to dress even more casually than most other Australians.  I can imagine that many of these straitlaced young Catholics from Europe must think we’re so poor here, because so many of us just don’t bother spending that much money or time and effort on our grooming.  Sydney is a generally a very relaxed and casual place, and many people have transcended the need to dress up all the time.

In my travels to various parts of the world I have seen series of painted statues on display in cities.  In Denver, USA, a couple of years ago there were differently painted fibreglass cows, all over town as part of a series called “cow parade”. In Vancouver, Canada there are painted orca all over the place. The cows in Denver, were quite interesting, but the orca in Vancouver were lame, lame, lame!

Here in Sydney for World Youth Day, much in the tradition of the cow parade, there are Jesus Christ statues all over town that have been painted in various ways.  I found that most of the painted Jesus Christ statues weren’t very well done, but I did find one that I thought was fantastic. 

 Covered in mirrors, this statue was called “Reflection”.

I suppose it is trying to communicate that we should reflect upon the life of Jesus Christ and the Scriptures.  As I looked at this mirrored statue, I found myself thinking about how we as human beings tend to project our own concerns on the world. Although the Bible says God created man in his own image, I have a sneaking suspicion that man created God in his own image, and the mirrored statue seemed to be a metaphor of how our religions reflect who we are and how we see our place in the world.

Not very far from the reflection statue was a group of Filipinos who are being led in song by a Spanish priest, who played the guitar.

The priest had a beautiful voice, and the Filipinos sang along with him with a result that wasn’t as polished but not too different to the video below.

If the city of Sydney is to be inundated with large crowds of people from overseas, you really couldn’t pick a better bunch than young Catholics. So very different to the hooligan English soccer fans that plague continental Europe every year.

Back in October last year, my wife and I went to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to attend the Chinese wedding of our friends Claude and Jade.

As part of the Chinese pre-wedding ceremony tradition, Claude had to bargain his way into Jade’s family home. This involved arriving at Jade’s house with his groomsmen to haggle with her bridesmaids for entry through the front gate. The bargaining began with Claude, saying that he wanted to marry Jade, to which the bridesmaids began their demands.

Claude is a very quiet and thoughtful person who doesn’t have an extroverted bone in his body. The bridesmaids knew this about him and required that Claude declare his love for Jade at the top of his voice in five different languages. Claude was fairly easily able to comply with the language component of their demand but the bridesmaids like sharks sensing blood in the water kept calling on him to declare his love louder and louder. Whoever said that Asians are inscrutable and quiet doesn’t know Asians.  Jade’s Chinese bridesmaids were howling with laughter, with each attempt by Claude to satisfy their wishes and they raucously cajoled him into greater heights of embarrassment. The bridesmaids were merciless.

Finally, the bridesmaids relented and let Claude and his grooms through the front gate only to stop him at the front door. Jade was behind the closed front door and the bridesmaids told Claude that he would have to answers questions asked by Jade, and that if he didn’t get them correct, his best man had to apply make-up to him. Needless to say Jade asked so many questions that Claude was eventually covered in very badly applied makeup, accompanied by the very delighted shrieks of the bridesmaids.

The girls were loving it! Claude looked like he was going through a trial by ordeal.  It was very hot and humid and Claude was being dragged way out of his comfort zone.

The next step in Claude’s trials was to cross the living room to the bottom of the stairs, where he was once again stopped by the bridesmaids with their new demands.  I could see that Claude was starting to flag, and his spirits really dropped when he was told that he would have to sing a love song in French at the top of his voice to get up the stairs.

Luckily, Claude is a Francophone (which the bridesmaids knew) so he knew the words of a French song. The bridesmaids really enjoyed themselves as poor old Claude embarrassed himself once again at their pleasure.

After the song Claude and his entourage were allowed to the top of the stairs to the door and outside of Jade’s bedroom. The next demand by the bridesmaids was for money.  Basically they didn’t stop until they had everything in his wallet and only then did they let him through to see Jade.

The actual Chinese wedding ceremony was a surprisingly simple and brief affair.  The father and mother of the house, lit joss sticks and made offerings to their ancestors after which Jade and Claude did the same thing.

Tea was then made and Jade and Claude offered it to each other and then to Jade’s grandmother.  After tea, Jade’s grandmother then presented Jade with some gold, and that was it, they were now married.

The wedding reception was another thing altogether. It was held in a very grand hotel, and there were about 300 guests.

In February this year Claude and Jade had a lovely western civil wedding here in Sydney

The only graffiti I like seeing is clever stencil graffiti. I saw this brillant example painted on a bus shelter window in Bangkok last year.

I also saw some excellent stencil graffiti in Puebla and San Cristobal de Las Casas in Mexico two years ago in 2006.

If you’d like to see some interesting stencil graffitti in Slovenia taken by Grasswire click here

When I was about six, my mother (a widow) moved with my sister and I to New South Wales to start a new life in Sydney with her new boyfriend.  Although we lived in rented accommodation it was in a very up market part of town called Cremorne that had harbour views, and my first school in Sydney was in the posh suburb of Mosman.
 
My very first day at Mosman Infants School was memorable for the fact that I was beaten up by about 5 or 6 other kids.  I suspect that no one told them that kids from well-to-do suburbs were supposed to be gentlemen. I also guess that because I had bright red hair and freckles, I was marked out as someone who all the other kids could pick on. 

Years later I read The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski and I felt that I wasn’t alone. In the book a love sick game warden captures birds and paints them whenever the mad woman of the village he loves, will sleep with anyone but never him. The painted birds were released and the game warden gained some sort of solace as all the other birds would attack them.
 
I can remember my first few days at that school being quite miserable, as it seemed though the other children were competing with each other to see who could be the meanest to me. I guess one day, I just snapped. I had enough of the ill treatment and I turned around and started hitting back. I remember on one occasion, I walked up to a group of boys who are playing and asked them if I could join in.
 
My request was met with an aggressive push and a snarling, “NAH!”
 
Before I could even think, one of my fists had knocked out one of my antagonist’s front teeth.  He ran off screaming with his tooth in his hand and blood running from his mouth to tell the teacher what I had done. 
 
The teacher wasn’t interested in hearing what had happened and I was taken inside and caned.  For those unfamiliar with corporal punishment in the school system in Australia during the early 1960s, I will explain what caning is. The pupil is told to hold out his (girls weren’t usually caned) arm outstretched with his hand open and palm up to receive up to six strokes with a length of rattan cane about a half an inch (about 12 mm) in diameter.  Failure to do so would lead to a quick smack around the legs with the cane until the hand was held out to receive punishment. Boy-o-boy, I can tell you, it really hurt! I wouldn’t like to get caned as an adult, never mind being a little child.

There was also a code of honour in regards to being caned. It was considered to be unmanly to flinch and you were considered to be weak if you cried. Weak kids got picked on so it was not a good strategy to show how much it hurt. As soon as one is hit with the cane the automatic reaction is to shake your hand in the air, and quickly sit on them, which was bit problematic sometimes because more the one stroke was often administered. After being caned you were usually sent back to your seat, where you sat on top of you hands for an hour or so.  There was no point in trying to write because it was impossible to hold a pen and control it until the pain went away.
When I look back on my early days in primary school, there weren’t very many days I didn’t get the cane.
 
My time at Mosman Infants School consisted of being terrorised by my teacher, the very butch and cane wielding Mrs Davies and fighting with my fellow classmates during recess.
 
There was one kid in particular, whose last name was Rose, who used to cause me non-stop grief every time we came across each other’s path in the playground. For reasons that I still can’t understand Rose used to attack me (not once did I instigate anything with him) every time he saw me, and by then I used to automatically fight back. He seemed to have it in for me and I in turn, hated him right back. The teachers constantly had to pull us apart.
 
On one occasion I was walking along when Rose, who had been waiting behind a corner, jumped me and started pummelling me.  He got in a couple of good shots before I was able to smack him a few back. Before long we had our arms around each other’s necks in headlocks, and we were rolling around in the dirt by the time the teachers turned up. One of the teachers grabbed a hold of Rose, who was on top of me, and lifted him up off me. As soon as I was free of his grip, and I could see that the teacher was holding him, I ran forward and kicked him in the stomach. The teachers gasped at my un-sporting opportunism.
 
Rose was instantly released and I was dragged indoors and caned once again, and then told to go to the library. I was later told that day, after recess, that I was not allowed to play with the other children any more, and that I had to spend all my recesses for the next six months in the library.  Every time I attempted to explain why I had been fighting so much I was told to be quiet.

Although the situation seemed horribly unfair, I soon grew to love my time in the library.  I spent my time looking at books about submarines or aeroplanes and drawing pictures of them.  When I wasn’t sketching war machines I experimented with various forms of calligraphy.  It was a good day, when I could knock over a U-boat and some old Gothic script during lunch.  Because I used to also read quite a few of the books in the library my reading skills quickly passed everyone else in my class.

By the time my six months in the library was up, it was the end of the school year.
 
I was looking forward to my second year in primary school. I wouldn’t have to spend all my time in the library and I might have a chance to make some new friends. But alas, that wasn’t to be as my bright red hair acted as a magnet for more teasing and bullying.  I just kept on being picked on and as a result, I was involved in a lot more fights again.
 
I was never asked why I was in the fights and it was just assumed that I was a troublemaker. 
 
Again, I was sentenced to six months in the library, for the safety of the other children. My sister and cousin also went to the same school and I can hardly remember ever seeing them in the whole time that I went there.
 
Another six months of drawing and reading in the library during recess, passed.
 
I was finally allowed back into the playground with a warning not cause any trouble. Needless to say nobody had spoken to that miserable little shit, Rose.  Sure enough Rose attacked me once again and this time I got the upper hand and beat the crap out of him.  Once again, the teachers were not willing to listen to what had happened and I was sent to the library again. When it came time to go home that day, I was presented with a letter from my teacher saying that I was to give it to my mother, and they expected her to sign it and I was to return with it the next day.
 
The letter was a summons for my mother to come into the school to discuss my behavioural problems. Poor old mum was told that I was an uncontrollable danger to the other children and she had to take me to a Department of Education psychologist to be tested.
 
That was all fine with me because it meant that I didn’t have to go to school and I’d get a trip into the city instead.
 
I enjoyed my time at the psychologist because I got to play with blocks and answer easy questions.  It was a piece of cake and I thought I’d done well. The psychologist told my mother that I had the intelligence to be anything that I wanted to be, but I would never amount to much because I didn’t have any discipline.
 
When the psychologist heard from my mother about all the other troubles I was in outside of school (a story for another time) he suggested that I’d be put in a borstal (reform school) for two weeks to give my mother and the school a break.  I was told years later by my mother that the psychologist asked her out for a date. Mum thought he was a creep and declined his offer.
 
I was sent to Cronulla Boy’s Home as a punishment, but in fact, it turned out to be the best two weeks of my first two years at school.
 
The age of the boys at the home was between six and about fifteen. Whilst it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that such homes were full of incorrigible juvenile delinquent brutes, my fellow inmates were in fact; all decent guys and they treated me well.  Not once, was I bullied or picked on in the whole time I was there. The older boys either ignored me or treated me like a little brother.  It was the first time I’d ever been in an environment where I wasn’t being subjected to constant harassment.
 
It wasn’t all light and sweetness as the boy’s home was run by very scary matrons (the only male staff we came into contact were the ones we saw during our daytime classes). The matrons wore starched white nurses uniforms, and they enthusiastically wielded metre long (about 1 yard) rulers constructed of a leather, steel and leather laminate. In hindsight, I suspect that these were some kind of tradesmen’s straight-edge used for guiding blades when cutting things like carpet.
 
The matrons and their rulers terrified me.  I had seen them hoe into some of the boys with such gusto that they had me fully convinced that I didn’t want the same treatment.  The nearest thing I can think of that comes close to describing the matrons is the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”. They were the sort of people that one would paint a bush pink for, so as not to come to their attention.
 
Every morning began with a bed inspection and woes betide any boy foolish enough not to have a perfectly made up bed. The beds had to have the sheet pulled down to exactly the right place and the blankets had to be tucked in, neatly with what were known as “hospital corners”. The matrons had me so frightened that I didn’t dare ask them how to do a hospital corner so I used to just fake it and I would to spend a lot of time and effort frantically trying to make the corners of my bed “look” exactly as they wanted them. I never learned how to do it properly, until years later.
 
Aside from the scary matrons, the only other thing of my whole time in the boys home that I didn’t enjoy was after dinner when we got to watch television. All the older boys insisted that we watch “I Love Lucy”. I hated the show as a child and I still hate it to this day.

The Vietnamese think that dark skin is unattractive so many of the women who work outdoors keep most of their exposed skin covered.

After working a couple of years as a laser light show operator in the US.  I was looking for a change so I hooked up with some guys who had an electronic drag racing simulator game.  One of the guys, Mark was the son of the fellow who had invented the game and he invited me to come and stay with him in Minneapolis during the winter off-season.

Most carnies head south down to Florida for the winter, but what the heck I was always one to tread the path less travelled so I headed up north to freeze my arse off for 5 months.

When I first met Mark, I was in awe of what a go-getter he was.  Here was a guy that was 22 years old that had already bought his own house, a large pickup truck with a snow plough and a 1969 MG  “C” convertible.  Mark would work all summer in the carnival, and then he used to snow plough supermarket parking lots in the winter.  He seemed to embody the enterprising American can-do spirit.

Not only was Mark, a go-getter, he was quite athletic, being an excellent skier and ski jumper.  The cherry on top of all of this was his personality.  He was a great guy, very friendly and a lot of fun to be around.

When I first arrived to stay with Mark it was one long non-stop party.  It was just go, go, go and I soon found out why. 

The first clue I had that things weren’t quite right with Mark were all the children’s baseball bats and various other types of clubs in nearly every corner of the house. There was a baseball bat behind the front door, another one just near the door in the kitchen two in the living room, another at the top of the stairs, one in the bathroom, and I know he kept a big one in his bedroom.

Mark was a cocaine dealer. 

There was a constant stream of people coming to Mark’s place, and because they would snort some coke while they were there, it would instantly turn into a motor-mouthing party as all the various hangers-on, gas-bagged on, about nothing in particular, but at high speed and with great enthusiasm.

It’s easy to see why cocaine is so popular as it makes everyone feel as though they are the most witty and intelligent person in the room.  It gives them confidence to make conversation (even if it is about absolutely nothing), with just about anybody, in any situation. 

No wonder they call it the party drug. 

The trouble is, that if you aren’t on coke and you’re in a room full of people high on coke, it can be extremely boring.  The reason for this is that conversation doesn’t actually happen when someone is in the presence of a cocaine user, because a person high on coke could talk the leg off a table whilst under water, but doesn’t actually converse. They just rabbit on non-stop in the most inane fashion, only stopping occasionally to laugh at their own jokes. Basically they talk at you like you’re some kind of cardboard cut-out, not with you, like you’re a person that might also have something to say.

Mark was everybody’s best friend when we used to go out. Beautiful girls used to come up and give him a big hug and squeeze to rub their breasts against his arm while trying to charm him into fronting them a dime of coke.

“Awww common Maaaaark! You know meeeee, I’ll be good for it.”

“Pleeeeeze.”

Mark always said no and it was quite entertaining to see the demeanour of these young vixens change so quickly.

Another sort of perk of selling cocaine was that Mark used to get invited to all the rich kids parties and it was not uncommon for us to go to huge houses with a multitude of exotic cars parked outside.  When Mark arrived, it was as though a hero had returned, and very quickly a throng would form around him, and he would be dragged this way and that, so they could complete their deals with him.

Yes I have done that cliché “nude in the hot tub with the bimbos snorting coke” at the big parties thing…. numerous times. 

Because of the high price of cocaine (it was selling for $200 a gram in 1980) people without very much money would fake friendship with people who did, so they could get some coke. It was not uncommon, for guys on the make to go up to pretty young women at any social event and whisper in their ear, “I’ve got some coke, what some?” Forget about pickup lines, it was all about coke in the early 80s as far as I could see.

Cocaine is a selfish drug. It’s all about money and what it can buy.

“I’ve got some coke, wanna come and do some lines?” “Jus’ you an me.”

One night, a dentist with his wife and their girlfriend turned up at Mark’s placed to score.  I was talking to the dentist and their girlfriend when the dentist’s wife went upstairs looking for Mark. Mark told me later that he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, when the dentist’s wife walked in and pulled up her dress to show that she was not wearing any underwear, and then proceeded to go to the toilet in front of him.  According to Mark this sort of thing was always happening to him. Women would throw themselves at him in the hope of that he would be like so many other men trying to use cocaine to get into their pants and that hopefully he would get them high for free.

Ahhh…. Men!  Sometimes we are so weak.

Meanwhile downstairs, the dentist was wondering where his wife was, so he went upstairs looking for her, and I was left talking to the girlfriend.  As soon as the dentist disappeared, the girlfriend undid her blouse to expose a breast and took my hand and placed it on it, while saying to me, ”if you are generous, you can have some”.

I said to her,”what do you mean?” “What about those other two?”

“I only hang out with them about two or three nights a week for a three-some and to do some coke, but I’d like to get together with you and party some time soon.”

With the sound of people coming down the stairs, the girlfriend quickly pulled away from me and did up her blouse.  It was obvious from the way how animatedly everybody was talking, that they had been sampling some of Mark’s product upstairs.

They were in a very good mood, strangely enough!

The dentist and his wife got out some of the cocaine that they just purchased and chopped up a few lines for the girlfriend and like the experienced drug hoover that she was, it was gone, with a quick snort. The three-some then invited us to go out with them.

Mark declined.

As soon as the dentist, and his harem left, Mark asked me if the girlfriend had come on to me. When I said yes, Mark warned me with, ” she’s tried it on with me and I guess she’s tried it on with you, because she figures she can get high for free since your my friend “.

“Stay away from her because she is bad news.”

No shit Sherlock!

Mark used to buy his coke of another dealer who had his own business, making sandblasted wooden signage for businesses. He was such a crocodile skin, cowboy boot wearing stereotype.  He exuded the smugness of somebody who lived by the ethos of, “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich….. like me?” I found it very sad to see that Mark saw this arsehole as a mentor.

In the five months that I was in Minneapolis, I saw Mark go from a big healthy strapping confident guy who seemed to be master of his universe to a complete paranoid nervous wreck.

Mark loved coke and what it did for him, and the money that it brought in. He also liked the way how it made everybody love him. I guess that some people don’t really care where the love that comes from, or why it’s coming to them, but they’ll take it any way they can.

I remember very early one morning Mark came into my bedroom and excitedly woke me up, whilst shoving and mirror with a few lines of cocaine under my nose and saying “here, you’ve got to try this is, it’s amazing!” So I did as I was told and sat there high as a kite, as Mark motor-mouthed about what a great party he had just come home from and how good the latest coke was that he had just scored. Then, almost as suddenly as he came in, he said to me, ” I’ve got to dash, we’re going skiing.  See you tomorrow.”

So off he went and there I sat in bed at six o’clock in the morning by myself in a very vibrant state of wakefulness.  It just seemed so pointless. Mark was always offering me coke and he was quite surprised that I wasn’t into it as much as he was.  Cocaine is wasted on me, as I am naturally talkative and gregarious. I certainly don’t think it is worth the money, and I would never actually buy it.  Nowadays, I wouldn’t even go near the stuff even if it was free. 

About a week later, Mark told me that he and his sleaze-bag mentor were going to Aspen in Colorado to sell cocaine to well-heeled skiers.  I was asked if I wanted to join them, but I declined, as I knew that I wouldn’t enjoy the scene and plus it would cost a small fortune to try and keep up with those guys. So Mark bought a pound of cocaine, which at the time cost about $30,000 and he was hoping to realise about $50,000 or $60,000 in profit. Maybe even more if he cut it with the Italian laxative called Mennite, which I had seen him do many times.

Mark didn’t come home for three weeks, and during that time I got worried calls from his father, asking me if I knew where he was and that there were debt collectors looking for him.  Apparently, Mark’s father had been guarantor to all his loans, and Mark hadn’t been keeping up his payments for about the last two or three months.  The creditors were starting to circle around Mark’s father.

When Mark came back he was a shadow of himself.  He had lost a lot of weight and seemed all nervous, irritable and jumpy. 

It turned out that he had spent his whole time in Aspen, constantly partying with new-found friends, and that somehow they had snorted all his coke and he didn’t make any money at all.  He was devastated that he had gone into debt so he could try and make some quick money in Aspen, and he had basically lost a lot. 

To top it all off, he seemed to be in some sort of cocaine induced paranoiac psychosis. 

The change in Mark was startling, and his father who was a born-again fundamentalist Christian could see his son was in deep trouble. 

Mark’s father took him under his wing promising to pay all of Mark’s debts, but only after he had made Mark sign over everything that he owned and stopped taking drugs.  Mark’s father also said to him that he would require him to undergo frequent drug testing.  Once he was assured that Mark was on the straight and narrow again, he would give him back his house and cars.

This is a response to Pat Coakley of “Single for a reason“ post “Local Knowledge Necessary” 

“Quo vadis?”

“Just down the road a way.”

“If you get into trouble, don’t call me.”

“I’ll be OK, I’m 10 feet tall and bullet proof!”

“But there be dragons!”

“Aye! There be, and I have some experience of their fire.”

“The spirit may be strong, but the flesh is weak”

“That is true but time flies, life is short and I have far to travel.”
“After all, I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”

I was reading an article about losing passports on a blog called “I Am The Cheese” today and it got me thinking about my relationship with my passports and dealing with immigration in the various countries I have visited. 

I was 16 years old when I got my first passport, and I can remember being so thrilled when I received it.  I looked at all the blank pages and dreamt of filling them up with stamps from exotic destinations. 

I’ve had a total of five passports.  I filled up two of them, destroyed one in the wash, had one expire without filling it up, and I’m currently working on filling up a new fairly new one.

• 1st photo was taken in 1973 when I was 16

• 2nd in 1975 after two bouts of malaria and starving in Cambodia

• 3rd in 1990

• 4th in 2002 and it’s proof that you shouldn’t have passport photos taken after a big night out and with a killer hang-over.

The old passports were easy to fill up because back in the early 1970s, when I started travelling, the stamps in passports tended to be big, elaborate and colourful affairs. 

I used to love it when I’d get a nice big new visa stamp in my passport.  It was as though my passport was a gun and each new visa stamp was like a notch on the barrel, marking off each new kill.  This might sound crazy, but I used to love crossing borders and filling out the immigration forms.  The more questions on the forms for me to fill out the happier I was.

Although I liked getting the visa stamps in my passport and filling out the all the forms I didn’t have that much respect for the whole concept of authority. I used to bristle at the thought that my stays in various countries would be limited by how much time was allowed by the stamps in my passport.

The first time, this attitude got me into trouble was in the second country that I visited, Indonesia in 1974. Back then, you could only get a one-month visa, and if you wanted to extend it used to cost $25 US for another 30 days. This extra charge struck me as being outrageous, because at that time, I was making about $80 a week, and it seemed like a huge amount of money to pay.  Thanks to my bad attitude, I decided that I wasn’t going to pay the $25 extra and that I was going to sneak out of the country on a fishing boat or something when I felt like leaving, instead of getting the proper extension. So I took my time as I dawdled through the Indonesia from West Timor to Bali and then on to Java and Sumatra.

By the time I got to Sumatra I started to realise it wasn’t going to be so easy to leave illegally, and it would probably cost me way more than the $25 extra charge I was trying to save. Plus there was the problem of arriving in another country illegally. I’m not a very good chess player.

Okay, okay, so I’m as a sharp as a bowling ball! I know, I know!

By the time I’d gotten to the small town of Djambi in the southern part of Sumatra I had already overstayed my visa so I went to the local immigration office to sort things out.  Rumour had it that all officials in Indonesia were extremely corrupt.  So I hit upon a cunning plan.

I got all of my money, with the exception of about $10 worth of local currency and hid it in my shoes, and then I went into the immigration office and ask to speak to the boss.  Amazingly, I was taken straight in to see a General of Immigration (there’s a general for everything over there).  I walked straight up to him and shook his hand and then explained to him as best I could in broken Indonesian, that not only had I overstayed my visa, but I only had $10 to bribe him with to fix things up.

The general looked incredulous and embarrassed, as I, a long red haired teenage idiot offered him a pittance to compromise himself and break the law.  As a condition to entering Indonesia, I had to have an onward ticket out of the country, and the cheapest ticket out of Indonesia that could be bought overseas was a 15 minute air Malaysia flight from Medan, Sumatra to Penang in Malaysia.  The general asked to see my onward ticket so I showed it to him and then he asked to see my passport.  The general then stamped my passport and wrote in my passport that I had 10 days to get out of the country.  He then told me that if I didn’t leave by that time that I would go to jail, and that it was basically a deportation order.

Whoo! Hoo! My first sort of deportation! Awright! I was special, and I had special stuff written in my passport.  I couldn’t have been happier. I showed every other traveller I met over the next couple of months.

The next time I got into trouble with immigration was in Cambodia.  By the time I had arrived in Cambodia (about six months after I’d left home) I was starting to run out of money so I had to look for some work. One of the beauties of being a native English speaker is that one can always teach English in non English-speaking countries, with dodgy governments. The fact that I wasn’t qualified didn’t even enter my mind and it wasn’t very long before I found a bit of work here and there pretending to teach people how to speak English.  The matter that I was on a 30 day tourist visa, and I wasn’t supposed to work didn’t even appear as a blip on tje outer edges of my radar. 

Who ever said “ignorance is bliss”, sure knew their stuff, when it came to my attitude towards governments and their rights to control the movement and the employment of foreigners within their borders. I just didn’t give a shit.

Cambodia during my stay was in the midst of a civil war, and as such, the government was a shambolic free for all.  It was pretty easy at the time to get extensions to the visas, but it was much more problematic to get permission to work.  I had gone into the immigration Department to explain that I wanted to change my tourist visa to a work visa, and I was told that they would think about it.  That evening two immigration officers turned up at my place, and just hung around for about an hour or so, making small talk.  I was so clueless at the time, I thought they were just being sociable and I didn’t realise that I was supposed to pay them some money to sort my visa status out.  When it was obvious that they were wasting their time with me, they left, and my visa wasn’t extended or changed. 

To be honest, at the time I didn’t care. That is until I got a letter from the Australian Embassy, telling me to leave because the Khmer Rouge were about to take the city, and I had to leave in a hurry.  When I went to buy my air ticket out, I was informed that I had to get permission to leave the country, because my papers were no longer in order.

I went back to the immigration Department to try and set the matter straight.  I was kept waiting in a stuffy hot office for about two hours, and during that time a long haired American traveller who was there before me, totally lost his cool and started yelling and screaming at the immigration staff. He had been waiting for so long and it was the second time he had been through the long waiting rigmarole thing. Apoplectic with rage, his face turned a bright red as he spluttered invective at a seemingly imperturbable desk clerk. The American could see he was getting nowhere, and that the immigration staff were beginning to enjoy his little rant so he just “tossed his plaits” and stormed off.

A short while later I was shown in to the office of the man in charge, Su Sonn the Controleur de Police.  He was one of those greasy arrogant and horrible people, who made their way in the world by squeezing money out of everybody he came into contact with. I had seen him around town before, riding around on a big Harley Davidson dressed in a khaki safari suit and he used to wear a side arm in a holster around his waist. He parted his hair in the middle and slicked it back with a greasy pomade.  To complete the slime-bag image that he was cultivating, he was smoking a cigarette in a tortoise shell cigarette holder and wore aviator Ray Bans.

Su Sonn sat behind his desk, slumped in his chair as he gave my passport a cursory look. With a grunt he flicked it casually back at me, making sure it fell on the floor and said to “me come back tomorrow”.

I was starting to see why the American had lost it.  As I picked up the passport off the floor I remembered that the next day was a public holiday so as I stood up, I flicked the passport back across the table towards him, so it landed in his lap and I said to him “tomorrow is a public holiday, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks”.

It’s never a good idea to lose one’s temper in Asia with officials because they see it as a sign of weakness and lack of control. It only causes them to despise you even more.  I knew that Su Sonn scumbag was counting on me caring about whether or not I could get my exit permit. 

The thing was though, I didn’t care. 

I figured that if the guy was going to mess me around and then try and get some kind of huge bribe from me, I might as well, just say that my passport had been stolen and get another one. To hell with him! I was naive, brainless, 10 foot tall and bullet-proof.

I went back several days later and picked up the passport without any problems.

Whoo! Hoo! Awright! I was extra special now, and I had extra special stuff written in my passport.  I couldn’t have been happier. It was the first time I ever had to get permission to leave a country!

The next time I got into trouble with immigration was about a year later, in Japan.  Again, I had gone into the country on a tourist visa, with the intention of teaching English.  The Japanese at the time, where giving visas valid for multiple visits for two months over a six month period, that could be each be extended for another month. 

So in practice what one had to do was go to Korea after three months and then come back for another three months and then go out of the country again to get another Visa. Which I did, but the only problem was that when I tied to return to Japan, the Immigration officials at Smimonseki looked at my previous visa, and figured that I’d already stayed six months and that was long enough considering that I didn’t have enough money to support a tourist visit. 

They knew I was working, and I got to see side of the Japanese character that most Australians hadn’t seen since the Second World War.  All I can say is that it is the Japanese make the best of friends, but the absolute worst of enemies. Thanks to my wilful disrespect of Japanese immigration laws I got to see the nasty side of Japanese culture. They started to threaten me with ” we put you in monkey house”. “You no go home long time”. I could see that they are enjoying watching me to twist in the wind and the belligerent taunting went on for what seemed like hours.

I was getting desperate, and I finally blurted out that I had to get back to Tokyo, because my Japanese fiancé was waiting for me.  That threw a real wrench in their works, and they were full of consternation at what to do. After much heated debate in raised voices, they decided to ask me what my fiancé’s phone number was. I gave them my girlfriend’s phone number, and they called her and asked if it was true, I was her fiancé.  It was the first time Akemi had heard any such thing but luckily for me, she played along and gave the immigration guys assurances that we were in fact going to be married very soon. Incredibly, I was given a three-month stay and allowed to carry on back to Tokyo. Un-freaking-believable!

So I went back to Tokyo and continued teaching, but the three months went by awfully quickly, so I decided to hell with this, and overstayed my visa again.

In Japan foreigners have to register with the police, and they receive what is known as a gaijin (foreigner) card that they have to carry on their persons at all times. The gaijin card has to be updated by the police every couple of months.  Everything was going really well until I went to get my gaijin card updated and an unusually thorough policeman asked to look at my passport to check my details (it was the first time that it happened) and he noticed that I had overstayed my visa.  I was told I was in serious trouble and I had to go to the immigration Department immediately. 

Strangely enough, the immigration Department wasn’t very happy with me, and after reading me the “riot act”, they made me write out a personal apology to the emperor of Japan for breaking his laws (I’m not kidding) and then they told me I had a week to get my affairs in order and get out of the country or as I going to jail for three years.

Bummer!

When it came time for me to check in at the airport, the counter staff waved over two the huge beefy Japanese plainclothes policeman, who came over to me and without a word, each held me underneath an arm and kept a hold of me until the plane came.  When it came time to board, with hundreds of other passengers watching, the plainclothes policeman frog-marched me onto the aeroplane. I didn’t feel so it elated about having a real deportation happen. It was shameful and embarrassing, plus I was not allowed back into Japan for at least another five years. I loved Japan and the Japanese.

Double bummer!

As it turned out, I didn’t return to Japan for another 29 years.

My how things have changed, or should I say how I’ve changed.  I wouldn’t dream of trying any of that nonsense on nowadays.  I like my border crossings to be trouble-free, and I go out of my way to keep my nose clean when I travel.  These days I have, itineraries, rental cars, travel insurance and obey the laws of the countries that I go into without giving it a second thought.

The trouble is, when one does the right thing, it doesn’t lead to any experiences that are worth the telling.  Now when I come back from overseas trips, and anybody asks me about my trip, I can sum it all up with the following statement, ” I had a really great time, and everything went well”.

Nowadays it’s much harder to fill up a passport with stamps as they’re now these dinky little anticlimactic things.

One can assume, the more sophisticated the country, the smaller and more insignificant their entry and exit stamps are.  It would seem that it’s only Third World countries with Byzantine bureaucracies have nice big colourful stamps (more like bank notes really) any more.