My last week has been very busy with cooking.  I’ll be having some friends of French descent over this Friday night as a pre-Bastille Day celebration.  There will be 10 of us in total, and I want to make sure that the food is of a standard that my friends have come to expect from me.  I usually don’t make meals of the same ethnicity as my guests as I know that they will be comparing what I’ve made to what they grew up with. 

One of my pet peeves is the way how Italians crap on about food and their mother’s cooking.  So many Italians, I have met seem to think that not only their mothers are the greatest cooks in the world, but also that Italians are the only ones who know how to cook.  I am so over the idea of the integrity of ingredients and the simplicity of flavours that I hear so many celebrity chefs on television harp on about.  This Eurocentric chauvinism about food seems to deny the validity of complex flavours developed in the east, such as Indian and Thai cuisine.  I just won’t have it.

To all you Italian guys out there, who were always going on about your mother’s food, get over it and move out on your own!

This now brings me to the French. Sure enough, some French food is fantastic but to be quite honest, I’m not interested in eating so much offal and saturated fats.  I remember being quite shocked when I first looked in the bible of French cuisine “Larousse Gastronomique” at how much butter, cream and guts there was in so much of the so-called traditional French cooking. 

I keep on hearing about how the French eat these high saturated fat meals, and that they have a low incidence of heart disease in their country.  Some say it’s the red wine that is drunk with the meals that is helping ameliorate the effect of such a high-fat diet.  I think the reality is, that years and years of eating high fat food has killed off all the generations of the people who can’t metabolise so much fat and what is left is a country that is populated with people who are genetically engineered to efficiently process fat.

As for me, I have been genetically engineered to efficiently accumulate fat so my body can produce cholesterol and store it for hard times by lining my arteries with it.

Since I am getting together with my friends for, what is essentially a French celebration, I thought I’d put aside some of my fears and prejudices and cook them a French meal.

Whenever I cook a dinner for a large group I always test the menu two or three times beforehand to make sure I don’t have any surprises on the night. Since I wanted to avoid fatty foods I thought I’d cook fish dish of John Dory with shellfish, saffron and merguez broth. Sure enough there was cream in the recipe, but I used about a quarter of what was specified.

Quelle horreur!

The end result wasn’t bad, but I felt that merguez overwhelmed the lightly flavoured fish.

Since trying my hand at the French sea food meal, I was asked by a friend of mine who is a professional chef to help him with the preparation of some Indian dishes that he wants to serve at his wedding in November. So I spent the whole of Saturday with Mark at his place, cooking enough food to totally stuff 20 people.

 The idea of the dinner was to trial a variety of foods and then give a questionnaire to our 20 guests to see what they liked and didn’t like.

 There will be about 150 guests at this wedding and it looks like Mark has made quite the rod for his back considering that he wants to do all the cooking. I have foolishly offered to help. It looks like it’s going to be one hell of a day.

On Sunday, my wife and I had a really lovely day sitting out in the backyard reading the weekend paper and drinking vodka martinis. Although it’s winter here in Australia, it’s not that cold, and since we light up the chiminea, it’s quite comfortable to sit outside all day.

Because I have discarded the idea of serving fish for my French friends, I’ve latched on to the idea of preparing poulet chasseur (hunter’s chicken). I spent Monday, trying out a combination of recipes, and I think I’ve come up with something that my guests will hopefully like. I’ll post photos and the recipe after the dinner.

Over the weekend I’ve been listening to Bebo & Cigala on their album Lágrimas Negras

This last picture is in response to Pat Coakley’s question, What’s On Your Refrigerator?

The stuffed toy is the amazing, everlasting and very cantankeous “Magic Pudding” character from Norman Lindsay’s children’s book of the same name. The black dancing figure, magnet, is of Kokopelli a South Western American fertility deity, usually depicted as a humpbacked flute player who is also a trickster god and represents the spirit of music

Mai Long is an artist friend of mine whose work I love so much that I’ve bought 4 of her works over the last couple of years. I also designed Mai’s website and I’m her webmaster, as such, I do all the updates. Below is an artist’s statement about an exhibition that Mai had in Perth, Western Australia in late May this year, that Mai sent me yesterday to put up on her website.

Due to the sensitivities of the organisation ‘Vietnamese Community in Western Australia’, the Phở Dog installation has been covered.

Here is an explanation by Mai Long (the artist of the work)

Phở Dog is an installation of 12 mythical mongrels named Phở Dog. Part of my artist statement printed in the I love Phở catalogue (p. 44) explains Phở Dog as a ‘character that contemplates difference and tries to understand it in the broader context of human nature and complex political histories – a tribute to the idea that things will never fit into neat little boxes’ … and also… ‘Eating Phở in Australia as an Australian reminds (me) of the unhealed wounds of the Vietnamese
diaspora’ … in addition … ‘This work embodies my wish for a healing, and a search for hope and humour’.

Cuong Phu Le, curator of I Love Pho, informed me of a sensitive response to the Phở Dog ‘Keala’ at the opening night of the exhibition. Keala, a dog interweaving a number of flags and symbols from parts of flags from various countries, was seen to be problematic by the Vietnamese community, due to the five pointed yellow star on red background and the three red stripes on yellow background.

Over the past weeks, increasingly steady pressure regarding the problematic work - threatening ‘boycott’ / requesting ‘removal, or ‘covering the work’ - and negative media generated nationally throughout the Vietnamese community has taken it’s toll. It has been the personal criticisms directed at the curator that have been particularly damaging. Following many in-depth conversations with Cuong Phu Le, I made the decision to cover the entire Phở Dog installation. During our discussions, the curator had also expressed concern over my personal safety as I am scheduled to arrive in Perth 23rd May to run a weekend workshop.

It is with great sadness that I have decided to cover the entire installation of Phở Dogs with a black sheet, as if a shrouding, a mourning, a death-ness, a frustrated silence with mysterious and alien bumps. This is a gesture to acknowledge the suffering of the Vietnamese Community concerned, and at the same time the suffering of all peoples who cannot speak out in the world, and who are censored in their own societies.

I considered just removing or covering Keala, but to censor one would be to treat that mongrel differently to the next, which in essence goes against the grain of the entire concept of the installation. The mongrels need to be seen in context as well as individually. Individually and as a group they illustrate and talk to the whole idea of complexity and the problem of us all progressing equally together, as a healthy cohesive society.

Phở Dog tries to look at complex issues in a humorous light, with a main inspiration being selfmockery as I slot myself into a supposedly derogatory mongrel label (as a half-breed). Selfmockery is a mechanism I have used previously in my art to alleviate the weight of pain and seriousness I have placed on issues that seem so unfair and irreconcilable that you just don’t know where to turn or who or how to communicate them with. In this sense, sadly and ironically, this “blackout” of the Phở Dog installation seems eerily natural. However, I will need some more time to better digest what has occurred here.

Mai Long
27th of May 2008 

Phở Dog installation – by Mai Long 2006 –Casula Powerhouse Collection
Phở Dog Blackout – 23 May 2008 –Breadbox Gallery, Perth

Apparently there are people in the Vietnamese community here in Australia who feel that the current flag of Vietnam is as potent a symbol of oppression and hate to them as the nazi flag is to Jews. It would seem that 33 years after the war in Vietnam ended, feelings still run high. I find it ironic that some people would have us believe that behaving in a non-democratic and fascist manner is somehow better than the way how the Vietnamese government behaves. To such people I have this to say:

Guys, you’re here in Australia now (a country that recognises the current Vietnamese government) and those sort of bullying tactics are not what this country is about. You live here because you enjoy your freedoms. By all means express your opinions but that doesn’t give you the right to curtail the freedoms of others to express themselves.

Below is an example of Mai’s latest work.

All the recent hullabaloo in the newspapers here in Sydney about child pornography issues and art, got me thinking about the subject.  I don’t intend to comment on Henson’s photography myself, as I feel I that I only have a very foggy understanding of what art actually is.  I don’t really feel capable of expressing an erudite opinion on the matter of photographing young semi-naked girls in the name of art.  What I do have some experience with, and feel I can comment on, is young girls and the way how some of them respond to being photographed.

Back in the early 1990s, I was invited by a modelling school and agency in Dunedin, New Zealand to photograph all their recent graduates for their portfolios.  My contact with the modelling school was a professional makeup artist friend, who was a graduate herself.  Over a two-week period, I photographed over 40 young girls and women.  The age of my subjects ranged from about 14 up to the mid-20s.  It was a great job and I felt that the modelling agency had trained the girls very well.

All the girls had been trained how to pose in front of the camera and most of them were very good at it but what I found very disconcerting was some of the expressions that the very young girls just “turned on”.  About a quarter of the girls (mainly quite young from about 14 to 16 years old) affected the very overt and sexual “come and get me look” that is worn by many of the models in men’s magazines.  I had to explain to quite a few of the girls that when they become professional models they will be mainly used to model clothing to other women.  Since the majority of women aren’t gay, such “come hither expressions” won’t be of much use.

Another issue I found unsettling was the eagerness with which the girls would strip off in front of me to change.  This happened once while the girl’s mother was with me and she even didn’t bat an eyelid as her child disrobed in front of me.

Somehow they got it into their heads that models will be required to take off their clothing without much privacy.  I found myself explaining to a few of the girls (and their mother in one case) that when they go out in the world to make a living at modelling, they should expect proper facilities than insure their privacy as they get changed.  It made me shudder to think how such innocence can be pounced upon, and I warned them that if they were ever working anywhere, where there weren’t adequate facilities for them to get changed they should be highly suspicious, and to be on their guard.

It was fairly obvious to me that many of these models had gone through much of their young lives being told how beautiful they were and it gave them a false sense of what attractiveness actually is.  I think that when we are young, due to our lack of experience in worldly matters, things tend to be a little more black-and-white.  Due to the youth and inexperience of many of the girls, they had no idea about the difference beauty and raw sex.

I think the word glamour is misunderstood by many people.  Glamour means a illusory sexual allure and that’s just what it is, it’s an illusion.  I think this confusion between beauty and sexual allure leads to a Frankenstein version of what an attractive self image is, in young minds.

I’m pretty sure that when parents and relatives tell children that they think those kids are beautiful, they’re not usually trying to plant overtly sexual stereotypes in those children’s heads.  What are children to think of when they see toys like Bratz dolls and the bump and grind of a Britney Spears or Shakira performance?  It would seem that kids aren’t really allowed to be kids any more.

I bet the parents of a beautiful young 15-year-old girl, who I had been photographing, would be absolutely horrified to know that their beloved and precocious little moppet followed me into the toilet, and asked me if she could help me get my equipment out (if you know what I mean).

I wonder how, many parents would react, if, when their beautiful child is asked what they wanted to become when they grew up, their child responded with “I want to be an underwear model”? I also have to ask the question, what’s with these people who put their kids in child beauty pageants? Do they really think that is harmless to make their little girls into painted up sex objects and then judge them?  What, if anything, is going through their heads?

I think that this accelerated sexual development is not only harming the children when they are young by cutting short their childhoods whilst perverting, and quite often diminishing their sense of self esteem. It’s also harming the society that we all live in as they get older. 

As I have become older, I tend to feel that women fall into two groups.  There are people with intellects who happen to be women, and then there are another group who are nothing more than painted up life-support systems for their genitalia (I guess the same can be said for men).  I remember once meeting a highly made up woman who didn’t want to shake hands when we met and when I asked her why, she said that she thought that I was just trying to make her breasts jiggle.

Most intelligent women that I have ever met don’t wear much, if any, makeup at all and they tend to dress in a comfortable and casual way.  I think that many women who spend an inordinate amount of time on their appearance don’t give themselves a chance to be treated with the respect that they crave.

Being attractive enough to create arousal in men is a biological necessity that enables the continuation of our species. Unfortunately due to heavy advertising aimed at eroding women’s self-esteem so that they will buy more beauty and fashion products, striving to be sexually alluring into old age has become something of a quest for many women. 

The seeds that we plant in young people’s minds today will shape the society of the future. 

From tiny acorns mighty oaks grow.

There are sometimes that I feel so disassociated from the rest of the society that I live in.  Like one of the androids in Blade Runner once said, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe” and I feel some of those things that I have seen, separate me from most other people in the way how I cope with stuff that doesn’t go my way.

I am constantly amazed at the whingeing that I hear in this prosperous and fat first world country that I live in.  It seems to me that some people are living in some sort of antiseptic bubble that insulates them from the rest of the world.  It blows me away to think that some people (here in Australia) think that it’s acceptable to complain about water restrictions, and the fact they can’t wash their cars in the time of a drought. Or that it’s okay to harp on about not getting financial assistance from the government in the form of the baby bonus when you’re earning over $150,000 a year.

“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!” 

I’ve also noticed that a lot of Bloggs, that I’ve been reading lately have been discussing idiosyncratic eating habits.  It just goes to show what prosperous lives many of us lead in that we can be so choosy about what we eat.  There was a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald about people who falsely claim to have allergies to foods.  Apparently real food allergies are very rare and can be life-threatening, but it would seem that some people like to claim they have allergies as it is an attention seeking ploy that sets them apart from the mainstream.

“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”

I’m hardly without sin in this area myself as I hate and won’t eat pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, or any offal. I’ve been thinking that on an evolutionary level it’s not a very smart strategy to be a picky eater.  We’ve spent millions of years developing a taste for eating just about anything that ever lived. 

“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”

My stepfather (Manfred), who was in Germany during the Second World War as a teenager, and in the Hitler youth, always likes to say “you can shit on my plate and I’ll eat around it”. Manfred has told me stories about the deprivations that he and his family went through at the end of the Second World War, when they were forced by the occupying Russians to leave what was once the German part of Prussia known as Upper Silesia (now a part of Poland) and walk to Berlin with no supplies.  When I was a teenager and I used to peevishly complain what was for dinner, Manfred used to remind me about how he and his family had to live on grass soup for two weeks and that I should be just grateful for what I have in front of me. 

“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”

My mother who grew up in post-war England during the time of rationing had very little patience for any sign of picky eating.  My mother’s standard response to any question about what was in a meal was “Shit with sugar on it!” “What do you think this is a restaurant?” “Shut up and eat it!”

“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”

The woman in the picture above is a beggar that I saw in 1974 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia during the war. There were so many pathetic beggars in Phnom Penh at that time.  It was a regular freak show of maimed soldiers; orphaned children; refugees, lepers and war widows, not attractive enough to become prostitutes. In short, people with REAL problems.

I saw the woman in the photograph nearly every day, and one day I saw her on her hands and knees vomiting onto the sidewalk.  Her whole body just convulsed with spasms as she retched up what little food she had in her stomach.  When she had stopped being sick she scooped up the vomit and re-ate it. She obviously was too poor to be able to waste food by leaving her vomit on the footpath.

This brings me to the whole concept of contrast.  Chiaroscuro is an Italian word describing light and shade. It’s a term that one will see quite often in books about art and in particular, the Renaissance era.  By varying the tone of a drawing by simulating highlight and shadow, an artist can create the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. A bit of contrast makes things in general, more…….. “real”.

As I go through life and get older, I’ve come to realise that the old adage “whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”, has a lot of of truth to it.  I think that the bad things that have happened to me in my life have helped me appreciate to a greater degree, the good things that happen to me.  I also think that because I’ve had such an extreme range of highs and lows that I am better able to deal with life’s little disappointments. A little chiaroscuro serves me well.

When ever I have some difficulties, I just reflect on some of the really negative benchmarks that I have, in my stupidity, accumulated. I was nearly killed when I came under mortar fire by the Khmer Rouge. I’ve been beaten up by the police and a mob in Morocco, nearly had my foot torn off on a train, smashed my car in the desert nearly killing my wife and I, and last but not least, lost 10 kg (22lbs) in two months when I had malaria and was starving in Phnom Penh.

To lighten the mood of this rant, I’ve put in this little video, titled “Harden the fuck up” by Ronnie Johns (an Australian comedian), impersonating a famous Australian criminal and murderer called Chopper Reid (the subject of the excellent movie “Chopper” starring Eric Banna).

As I have mentioned in several posts previously I have spent quite a bit of time in the USA.  Lived there for two years during the early 1980s, and I have been back there four times since on various holidays. 

One of the things that really gets my backup is when people automatically dismiss America as a travel destination because of its foreign policy or the fool who is currently in power over there.  Although it could be argued that American foreign policy and politics are a manifestation of the national will, most Americans I’ve met don’t support Bush’s deranged and rapacious ways.  Sure, Bush stole the election fair and square, but the majority of Americans did not vote for him. 

As a matter of fact, a majority of Americans don’t vote at all because they have no interest in the candidates. The two party political system has left a great deal of the population feeling they aren’t being represented by either the Republicans or the Democrats, so they just don’t participate in the election process. 

Americans that my wife and I met were very concerned about foreigner’s opinions of America.  So often, the people that we spoke to (without us instigating any conversation about politics) actually apologised for Bush and made a point of telling us that they did not vote for him. 

The average American that I’ve ever encountered is a very polite and friendly person who is happy to meet people from overseas.  I was treated with nothing but courtesy and decency (with a few notable exceptions), in all the times that I have visited the States.

Some other people seem to think that because America has the largest economy in the world that it must be some big industrial wasteland and there are a quite few places like New Jersey (the “Garden State”, what a joke!), that do fit the bill, but on the whole it is an incredibly beautiful country.  I particularly like the south-western states, but there is beauty to be found across the whole country.  I have been to about 45 of the states and I feel that I can say this with some authority.

My favourite place in the US is the Grand Canyon (I’ve been there three times), but my second favourite place is Yosemite.  

Because of its beauty, Yosemite is usually very crowded for most warmer months of the year.  My wife and I visited Yosemite in the late summer, early autumn of 2006 and the park was almost empty. 

Apparently, most people go to Yosemite in the late spring or early summer, because the melting snow creates numerous waterfalls, off the steep rock faces of the valley.  There were no waterfalls when we visited Yosemite but it was still amazingly spectacular.  When I was younger and I used to rock climb, I used to fantasize about climbing at Yosemite and after visiting there, I found it easy to understand why the place was such a rock climbing mecca. The whole place is just stunning.

Last weekend my wife and I went to Cabramatta in western Sydney with my friend Peter and his friends for lunch.  Although I have lived in Sydney for many years I had never been to Cabramatta before and I had heard that it was a great place to have Vietnamese food.
 
Cabramatta has the mixed reputation as being the centre of heroin distribution and Vietnamese culture in Australia.  Up until recently, smack was sold to junkies, fairly openly in the streets there.  Once a few of the tabloid television shows started running stories about how easy it was to buy heroin in Cabramatta the police finally got their fingers out and started to do something about it.  Heroin dealing has now gone underground, and is no longer a common scene on the Cabramatta streets.
 
Cabramatta has become almost a tourist attraction, because of its large Vietnamese population and the plethora of Asian businesses and restaurants.  On Saturdays Cabramatta is very busy as the streets fill up with people who have come to buy Asian vegetables and eat at the restaurants.

It came as quite a surprise to me when I asked several of the locals for directions to an automatic teller machine, that none of them could speak English very well to the point that they couldn’t understand what I was saying, and I couldn’t understand their replies.  It would seem that the Vietnamese population in that area of Sydney is so large, that people can live there without having to learn English. 
 
Now this isn’t going to be a rant about “foreigners must learn English if they want to live in Australia” because I know what it’s like to live in a foreign country that speaks a different language than I do. 
 
I speak enough French, Spanish and Japanese to get around, but not enough to have anything other than a childlike conversation in those languages. I think that many people don’t realise that when one learns a second language that it is so difficult to have mature conversations with any depth and that is why many non-English speaking immigrants in English-speaking countries tend to stick with their own kind so that they can speak their own language.  I lived in Japan for a year and had a Japanese girlfriend at the time so I learnt enough Japanese to be able to get by, but I found it far less taxing to speak English with native speakers as I could express myself more fully, easier.
 
Every day I accompany my wife to the train station when she commutes to and from work because there are quite a few unsavoury characters about, plus I don’t like the idea of her walking home alone at night.  The area that I live in is mainly populated by blue-collar Caucasians with a sprinkling of Southeast Asians and Sri Lankans, and it is in the process of being gentrified as the price of home ownership is sky rocketing here in Sydney forcing first-time home buyers further westward.  It’s very interesting to see the division in education, when one looks at who is standing on what platform at the train station in the morning.  The people on the platform heading east into downtown Sydney are all in office clothing reflecting in general a higher level of education than those people standing on the westbound platforms, heading out into the more industrial areas.  In general, the people heading east tend to be from a broad ethnic background, look cleaner and well groomed than the mainly caucasian people heading westward who are generally scruffy and display far more jail tattoos than I’m comfortable with.  The contrast between the people occupying the eastbound and westbound platforms is quite stark and to me it displays a cultural polarization. 
 
There seems to be a shift in Australian culture at the moment, with the population becoming better educated and employed in white collar jobs but there still is an element that seems to be in love with the whole concept of being an “outlaw”. A sort of white-trailer-trash-biker aesthetic.  I think many of you would know what I mean.  Homemade tatts, long greasy hair with long beards and black grease under the fingernails, with of course, the obligatory earrings.  To me that whole scene is so anachronistic, and it belongs to a section of Australia, that looks backwards rather than into the future direction that Australia is heading.
 
In the past, I used to see Australia as a cultural backwater but lately; I feel that we are at the forefront of cultural policy.  For the last 30 years Australia has had the forward thinking  policy of “multiculturalism” in which we have seen a shift from a predominantly Anglo-Celtic culture to a far more ethnically diverse culture. Thirty percent of the people who live in Sydney weren’t born in Australia.
 
There are many people of Anglo-Celtic background, who are concerned by the racial and cultural shift happening here in Australia as they feel that many foreigners come from less than ideal philosophical backgrounds and that they will somehow contaminate Australian culture and degrade it in the process.  I think that what a lot of these people don’t realise is that most of the people who have come here to Australia, did so because they thought Australia had something to offer that their homeland didn’t and they don’t necessarily have an agenda to change Australia into a version of their homeland.
 
One of the distressing things I’ve noticed is how some people think that because they are white they are somehow better than people who aren’t. 
 
One evening while I was waiting for my wife at the train station, I saw an old Sikh man make the mistake of asking directions from a dirty and scruffy tattooed youth with bad teeth and the mandatory sports clothing with logos plastered all over them (so beloved of white-trash).  The old Sikh asked his question to which the youth replied loudly, “WHAT?!” The old man would repeat his question to receive the same loud WHAT?!” This cycle happened four or five times until the youth exploded with “WHY DON’T YOU LEARN HOW TO SPEAK FUCKING ENGLISH?!” Then he just stormed off yelling racist epithets at the old man. The poor old shocked Sikh came up to me and then asked his directions again.  Sure enough, his accent was very thick and not that easy to understand but I hung in there and was able to help him out. 
 
The whole experience left me feeling very embarrassed, as I have never been treated in the way that the old man had been treated when I’ve been overseas in countries where I don’t speak the language.  I would say that in general, when I’m overseas, everybody I’ve ever asked directions from has been universally helpful and polite.  It really pisses me off that some ignorant lowlife scumbag thinks he’s better than someone else just because he is white. There are many people of an Anglo-Celtic background here in Australia who would do well if they took the time to learn about other cultures.  In no way am I saying that foreign cultures are better, but I am saying that we should be eclectic and take the best from every culture.

This is part 3 in a 3 part story.

If you want to read part 1 click here.

If you want the read part 2 click here

With the constant chatter of machine-gun fire in the background, we waited for the ammunition truck in the only small copse of trees in what was basically a couple of hectares of rice paddies out in the open.  With the aid of the Cambodian reporter, the Space Cadet and I made casual small talk with the boy soldiers.  It was completely surreal, and everybody seemed quite relaxed, as they enjoyed a few moments of impromptu socialising.  Every now and again the Space Cadet would punctuate the conversation with his mantra of “Wow this is all so real!  This ain’t no movie!”
 
When the ammunition truck arrived, the soldiers that we had been chatting with, explained to the driver that he was to take us to the front.  The back of the truck was fully loaded with ammunition of all kinds so all three of us (the Cambodian reporter, the Space Cadet and myself) piled into the cab with the driver. It was a bit cramped, but no one could ride in the back. Talk about getting into the most dangerous ride in the world. Being close to battlefront was bad enough, but getting into a truck loaded with explosives that might get detonated by a lucky shot, was probably the stupidest decision I’ve ever made in my life.
 
The dirt road was raised at about a metre higher than the surrounding rice paddy fields so the driver just put his foot to the floor and drove as though his life literally depended upon it.  A full ammunition truck raised above all the surrounding landscape would have been the target of choice.  About 1 km from where we got on the truck we sped past a dead burnt body by the side of the road.  In the split-second that it took to pass the body, I could see that it was on its back with its arms and legs in the air as though it were some insect that had been sprayed with insecticide. His clothes had been almost totally burnt off, revealing shiny vitreous blackened skin.  There was no one else around and the body was there all by itself like a pathetic discarded shop mannequin.  It all happened so fast that I almost didn’t feel anything other than regret that I couldn’t stop and take a photograph.  It makes me shudder when I think about how unfeeling and uncaring I was back then.  So childishly selfish, hardly better than a hungry animal.
 
We sped down the road for about another kilometre or two until we got to a small village of battle damaged grass huts, which was our destination. 

Our ride skidded to a halt, and we all jumped out as fast as we could and ran for cover behind coconut trees to wait for the commander.  It took me a few seconds to realise that there were Cambodian government soldiers dotted around the village behind whatever cover they could find. 

The sound of machine-gun fire was no longer a background noise.  When I was in high school, I used to be in the army cadets and that involved training with rifles (Enfield 303) and machine guns (Bren guns).  When we used to go down for rifle practice we all had to take turns in the bunker at the end of the rifle range to keep track of how well the other kids were shooting at the targets.  It was during these times at the rifle range I became familiar with the different sounds bullets make.  When one shoots a rifle and the bullet is moving away from you the sound is very similar to what one hears in the movies but of course much louder.  When a bullet is travelling towards you it makes a cracking sound that is similar to a bullwhip.  As we waited for the commander I could hear both types of bullets sounds.  Incoming and outgoing.
 
Waiting behind the coconut tree in the company of soldiers who were similar in age to me, with the sound of gunfire all around, was the most scared I’d ever been in my life.  I’m talking real fear that borders on panic, and not some milder type of fear like the type caused by someone threatening to punch you in the face.  The fear that I experienced during that time has become a benchmark in my life that I use to compare how scary something is.  I wasn’t the only one that was scared and as I looked around everybody I could see was hunched over in silent contemplation over how close they were to shitting themselves. 

I found myself thinking about how I put myself voluntarily into such a situation, and then comparing how stupid I was in comparison to the poor Cambodian soldiers who had been drafted into the army and who were there, through no desire of their own.
 
Fear is a physical response to hazardous stimulus, and I’m pretty sure it serves the very important function of keeping us out of harm’s way. It was at this moment, I found myself thinking about how young men can be trained up to do very unnatural things like ignoring the very natural instinct to remove oneself from danger.  In a flash, it became very obvious to me that it was this very fact that one could train up young men anywhere in the world to ignore their fear and the desire for self-preservation that was causing so much trouble in the world. 
 
It would seem that there is always a group of young men, that you can train and give weapons to, who are willing without much informed thought to go and kill other people for whatever foggy reason.  It’s happening in Iraq right now.  Young Americans have been told that they are in Iraq fighting for some noble cause, when in fact; they are just helping the oil companies maintain their supply and profits.
 
In amongst all the noise and fear, the commander and his sergeant wandered casually into view like they were taking a stroll in the park.  When the commander, who spoke English, saw us hiding behind the trees he laughed and waved his hand in a motion to get us to stand up and come out in the open like him.

 The commander was saying it’s okay, it’s okay, the Khmer Rouge are about 200 m away and they can’t see us.  The commander’s confidence eased our fear considerably, so we got up and made our introductions. 

The Cambodian grunts stayed put, they weren’t stupid. The commander then called out to a few of the soldiers to unload the truck, and invited us to come to his command post and have a few beers.
 
The command post was a grass hut with a paved brick floor that had some of the walls and the roof blown off by a mortar round.  There was so little of the structure left that it was almost like sitting out in the open.  In the middle of the floor was a small folding card table, with a few ammunition boxes for seats around it.  We were invited to sit down with the commander as the Sergeant yelled at one of the soldiers to get us some beers. Off to one side of the floor was a set of stairs down into a bunker.
 
So there we sat, in the open, making small talk and drinking warm beer, with the sounds of bullets coming and going, whilst the rest of the soldiers stayed under cover.  The commander said that they had captured some Khmer Rouge soldiers, and that if I stick around, I can get some pictures of them.  This would have been quite the coup as there weren’t very many photographs ever taken of Khmer Rouge fighters as the government soldiers rarely took them alive. 
 
I guess the commander wanted to inspire his troops with his cavalier disregard of the danger.  As for me, I was just going with the flow.  I was so childlike in my trust and confidence in the commander’s ability to interpret the state of affairs. The way that I had it figured was that the commander was used to that sort of situation and was better able to evaluate how to behave under such circumstances, so I just did as he said. 
 
We had been sitting for about 15 minutes, shooting the breeze and knocking back the beers when all of a sudden, BAMM!!  A 105 (as I was told later) mortar round nearly blew me out of my chair. The pressure wave of the explosion was like getting smacked in the face with a plank.  As the dirt from the explosion was coming back down and landing on us, all us noncombatants just looked at each other and as one, made a dash for the bunker.  The commander grabbed me by the arm and said not to worry because the Khmer Rouge only shoot one mortar round and then move to another position, because they knew that the government forces could hear where the rounds were coming from and would go after them.
 
No sooner had the commander finished his re-assurances, when another round came in with a loud BAMM!! Another smack in the face with a plank, and this time, I just bolted down into the bunker, followed closely by the reporter and Space Cadet, so fast that the dirt from the explosion didn’t land on me.  The commander and sergeant ambled in casually, like it was all no big deal.  Which I guess for them it wasn’t but for the Space Cadet and I, things were getting a little bit too real. The Space Cadet was right, “it was all so real!  It wasn’t no movie!”
 
The bunker was basically a square hole 4 m by 4 m (about 12ft by 12ft) in the ground with two army cots in it.  The roof of the bunker was made of coconut tree trunks that had been piled up about three or four trunks thick.  The height of the room was about 2 m (about 6’6”) and near where the wall meets the ceiling, there were two slots for each wall about 20 cm high (about 8”), and a metre (about 3’) long to shoot out of.
 
Just as we got into the bunker, another mortar round scored a direct hit on the top of the bunker and dirt from between the tree trunks fell to the floor, and just in case I wasn’t already terrified enough, two more mortar rounds came in very close to the bunker for good measure.  In total, five rounds had come in. So much for only firing one round and running.  That smug arsehole nearly got all of us killed.
 
The commander sat on his cot and waved to us to sit down and told us to relax as we were now quite safe.  Next to his bed was an ammunition case that was serving as a bedside table and on it was a little tubular personal defence weapon for officers. It was a little bigger than a cigarette, fitting in the palm of the hand and it was loaded with a single small shotgun shell.  I picked it up and cocked it (It cocks like one of those small toy cannons that fire matchsticks) and held it in my hand as I looked up at the slots thinking about what to do if a hand grenade got thrown in.  I was totally freaked out, because I had been thinking that perhaps the mortar fire had been a prelude to an attack. 
 
I sat in a corner with my back against the walls looking up at the slots thinking to myself about grenades, and how I should just pick it up and throw it out; pick it up and throw it out; pick it up and throw it out. The reporter and commander were deep in conversation and  I can’t even remember what the Space Cadet was up to as I was in total self-preservation mode.
 
After what seemed like an eternity of me thinking, pick it up and throw it out; pick it up and throw it out; pick it up and throw it out, a soldier came into the bunker to let us know that the ammunition truck had been unloaded and that we could now go back.  I didn’t give dam about that taking photographs of the Khmer Rouge prisoners, and I couldn’t get in the truck quick enough.  I’m pretty sure the driver had the same idea because no sooner had we shut the doors of the cab, he put his foot flat down on the accelerator and we raced back down the road to where we came from. 
 
As we were hurtling along as fast as the potholed dirt road would allow, small groups of panicked government troops came running out from their positions and tried to jump on the truck.  Amazingly, one guy, was actually able to jump up on the running board on the driver’s side and was holding onto the open window frame.  The driver started screaming at the terrified soldier and smacked him in the face with his elbow and knocked him loose from the door.  More soldiers came running out, and the driver was yelling at them as he sped past them.  The reporter told me that he was telling them to stay and fight and that they were a bunch of cowards.  Pretty easy for him to say considering that he was leaving at high speed.
 
When we got to the T intersection where we met the two soldiers before, they were nowhere to be seen, so we took a left turn and headed back to the Army checkpoint were all the weapons had been piled up.  As we are driving back to the Army checkpoint the Cambodian reporter had told us that the commander had informed him that his soldiers hadn’t been paid for months, and that he was pretty sure that some of his fellow officers had been stealing the payroll and wanted the Americans to know who they were.
 
We were dropped off at the checkpoint, so that the truck could be loaded with more ammunition.  There were quite a few wounded soldiers being carried back, and we noticed one guy who had shrapnel wound to the face and upper leg and had no one to help him, struggling along barely able to limp, so we offered to give him a hand.  At first, two of us each took an arm and placed it around our shoulders, to help him walk but he was in so much pain he just couldn’t bear it. We finally figured out the best way to carry him was for one person at a time to straddle him on their shoulder and walk with him up there until they got tired.  The poor guy was so thin and light that carrying him was not that much trouble for the Space Cadet, reporter and I. The wounded soldier was in so much pain that each step we took caused him agony. When we changed him from one of our shoulders to the other person we could see how much pain it was causing him, but there was nothing we could do and we knew we had to get him back.

When we got to the ferry we handed him over to some other soldiers, and they took care of him from that point onwards.  We were so numb that our ferry ride back over the Mekong passed without much conversation.  I was so caught up in my thoughts about what had just happened that I hardly even noticed the battle sounds receding.  Even the Space Cadet was quiet.  It was a hell of a job that that Cambodian reporter had to do, day after day, and I feel ashamed that I can’t remember his name.
 
Everybody’s mood changed instantly as soon as we got off the ferry.  As the wounded soldiers were disembarking, one could almost feel a palpable sense of their relief. It was like a weight being lifted off everybody shoulders. We knew all was right with the world, when the Space Cadet started off on his mantra once again, “Wow this is all so real!  This ain’t no movie!”

My mother saw the picture of the lorikeet yesterday and in response she emailed the photo below that she took on the weekend with the words: “you have the parrots and we…………..still have the ice in Hamilton harbour”.

When I used to live in Canada I used to think about how hard it must’ve been for the first Europeans who settled there back in the times of no central heating or imported out of season vegetables. Just goes to show how grim life must’ve been in Europe at the time for the peasants.

Every now and again I almost feel spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing things like what to eat or places to go to. When it comes to food, I’m not a fan of offal and every time I see offal for sale I think about how in the old days the average peasant (my forebears) wouldn’t have been able to afford to eat the better cuts of meat and that they would’ve had to resort to eating “humble pie”.  Now I know that some kinky types have developed a love of innards but all I can say when confronted with a plate with guts on it, is “get that crap away from me!”

I feel the same way about Canada in the winter. In this day and age of first world wealth where the average employed person living in a developed country can, without having to scrimp and save for a long time, buy a ticket to anywhere in the world, I find it difficult to understand living in places that are uncomfortable and unpleasant most of the year. Call me spoiled, but one month of nice days does not a good year make. In my parent’s defence, they live in the nice part of Hamilton near Battlefield Park (the site of the Battle of Stoney Creek), and Ontario does have good and free health care.

On a side note, I can’t understand how Canada has a higher standard of living than the US, (which has the biggest economy in the world), and still be able to afford to provide free universal health care which the US doesn’t even seem willing to consider. I wouldn’t want to be poor and sick in the US.

It’s a bit of a mystery to me as to why some people, here in the developed world, feel trapped by fate in some kind of living hell like working a grave-yard-shift in a factory or being in a bad marriage. Some people claim that they don’t have any choice. Pish!  We’ve all got the ability (unless one is physically incapacitated) to change our situation and all it takes is the courage to make the decision to take action and then act on that decision. Back in the early 1980s  Direct Action used to gafitti the following equation all over Vancouver:

Talk-action=0

My wife and I have been thinking about going on a cycle trip down the Rhine and Mosel rivers next year and we were given a guide book to Germany by our neighbour Sandra. As we were looking through the guide book we though it might a good thing to find out what the regional cusine specialities were in the areas we are interested in, with a thought to trying them when we visit there. We were both very disappointed to note that every place we wanted to visit had offal based food as the regional speciality. Oh well, we’ll just have to live on swartz veldt kirschtorte (black forest cake).

About 50kms northeast of Mexico City are the amazing pyramids of Teotihuacán.

I didn’t visit Teotihuacán back in 1983 when I first went to Mexico because in my mind I thought they’d just be some kind of lame tourist trap. I used to have an elitist head space back then about travelling. I used to make a distinction between “tourism’ and “travelling”. In short I thought that tourism was for weak-minded lightweights and that travelling was somehow purer. Ah… the arrogance of youth. Now that I’m older, I see all travelling that’s not done for business, visiting family or to get to safety, as essentially tourism. Just going to places to have a look see.

I now wince when I hear someone declare with emphasis that are travellers.

Au contraire!

I “travelled” for 11 years straight which included probably over a 100, 000 kilometres hitch hiking and sleeping rough and when I look back I don’t feel that it could be described as anything more than tourism. I just didn’t have enough money most of the time to make it comfortable and that fact doesn’t turn it into “travelling”.

As a matter of fact, I’ve stopped staying at backpackers hostels when I do go abroad because I know it’s socially unacceptable to maim people bragging about what legends they are because have been “travelling” for a whole six months. I also feel it’s better for everyone that I remove myself from the temptation of perpetrating a little ultra violence when I hear some wanker ask a fellow backpacker, “how long have you been travelling for?”, so they can establish some kind of “I’ve been travelling longer than you” hierarchy. It’s a good thing that I didn’t meet myself when I was younger or I might not be writing this post.

Now with my little rant over, I will tell you a little about Teotihuacán. My wife and I took one of the cheap local buses from the Terminal Norte in Mexico City which turned out to be a good thing because it stopped at various little towns along the way and musicians would get on a play for tips. It was very atmospheric and muy sympatico.

If you ever go to Teotihuacán make sure you take a hat, some sun screen and water. There is very little shade and it can get very hot.

As you walk along the main avenue of the ruins, the charmingly named Calzada de los Muertos (road of the dead) you will see one small pyramid type platform after the other on either side in a row leading to the big pyramids at the end.

It wasn’t until I had visited Teotihuacán that I found out that the largest pyramid in the world (Cheops) might be in Egypt but the next two largest ones were in Mexico. Even though I’ve been to Mexico twice now, it still amazes me how many big pyramids there are in that country. I almost think that fact is being kept from the world, but then I realize it’s just my own ignorance.

 At the end of the Calzada de los Muertos the second largest pyramid at Teotihuacán known as the “Pyramid of the Moon”

and to it’s left is the larger (third largest in the world) pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun. My wife and walked up the stairs to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.

 It was pretty steep (not as steep as Tikal but much longer) and long but the view at the top is wonderful.

On the Pyramid of the Moon’s right is the Placio de los Jaguares which is quite different to the rest of the complex. It’s a nice place to sit a while in the shade and get some respite from the hawkers.

The Placio de los Jaguares is one of the few places in the whole complex where you can still see some of the old painted decoration.

 It must’ve been an amazingly colourful place. Almost psychedelic.

Not much is known about the people who built Teotihuacán as it is thought that it was started in the first century AD and abandoned by the eigth century.

Remember if you go there, that the hawkers are probably the descendents of the people who built the place and they have a right to be there and to eek out a living somehow. Don’t get annoyed at their constant attentions, just say no, thanking them politely (no gracias) and walk away if you don’t want to buy anything from them.

For years, the developed western world has been pumping a consumerist message into the rest of the world.  Trouble is that the rest of the world now wants the first world life style that is so costly in terms of the earth’s resources and pollution.

Malaysia is a classic case in point, as it’s economy grows and the standard of living rises, it’s population aspires to live the dream sold to them by the west.

The first image (above) is of the billboards making up the facade of the building housing Mc Donald’s in Bukit Bintang (the very centre of Kuala Lumpur). On the surface things look fairly normal to a western eye but directly behind the Mc Donald’s is a mass of air-conditioners.

As the developing countries get more affluent, they too, just like the developed west, will want to be more comfortable, and I think we all know where that’s going to end when consumption of energy and resources doubles or even triples.

I’ve always thought it was extremely hypocritical that the west has been trying to tell the rest of the world not to pollute when we are the worst offenders. To add insult to injury, we keep on glamorising consumption.