weak-kneed winch

2010-05-29T12:07:00.004+01:00

bafana bafana

"buy the ticket, take the ride."

- hunter s thompson

it’s good to be home. great to be back in a first world country again. with decent fast food. and an advanced non-violent unprejudiced multi-racial society. and world cup fever. it sure is exciting. i went out today (friday) and all the okes were wearing their yellow bafana bafana soccer tops. apparently it’s world cup friday. every friday. for the rest of time. jussis. it’s lekker.

eish... so anyway. i flew from aus to bangkok. the start of my trip home. it sure did get a bit hairy on the ground the wend we were there. but we managed to pull thru. the important thing was not to panic. we just focussed on the beer and the go-go bars. and left all the trivial stuff to the riff raff.

a quick summary of the issues in bangkok: a few years ago thaskin was the prime minister of thailand. he either nationalised a private telecommunications company and sold it for personal profit. or he privatised a state telecommunications company and sold it for personal profit. either way he made a lot of cash. it was a smart move. he then invested this money in manchester city football club. this was not a smart move. the yellow shirts (bourgeoisie) went to work. they mobilised the army and staged a military coup. justifiably so. everyone knows you don’t give money to dirty manc bastards. the red shirts (proletariat) decided they wanted a democratically elected government. so they barricaded central bangkok and staged a protest. eventually the army shot most of them dead (mowed the fuckers down) in a carefully planned and successfully executed military operation designed to maximise innocent civilian casualties. yay for dictatorships. fuck the people. and that, in a nutshell, is it. use it. don’t use it.

anyway, enough of the bullshit. i love bangkok. it’s got an edge. a vibe. it’s happening. but the greatest thing about it is the gender relations. i’m all for chicks rights. i’m a big fan of plastic surgery. but i’m also a traditionalist. a romantic. so, for me, it’s lekker to check punda in their natural habitat. performing on poles. mastering the use of ping pong balls. practising naked yoga. doing all the things that god made them for. getting back to nature. you can see they are happy. a destiny fulfilled. and when they finish up in the sex trade at the age of nineteen after a long ten year career, they head back to the farm and produce the next generation of pole dancers. of course, if some of them show ambition or potential, there is room to move. they can become air-hostesses. on a budget airline. doing safety demonstrations. and selling cheap airline memorabilia and shit.

eish... so the first night we stuck to khao-san road. backpacker mecca. we consumed beers. picked up a fat canadian chick. who was a bit of a laugh. the fat one’s always are. what else have they got? then we downed fuck-buckets. and ate crickets. that’s when i lost consciousness. i woke up in the morning curled round the toilet bowl. a first ever for me. believe it or not. chunks of dry kotch on my shirt. which could have been mine. or neil’s. considering he had to chunder over me into the toilet. was defo the crickets. they’re indigestible. totally devoid of nutritional value.

spent the day in the roof-top pool. charfing the hot scando chicks. and that night we hit soi cowboy. a place where dreams come true. heaven in a strip joint. and lady-boy proof. the chicks dance and wiggle around above you. on a glass ceiling. with no underpants on. and you don’t even have to look up. no need to strain the neck. the tables and bar counters are mirrors. convenience. easy to spot a huge wanga waving around up there. gives one peace of mind.

one night in bangkok and the world's your oyster
the bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
you'll find a god in every golden cloister
and if you're lucky then the god's a she
i can feel an angel sliding up to me

after that headed back to singapore for a week. caught up with all the okes. got stuck into some chicken rice. shweated like a beast. got smashed over the head with a bottle. on a friday night. at attica. a place where previously i had had a hundred percent record. how times have changed. eish.

we were dancing. and some local chick got a bit excited. so i turned around to check what was happening. and she smoked me on the head with a bottle. there was no matrix moment for me. i didn’t sway out the way in s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n. no mr miyagi wax-on wax-off bottle avoidance procedure. i didn’t even see it coming. i just took it full on the forehead. luckily, the last and previously only other time i had been violently assaulted (in a backward town called empangeni), a dude smashed me in the face with a bottle. hence the flat shnoz. so i was experienced. the important thing was to remain calm. i considered the c*nt punt. but settled for a rant. and some finger pointing. then the bouncers escorted me outside.

there was blood all over the show. but they fixed me up. called the police. took statements. and bundled me into an ambulance. with another oke. who looked real unhappy. he was just back from six months in iraq. came thru without a scratch. he was letting his hair down at attica. dancing behind me. the bottle bounced off my head. flew thru the air. and smashed his front teeth out. haha. he had the teeth in his hand. poor bastard. reckons the assault weapon was a chivas regal bottle.

eish... so i have this big purple 3cm scar on my forehead. it is central though. symmetrical. hopefully it will complete me. like that smoking hot chick in the michael buble “haven’t met you yet” video. she has a mole on her chin. an imperfection that makes her even more perfect.

now the sky could be blue
i don’t mind
without you it’s a waste of time

2010-04-27T12:39:00.002+01:00

avatar

"we are being made aware that the organisation of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a great deal of our material progress is progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly. i need only mention... the exploitation of the earth, on a vast scale for two generations, for commercial profit: immediate benefits leading to dearth and desert. i would not have it thought that i condemn a society because of its material ruin, for that would be to make its material success a sufficient test of its excellence; i mean only that a wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards god, and that the consequence is an inevitable doom. for a long enough time we have believed in nothing but the values arising in a mechanised, commercialised, urbanised way of life: it would be as well for us to face the permanent conditions upon which god allows us to live upon this planet. and without sentimentalising the life of the savage, we might practise the humility to observe, in some of the societies upon which we look down as primitive or backward, the operation of a social-religious-artistic complex which we should emulate upon a higher plane. we have been accustomed to regard 'progress' as always integral; and have yet to learn that it is only by an effort and a discipline, greater than society has yet seen the need of imposing upon itself, that material knowledge and power is gained without the loss of spiritual knowledge and power."

- ts eliot (1939)

decent flick. but not the greatest in the whole history of the world ever. the chick is pretty hot tho. if you dig big chicks. with man hands. and four fingers.

so leaving the farm tomo. it sure has been a rough last week. mower broke. so had to get out the hoe. man oh man. nearly killed me. proper physical labour. brutal. at one point my hands started bleeding. and then one of the trees whipped me in the face. and then i fell on the hoe and it stabbed my spine off. i swore. and then kicked the tree. i shed a tear. and wished i was back home. with my garden boy. australia sure is an undeveloped country. they desperately need a slave class. cheap labour. white folks shouldn't be doing this shit. we weren't born for it. its genetics.

so heading back to sydney for a few days. and then onto bangkok for the wend. hopefully the reds and yellows have sorted out their issues. goddamn the third world. these people shouldn't have power; shouldn't have a voice. its dangerous. this is the sort of thing that fucked australia up. they should tazer the fuckers. or mow them down with that high-pressured water gun. drown one of the bastards. make an example. really do some damage. and then put them in their place. send them back to their huts. to tend the rice paddies. and sell their teenage daughters to the sex trade.

get. the. fuck. in. harry redknapp's blue and white army.

2010-04-21T13:33:00.008+01:00

grapes of wrath

"i aint gonna baptise. im gonna work in the fiel's, in the green fiel's, an' im gonna be near to folks. i aint gonna try to teach em nothin'. im gonna try to learn. gonna learn why the folks walks in the grass, gonna hear em talk, gonna hear em sing. gonna listen to kids eatin' mush. gonna hear husban' and wife a-poundin' the matress in the night. gonna eat with em an' learn." his eyes were wet and shining. "gonna lay in the grass, open an' honest with anybody that'll have me. gonna cuss an' swear an' hear the poetry of folks talkin'. all that's holy, all thats what i didn' understan'. all them things is the good things."

- grapes of wrath, steinbeck

jussis. so the last two weeks have been about work. manual work. down and dirty. like christina aguilera. hand-to-mouth. like jemma jameson. mixing with the proletariat in the fields. on the building sights. in the pub. talking their language. eating their food. drinking their beer. breathing their goddamn filthy air. life experience.

eish. so it started off in townsville. north of brisbane. south of cairns. a backward town. laying insulation in roofs. shweaty job. gets friggin hot up there. stuffy. and toight. like a toiger. not conducive to claustrophobia. or wet beer farts. we started each day at 2am. kitted out in dirty singlets. and short rugby shorts. and bundy trucker caps. unshaven and mean. hard ripped bodies. charging around in a construction bakkie. flashing orange light on top. swigging xxxx gold. charfing the abo chicks with inappropriately bad language. we owned that building site. was peasant heaven. but after a week i had to move on. no pay. one big fuck in the ass. such is life below the poverty line. god hates poor people.

so i moved onto a farm. a few hours west of sydney. just over the blue mountains. hazel nut crop. the email invitation sounded perfect:

"I hear you might be interested in some hard labour on the farm.
We can offer you $10/hour and board for two weeks.
Most of the work to be done is hand mowing and cleaning weeds from the nursery."

sounds all rainbows and butterflies. but its not. friggin hell. i feel like ive hand-mowed the whole entire fuckin world. that nursery... eish... its not small. seven rows of hazel nut bushes. each row is half a kilometer long. and 2m wide. with knee high grass (shoulder high if you're wiggy). on a steep rocky incline. full of extremely dangerous animals. spiders and snakes. all to be negotiated with a small petrol-powered handheld lawn-mower. i was clumsy at first. ploughing down nut bushes. ripping up irrigation piping. now i am lawn mower master jedi.

on the plus side my hands are all hard and shiny. dirty finger nails. no more soft manicured office hands. labourer's hands. value-adding hands. hands that hot chicks love. hands that gays hate. a metrosexual's worst nightmare.

one unrelated point: the nude girls are one of the top 10 greatest bands in the whole world ever. just for the song genie alone.

hey now with the fist of a man
now with the fist of a god
now with the fist of my oh my
i heard my daddy said
no more, no more, no more, no more
uh oh now a little bit of money
yeah yeah from a little bit of hurry
genie genie genie GENIE

2010-04-03T12:22:00.024+01:00

fruit donkey

"thus the hero of the odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the phaecian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. he is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arete.

arete implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialisation. it implies a contempt for efficiency - or rather a much higher level of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself."

- zen

hold the phone. jeepers creepers. and you thought queenstown was a lekker town. freak me out. two words. byron. fuckin. bay. pure quality. hippy heaven. on the beach. with awesome swells. and hot young chicks. with pert boobs. and vintage stores. and real live hippies. left over from the 60's. still living the dream. and smoking the weed. god bless them. eish. the whole place is so vibey. (aussies like to do this. i have noticed. take nouns and make them adjectives by adding a "y". hence the sea becomes sharky. and err... cant think of any other examples at the mo. dammit.)

lets back the truck up a bit. i've raced ahead. i left kiwi for aus sometime in early march. the first thing the bastards did was confiscate my love beads. fuckers. as if my mojo wasnt low enough already. apparently my love beads were seeds. of course they're seeds!!! they're fuckin love beads. fertile. virile. full of life. the goddamn border-nazi burned them. still... the aussie chicks must be relieved.

anyway. so... sydney. its ok. i guess. would have been better if simple guy little hadnt got us kicked out of the first pub. a hole on george street where the locals generally end the evening. we started there. so it was all downhill after that. dont remember much. sorry. selective memory. but it got real messy.

then headed off to canberra for the weekend. okes in sydney were shaking their heads. and muttering under their breath. canberra is seen as backward. but i had a mate there. a bogan. named jon. lekker oke. so... canberra!!! super surprised. very progressive. only really had one day there in between the hangovers and the sharks brumbies game. but in that time got to an awesome vintage market. joined in a gay rights protest. breezed thru an awesome arts gallery. and sipped wino to live music in the park. hundreds.

straight, gay, black, white
marriage is a civil right

eish i then had a week back in sydney. stayed with some of my folks mates kids (tedious link) in manly. people are so welcoming. i have no idea why people would choose to spend their time accomodating me. after all. time is all we have. very philosophical.

alrighty. enough of the bullshit. managed to catch up with george in bondi. what a night. what a place. what a chick. swedish. tongue ring. pity she was all over george. the oke is one good looking bastard. and he has a friggin awesome apartment. defo a step up from the burra.

headed up to the farm near mudgee to hook up with some long lost family. was hoping for a detox. no chance. goddamn dutchmen. and branderwijn. but the bonfire was kiff. if a little dangerous. being two stories high. and tended by two brandy-retarded sweaty-palmed gung-hos. (see that? i reversed aussie convetion. i converted an adjective into a noun. fuckin aussies. fuck em.)

they say the nile used to run
from east to west

then headed down to forster to catch up with another long lost cuz named dave. always puzzled me as to why i was named dave when my only other male cousin was already named dave. makes for a lot of confusion. such are the mysteries of the universe. like why german couples always look like brother and sister. and the name dave. the experience of which cannot be explained rationally any more than a piece of music. or a poem. but it was awesome to catch up after so long. spent a lot of time on the beach.

and then it was on to byron. the beast. and now brisbane. brisbane freaks me out a bit. there's a discomforting peacefulness here. like the quiet you expect to find in a peado's house. unsettling. and just last night (saturday 11pm) i was walking around the main pedestrian area in town looking for a place to watch the football when there, in the middle of the street, was a bible club. arguing loudly. "in 88AD the followers of christ...". eish. i shook my head. when i got back to the dorm (12.30pm) a fat chinese bastard was evidently having great trouble breathing in his sleep. the fucker sounded like he was violently choking. when things went quiet for 30 secs i hoped that he had finally been asphyxiated and slipped into unconscieniousness. but he then started neighing like a horse. at regular 3 minute intervals. i slept in the fire exit stairwell.

so heaps of folks have been asking me how aus is. and i hate to say it. but its friggin awesome (except brisbane - fuckin freaky). like a first world saffa. everything home should be. but... and here's the thing... its not africa. the people are nice. and the chicks are hot. and logically you cant argue saffa over aus. but aus doesnt make your chest puff up with pride. your eyes well up with tears. the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. it doesnt have that african spirit. you know? the waaahhhh. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck. passion. hold on your heart. TIA. no words can describe it. so im still confused. oh for a place to call my own. a home.

theres a highway of stars across the heavens
theres a whispering song of the wind in the grass
theres a rolling thunder across the savannah
a hope of the dream at the edge of the sky
and your life is a story like the wind

so whats been happening in a personal capacity? well... in the interests of becoming a more well-rounded individual and in the persuit of possessing a general life excellence, and because i have no money and i cant eat, i have decided that i want to pick fruit. or work in a factory packing shit. be value adding. tangible results rock!!! fuck yeah. oh... and i keep meeting the right girl at the wrong time.

wherefore art thou derick
in this fit of spilt maths
and keg of fruit donkeys?

- frederick von beanstein

2010-03-20T06:31:00.008Z

a poem about durban

crash in the late 90's
by caide and stevo

It was back in the day
And good were the times
You could get drunk as fuk
On some nickels and dimes
There were many of us
And none were slack
When you called one wolf
you invited the pack
but true to nature there’s always a freak
the wolves from the burra
had a black sheep
he came with one eye brow
and black belt Karate
he fell off a bukkie at some ou’s house party
This one’s from the burra
you may as well save it
give it gave it - don’t tell David

On the way to CRASH on a Wednesday night
The sneakers were dirty and the money was tight
Out came the rubber and a ball point pen
Tired of getting bounced again and again
With box wine courage we approach the rope
Got my jumper and my mojo and I’m feeling dope
The stamp on my wrist you know I had to fake it
It was time to give it gave it - don’t tell David

And when we got in, the chicks were a plenty
The way we were cruising, we needed a Bentley
Mickey mouse shirts and the ballies leather jacket
Cyprus hill songs “pick it, pack it……..”

So we order some dops, and we feeling free
Here they come, 6 times Espree
We pay with cash from handing out pizza phamphlets all day
We look to the right, there’s anri, he looks gay!
Next to him is George, trying to dance
He wasn’t on the dance floor but we’ll give him a chance
With a look that could make the poor female preggers
He organizes Guava’s Cousin in her cat suit and feathers

Meanwhile at the bar I check Dave’s on a mission
Searching through his pockets with faulty indecision
But then he see’s his chance, the freezer is ajar
With Rubber man skills he quietly rapped the bar!
So there we were, one Butterscotch richer
We downed that puppy fu#*t, wish I had a picture
Butterscotch buzzing my head like a mofo
As we watched two Lesbos rubbing Ka – ka – Camel toe

Feeling quite horney we head to the back
Of the rave section side, to start our attacked
Chicks are everywhere, but lazers they shining
Right in our eyes, and davo starts wining
That his luck is running dry and about all his rejection
We think “fok this” lets hit the Alternate side Section

Then out of nowhere, like a voice from a choir
“Genie” starts playing, and we start jumping higher
5 okes in a circle, we seem kinda daunting
But we know we cool, when the chicks start their flaunting
Like lion hunting buck, we make our selection
hen it is dog eat dog to get that affection!

Caide is zoned, caught up in the nights shinnanigins
If Dave comes right then by 2 points he wins
The pressure was mounting
Caide was unaware
Dave see’s a loose one pouting
And choonz her,”welcome to my under ground lair”
Caide see’s whats happening
And he has to react
o he goes to Dave and starts jamming
Caide snookers him, what a brat!
Dave lost his mojo
nd starts getting bleek
Caide choonz, Rule no. 27
Don’t be a Geek
Anri’s got his shirt off
Gilberts spraying beer
Steve’s looking desperate
No surprises here

But all of a sudden the tables start turning
Not sure why, probably cos of the yearning
Georgie has got one, with a kiss and a thrust
Stevo is in there with a squeeze of a bust
Gilbert is out cos he is with Brenda
Anri is BLACK and gets a “return to sender"

Davo is a struggling, clutching at straws
Battling at this stage, he would opt for a draw
He looks to the right, the sight is absurd
Can it be true, Caide is on his THIRD
He mutters under his breath and heads back to the bar
If he can’t scores the chicks, he’ll cotch by the car
He orders a double, it’s vodka, it’s neat
And as he downs it, he accepts his defeat

So the night is over and some share the stoke
a few of the others, are on the end of bad jokes
we look a watch it is twenty past three
it is time for a muffin at the berea BP
we eat and are happy and tell stories of the night
about okes coming left, and others coming right
we jump in the cab this night was insane
can't wait for next week so we can go it again!

It’s 4 in the morning so we head to the beach
We race each other there, we made the tires screech
Nude body surfing wasn’t a crime
But roof surfing was… that sh1t was sublime

Stump said it first
It’s time for a Jonny’s
We get the hunger burst
And bust it in our under roddies
we put our change together, it comes to 14,40
“two chip double cheese –mutton gravy don’t be naughty"
We choon each others mothers while in rotti heaven
But we’re bummed cause tech starts at half past seven.

2010-02-28T09:58:00.009Z

like a rolling stone

"the masses think that the power and providence are most clearly demonstrated by events that are extraordinary, and contrary to the conception which they have formed of nature... they suppose, indeed, that god is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order; and vice versa, that the power of nature, and natural causes, are idle so long as god is acting; thus they imagine two powers distinct from one another, the power of god and the power of nature."

- spinoza

jeepers. i was starting to feel underwhelmed by nz. couldnt see what all the fuss was about. then i was picked up by two asian ladies at the fox glacier. and together we breezed into queenstown. wind in our hair. smiles on our dials. kooks on the stereo. and 40 gigs worth of low quality photos on their memory cards. its quantity that counts. its the asian genes.

im not saying it was your fault
altho you could have done more
you're so naive yet so

queenstown is pure quality. one of the true greats. up there with must-go places like cuzco, barca, and queensburgh. the buzz is immense. like a brand new vibrator. running off a car battery. there's so much crazy shit going on there. like frisbee golf. its friggin unreal. and the scenery is worldclass. fronted by a lake. backed by mountains. middled by libido. and the ferg burgers are super kiff.

eish. so we had to hit the party. and we duely did. it was a saturday night. had a few drinks at the base bar. base is defo the slut of the hostel world. tempting you in with cheap booze and naked women. i love sluts. its whores i dont like. anyway. hooked up with an irishman who took us boozing. then hopped onto a pub-crawl with an american. (just an aside - the last time i was on a pub-crawl dopey cursed god after dropping his tequila shot. he beat his fists on the bar in pure frustration. he then ranted at the barman. later we ended up being escourted off the premisis by mall security having exposed ourselves to the bouncers and nightclub patrons.)

my mojo is gone. not sure if its temporary. but i just dont feel the beat of the party anymore. so i was just parking cheesy. remembering the days when we used to own clubs like this. absolutely dominate them. when some chicks started chatting to me. they were cool girls. three of them. an englishman, an irishman, and an englishman. pretty friggin hot as well. i wasnt in the mood. but they bought me drinks. and it was awesome. they bounced other dudes. but took me under their collective wing. and when the club closed they moved on somewhere else and pulled me along. when the bouncer didnt want to let me in. they had words. and dragged me in.

it was a quaint little upstairs bar. outside under the stars. fake gas fire burning in the middle of the table. they sat down. i went to get drinks. came back and they were seated around the fire. i went to sit down. but the fart i'd been holding in the whole night sneaked out (my stomach has been horrendus lately). silent. but violent. like a typhoon of propane gas. the fire momentarily flitted out. like the spirits of the dead had briefly passed over us. but then exploded in a fireball and rose into the night sky. there was an awkward silence. i quickly assessed my options and decided upon the "act like nothing happened" approach. my "so... its kinda cosy out here" line didnt really receive a response. the night ended fairly soon afterwards. we didnt exchange contact details.

the next morning the asian girls woke me up early. i was ruff. but their skydiving had been cancelled. so we were off to milford sound. wow. you gotta see this place. as far as natural wonders go - this is at least on a par with camilla. it was however raining heavily again. but honestly. cool place. wish i could have seen it without cloud cover. oh and a learning. a fiord is a valley cut by a glacier that is filled with body of water (this body of water is for some reason called a sound).

anyway. so my kiwi trip continued as usual. activity day, it poured down with rain. as soon as i spent a day travelling on a bus or in a car, bright sunshine. in this way wanaka and mount cook were blurred and blunted by the weather. christchurch also poured down so that i spent my only afternoon there in the hostel dorm. a 38 man dorm. WTF!!!!!! do you know what its like sleeping in a room with 38 strangers. freak me out. anything could be lurking in there. french. jews.

so im winding down my kiwiland tour. heading back to auckland to fly out on monday. i've dropped weight. big time. i blame it on the budget. i've also learned that everyone in the world can play better guitar than me (except frank). even if they only picked up a guit for the first time yesterday.

ps. oh ja. sorry about lack of pics. i forgot to bring the piece of wire camera computer attachment thing with me on tour.

2010-02-25T07:46:00.008Z

fush and chups

so the south island. its not all rainbows and butterflies. like they would have you believe. its more like rainfall and sandflies. i've been trying to detox. staying off beer and doing long hikes. but every time i put a toe on a track the heavans open. why does it always rain on me? is it because i lied when i was seventeen? great lyrics. and when the sun does flicker, the sandflies suck me dry.

kiwiland has more german tourists than kallis has ducks. the place is friggin packed with them. not sure what it is with german girls tho. there was a whole troup of them staying in the one hostel i was at. i was having breakfast in the common area. and the one comes in. plugs in her hi velocity high power leg razor and starts shaving her legs on the couch. the next one comes in and does the same thing. but then shaves her toes as well. and then her armpits. i choked a little bit on my yoghurt. but then the next chick comes in. giant of a women. brushing her teeth. takes the razor to the bikini line. brought back memories of porto slurping his cereal.

my finances are a little stretched at the mo. so have taken to hitch hiking. on my second journey was picked up by these two smoking young german girls (not the chicks with the razor issues). jussis bru. they were hot. like friggin awesome. but i had just come back from a two day walk in the jungle. no showers. smelling a bit ripe. so they kept having to open the windows. hahaha. was a little embarrassing. they didnt ask me up for a threesome.

yeah anyway. so south island round-up. picton was awesome. very picturesque. queen charlotte track boring. motueka nice and chilled. abel tasman track miserable. raining. sandflies. nelson cool. fox glacier was cooler. some awesome views. the copland track was friggin quality. hot pools and the hot chicks in the hot pools definitely scored some extra points. off to queenstown next.

wus gunna try talk un kuwi. but runnung out of time. wull guve ut u go nuxt time.

2010-02-10T06:04:00.004Z

kiwiland

if you want a jol. kiwi is the place. base is the backpackers to stay in. kiwe experience is the bus to catch. the green one. known locally as the fuck truck. jeepers creepers. i try to avoid these. as well as the bungy jumping. the excitement is too much for me. and the chicks are too young. actually, im lying. chicks can never be too young.

i flew into auckland from melbourne. bumped into simple guy little at the airport. cool to see the oke after a 3 year dry spell. was in auckland for an evening. met some irish okes in a pub. had a few pints. and joined them on a road trip the next day. along with a sing girl i know.

we went up north. cape reinga was pretty awesome. great deserted beach. and some nice waves. the party at the hostel was real good as well. altho they watered down the beer. i know this because i woke up without a hangover. i never do that now days. we drove south. and then east to coromandel. nice. but crap weather. we shot down to rotorua. cool place. but stinks. thermal hot baths were good. what is it with asians and hot baths. they love that shit. sitting there in steaming public baths. speedos. squinting contently. hard brown nipples. anyway, the party at the hostel was real good as well. they didnt water down the beers. i know this cos i had a hangover the next day. hamilton was next. we spent most of the time in the hospital. looked like a good uni town though. back to auckland.

nz so far was ok. i guess. but seemed a bit grey. lots of cloud cover. aus much better. all that changed when i got to wellington. southern most point of the north island. surrounded by green hills. and fronted by a silvery harbour. very pretty city. also nz 7s was on at the time. place was buzzing. and it also has a very interesting museum. honestly. im not a good tourist. but this museum, eish, quality. very interactive. also did a few walks. then picked up the ferry to picton (north of south island). and here i am. all alone. detoxing. in the cool air and greenery. doing a trek tomo. the queen charlotte sounds track. 3 days. its friggin cold. im camping. and cooking. gonna be tough. but at least i have no access to the spurs result. right.

rewind: melbourne was cool. nice to sleep in a bed after a 6 week van tour. didnt get up to much though. other than the aussie tennis open. go fed. the greatest saffa player of all time. yes he is saffa. trust me. i've checked. and now even the aussies admit it. also saw prince wills. what a legend. was trapping over to the tennis. when i saw a group of young hot screaming chicks. naturally i went over to investigate. and there he was. got close enough to be able to slap his bald spot. i started sweating. and screaming. i am a true prince wills groupie now.

2010-01-22T04:57:00.004Z

week 2 - the dingo bark
13.12.09 - 20.12.09

so we left kunanarra real early. and arrived in darwin mid afternoon. we had just missed a cyclone. and darwin was wet. real wet. the camp ground was soggy. and there were loads of mozzies. and it was super humid hot. but it had a kfc. god works in mysterious ways. but only if you stick to the path. we didn't. we went for the angry angus. it made me sick.

the van needed two days of fixing. so we stayed in darwin for two days. first contact made with abo's. one smiled and grumbled something at me. it was progress. but we were glad to get out of that hell-hole.

we hit a roo. mowed the fucker down. stayed a night at a trucker stop. picked up some hitch-hikers. stopped at some thermal springs. failed to swim in the (freshy) croc infested river. because we are not heroes. and made it down to tennant springs. jussis. was tennant springs a jol. we caught the free bus to the country club. and while frank and gem played pokies, i built bridges. the abo's adopted me like a son. i bought the okes beers. and then i bought them a second round. and then it was my round again. and we had an awesome conversation that revolved around the following 4 questions being asked over and over again in a cyclical sort of way:

- so where you from?
- so how long you here?
- so when you leaving?
- so this place is a good place.

but this was definite progress. the okes were friendly. and we were moving forward. holding hands. two become one.

the next day we hit alice. alice? alice? where the fuck is alice? was a cool place. i liked it. the weather was cool and breezy. and the pubs seemed jammed. but again we breezed through. we were out of there the next morning. and hit king's canyon. eish. hot. and unspectacular. if you ask me. we saw some dogs. that didn't bark. and dingo was it's name-o. D-I-N-G-O. but wiki reckons they do bark:

"it is often wrongly asserted that dingoes do not bark... only 5% of the observed vocalisations were made up of barking."

wadda-mistake-a-to-make-a. feuled by a few rums, i had argued the point vigoriously. and backed up by a bush-whacking lesbo i wagered a dingo tat on it. eish. frank let me get away with shaving my hair. i remember feeling hurt. and really down.

next day we hit uluru. its a nice rock. friggin big. could do with a kfc on the top. the colonel's bucket glinting under the desert sun. perhaps with a drive thru function. fillet burger sliding down the side of the rock to your car. its impressive. but the fuckers wont let you climb it. cos its sacred. apparently. still dont mind charging folks exorbitant amounts to get in. 25 bucks. and building a tourist park 5kms away. this is where contemporary abo culture is becoming confused. its like going to a whore house with a no touching policy. you feel like you're getting ripped off. this is the root of the problem on the abo side of the bridge. must learn more.

kpi's:

kitty master: derrick

van issues: sink leaking. broken chair. cracked windscreen.

frank fish count: 0

roadkill: 200 x giant locust. 5 x bird. 3 x frilled lizard. 1 x stumpy lizard. 1 x roo.

2010-01-20T05:34:00.006Z

week 1 - the salmon run
4.12.09 - 12.12.09

things started badly. earlier in the week frank and i decided to keep it tidy in order to make a clean start on sat. eish. it was always gonna be a tough ask. thurs and fri nights were huge. come sat morning i was so hungover even the ultimate kfc burger box couldnt pull me right.

but we left perth nonetheless. at 2pm. original etd 4am. we headed north up past geraldton to kalbarri. a breezy little holiday town situated along one main street that fronts some sort of seawater lagoon. during the drive up i suffered. but we still managed to elect tiny dancer as the official tour song.

blue jeans baby, la lady
i married a music man

we also managed to crack the windscreen 30mins into the trip. which was a shame. cos just 24hrs earlier we had elected not to take the windscreen and wheel insurance cover at just $3 a day extra. the lord giveth. and he taketh away.

we stayed a day at kilbarri to shoot the breeze. it was windy. we left the next morning. checked out some gorges. and then smoked it up to carnarvan. where we bought rum. and had lunch on the sea front. the seagulls sure were vicious. first sighting of abo's. we motored straight on up to exmouth. passing the tropic of capricorn on the way.

not sure what exmouth is. we couldnt really find it. sure was baffling. but we stayed in some lighthouse campsite. "the best situated campsite in wa" - lonely planet. really??? eish. missed that one. next morning we headed into the national park. now that was friggin awesome. we had neds campsite all to ourselves. and a quality beach 10m away. and roo's. just parking cheesy under the tree. they are super cool bastards. we spent two days there. frolicking in the turquoise water. playing cricket by the camp. snorkelling the ningaloo reef. i saw three monster sharks. okes were just dossing under rocks. i was too scared to pull their tails. frank fished. caught nothing. jussis. it was lekker. except the flies. never seen so many of the fuckers. they were all over the show. up your nose. in your ear. licking your eyeball.

the stars were awesome as well. but we struggled to find the southern cross. in the end we gave up.

we left the next afternoon. that was the last time we ever saw a vehicle of any sort going north. thousands coming south. but nothing going north. we sure were swimming upstream. the salmon run.

we spent the night in an outback roadhouse. it was frikken super uber hot. jeepers creepers. it was hotter than that dark chick on the 70's show. but not as hot as camilla. there was some german chick there working as a petrol attendant. she said she liked it. cos they let her swim in the river in the morning. friggin ace. i was thinking of applying for a job. no i wasnt. not even for a second. the place was filled with truckers. sweaty fat bastards. in dirty tight white vests. green truckers caps. chewing and spitting. i had an incident in the shower with one of them. it was awful. the lord giveth. and he taketh away.

so we hightailed it out of there the next morning real early. like 4am early. up to broome. broome is a kiff place. but would be better if it had a kfc. kfc is the very benchmark of kiffness. that's why south africa is the kiffest place in the whole world ever. quantity and quality. but broome is pretty kiff i guess. cable beach is massive. plenty of space for beach cricket. we were warned off swimming by croc sightings. but jumped in anyway. because we are heroes. and there were some dolphins chilling in the waves. we had a few beers at the local pub. abo sightings getting more frequent.

we continued north through fitzroy and halls creek. notorious for drunk abo's. but was pretty lame when we got there. apparantly they are dry towns now. this means that their are no bottle stores. and the pubs can breathalise you and send you on your way if you are drunk. bottlestore owners werent happy with this new ruling. neither were the abo's. neither were the UN. they came in. did a survey. and concluded it was against basic human rights. but the aussies dont care. so the town is dry.

so all the abo's have moved up to kunanarra. we met some of gem's friends up there. their car had just been stolen by the abo's. just for a joy-ride. they weren't happy. and were out for some vigilante justice. the police have given up. its bad practice to jail abo's. apparently. so this dude told us some stories. said he wasn't racist. but hates the abo's. reckons they're animals. they get drunk and beat the women and kids. and the women beat each other. and the kids steal cars. and they all sniff petrol. and i must admit. they all look rough. like really friggin kak. super hungover. with dopey red-eyes. and i haven't seen one of them in the work force. not even in a menial job. picking up rubbish. or behind a fast food counter.

eish. but this abo issue is a huge problem. i decided to build bridges. get to the bottom of it all. cos somewhere the system is failing. either on the western side. or the abo side. or both.

and there ends the first week.

kpi's:

kitty master: frank

van issues: cracked windscreen. inside light ripped. broken cupboard door. unidentified jiffy stuffed under the back cushion. two broken chairs. leaking sink. front bumper falling off. microwave broken. kettle leaking.

frank fish count: 0

road kill: 100 x giant locust. 3 x bird.

2010-01-04T04:08:00.004Z

the dingo bark?

jussis. im usually amped for new years. it represents an opportunity to bolster my figures. chicks are less discerning on the eve of the turn of the year. but it all came crashing down. horribly. i was busting out some wicked moves on the dance floor. really cooking it up. and then i fell over. on my shell. like a turtle. paws in the air. shifting from side to side in a rising panic. unable to get right side up. the crowd moved away forming a circle. pointing and snearing. and taking much glee in my misfortune. fortunately i was rescued by frank. but it was too late. i ran home. arms flailing.

otherwise trip is going well. i guess. it has been super tough. and we sure have covered a whole lot of miles. eish. from broome we went up to darwin. via kunarara and some abo mischief. from darwin we hightailed it down through alice springs and uluru to port augusta. we spent xmas at streaky bay with some abo-hating bigot. and now we're holed up in esperance while the campervan gets a new clutch. a new gearbox. the alternator gets changed-out. and the wheel alignment and suspension get fixed. they might as well trash the bastard.

but its good to be out. sun shining bright. open road ahead. shirt off. aviators on. head out the window. hair blowing in the wind. cold beer in hand. tiny dancer on the radio.

blue jean baby, la lady, seamstress for the band
pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man
ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
and now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand

do dingo's bark? this is a question that has been haunting us since we bumped into a staunchly feminist lesbo at kings canyon. she had a shaved head. but a furry upper lip. she swigged xxxx out the quart bottle. and sneered nah mate. dingo's don't bark. i agreed with her. she looked like she had grown up wild and feral. frank disagreed. after a bottle of rum we had a bet. loser to get a dingo tat complete with speech bubble "woof". eish. tough one to lose. apparently dingos do bark. according to wikipedia. frank let me get away with shaving my head.

i had a dog that didn't bark
and dingo was its name-o
D-I-N-G-O

i have come to realise that my task in aus is to build bridges between abos and bogans. let the building begin. abo bogan rights man. peace.

2009-12-12T04:39:00.003Z

the salmon run

broome. the hottest place in the whole world ever. eish. mid forties here. at least. and no sign of the scando's. they all head south for the summer. only bogans left here. and abo's. sitting under trees. red eyed. everyone of them looking like they've just come off a 30 day bender. gotta watch out for the fuckers. never trust an abo.

we were dreaming of a glitzy strip of fast food outlets. the colonel's bucket turning slowly in the cool breeze. an angry angus with my name on it. at the end of the strip a solver beach. waves gently lapping the shore. dolphins playing in the sunlight. hot swedish chicks tanning topless under the palm trees.

what we got was the prevailing southerly gusting wind. and flies. loads of the bastards. and croc warnings. and stingers. and storms. with lightning. that blew over.

why did we go north? schoolboy error. but we only had ourselves to blame. and the alcohol. last saturday was rough. our eta was 4am. we drove out of perth at 2pm. crowds lined the roadside and bridges to see us off. it sure was an event.

first stop was kalbarri. a nice place. with wind and flies. we motored out of there after a few days. and headed up to exmouth. a nice place. with wind and flies. and roo's. bonus.

at turquoise lagoon we snorkelled. and saw a few sharks and turtles. ningaloo (?) reef sure is a swell reef. myself and frank were wallowing in the secluded bay area where the majority of folks hang out. frank got this concentrated look on his face. he had added to the wildlife. TURTLE!!!! it was a fine specimen. brown and curly. about 20cms long. bobbing along in the current. we packed up and left the jol. but 2mins down the road gem wanted to head back for a quick pic. we turned around. drove back. pulled up at the beach. and waited for her to happy snap. we were still waiting 10 mins later. when gem came back she reckoned there was a bit of commotion on the beach. about 20 folks gathered on shore. pointing and shouting. very excited. she thought it was a shark. we knew better.

we cruised on and stopped at a roadhouse one night. no abo's here. no trees. just red soil. hot and dusty. boganville. truckies crowded the restaurant sporting taches and tats and wifebeater vests covering big thick bellys. they swigged beer from quart bottles. and chewed on raw roo. remanents of roadkill earlier in the day.

i needed a shower. big time. i gathered my toiletries and squeezed into the only cubicle available. i turned on the cold tap and the water steamed. i soaped up. but somehow i lost control. the soap squirted out of my hands. up into the air. down onto my slop. and under the partitioning to the cubicle next door. NOOOOOO!!!!! it was an uncomfortable moment. i was gripped with a momentary sense of panic. i got down on my knees and peered through the gap. the oke had hairy toes. big hairy toes. crusty toenails. thick ankles. cracked heals. not sure why im telling you this. soap was settled between his feet. i knocked lightly on the partioning. the oke grunted. i asked for my soap back. politely. he kicked it back. it went better than i thought. i could have been nasty. such are the winds of fate.

anyway i need to go. less than 5 mins remaining credit. car falling apart. need to replace windscreen. bumper fell off. light fell out. microwave broken. off up to darwin next. it only gets worse.

2009-11-17T08:21:00.003Z

pj

last sat i was lucky enough to see pearl jam for the 3rd time. pj are a beast of a band. and it was a beast of a concert. eddie was fuckin wasted. right from the off. slugging a bottle of red wine. slurring his intro. accosting ben harper when he came on stage to play a song. have a dop ben, shoving the bottle at him. nah thanks. have a dop bru. nah, im ok. have a fuckin dop bru, you fuckin dick. ben sheepishly takes a baby sip. eddie shakes his head in disgust. a true friggin legend.

the concert was worldclass. some new songs. some old songs. though no dissident. a few covers. and guest appearances. eddie is the humblest rockstar in the history of the world ever. he was plugging some unknown bands he saw in a pub he went to on friday night. which i thought was very nice. one minute your gigging in front of 9 bogan aussies in a dingy pub. next minute you're being plugged by vedder at a pj concert. some stupid aussie bird kept on at me about chris cornell. not sure what the fuck she was on about. i suffered knee damage.

otherwise not much happening. just waiting for frank and gem to finish up work. then we gonna hit the road. unable to decide on a route at the mo. think its gonna have to be decided over a yohoho and a bottle of rum. never fails to inspire. prob outta here around 5 december though. just in time for the fly season.

oh ja. land of the lost. will farrell. eish. way out there. would be awesome on shrooms. marco. polo.

when somethings lost
i wanna fight to get it back again

2009-11-10T09:56:00.003Z

the time i had a mullet

2001 sometime. office haircut. i kept the mullet for the weekend. i went to the la lucia mall with taryn. she started crying. it was a tough time. eish.

link

2009-11-02T06:47:00.008Z

roo

so we went camping this wend. up north somewhere. called sandy bay. aussies like to call things by obvious names. like snowy mountains. or yellow sands. anyway. i was dying to see a roo. i've heard so much about them. but never seen one. once you're out of the city they're all over the show. apparently. waiting to run into your car head first. so we drove for 3hrs. but not a sign of a roo anywhere. except the one instance of road kill. but that didnt count. so when jon announced that we were out of roo country. i was hurt. a few minutes later. one flashed out of the bush. in front of the car. slow motion. RRROOOOOOOOO. we drove over the tip of its tail. we could have flattened the bastard. if jon hadn't panicked.

it was late. so we put up our tents. pulled out the guit. and cracked a beer. or two. and chatted about the close roo miss. next time we resolved to get the fucker. mow him down like the vermin he is. at 11pm gem decided to go to bed. jon and i decided to have a small rum before retiring. big mistake. when gem woke up at 6am the next morning we were playing cricket. badly. it sure was hard to hit the ball. after a bottle of rum. and a whole lot more beers.

so when the sun got me up at 9am i was rough. super rough. but its tough to sleep in a small tent in the baking sun. it kinda cooks you. and it didnt help that the wind was howling. the tents were taking a beating. we tried to make the best of it. but our inflatable boat blew away. and frisbee was a no-no. we managed a few games of D-O-P-E-Y. and a swim in the sea. but there were no waves. it was however a beautiful location. but it was kinda hard to appreciate when the wind was stronger than semenya on roids.

we blundered through the night. but when my tent collapsed at 6am the next morning it was time to leave. we were outta there by 8am. we had an awesome beeg breakfast and coffee at some cafe in a nearby town. we then headed to the beach. and saw dolphins swimming just offshore. about 10m away. it would have been hundreds if we had a small inflatable boat to paddle out in. but alas, we didnt. on the way home we saw some bob-tailed lizards. and an emu. friggin weird creatures they have here in aus.

im dying to see a wombat. sounds hundreds. im not really sure anyone knows what a wallaby is.

when somethings lost
i wanna fight to get it back again

2009-10-19T07:18:00.004+01:00

are we human?

hit the beach twice this weekend. played D-O-P-E-Y loads with rugby ball, frisbee, and tennis ball. it sure was fun. but now may arm is very stiff. its been a while. the beaches are awesome though. except for the water. it is very cold. not cape town cold. but cold enough. and there was a mean little shorebreak. i was pleasantly surprised with the calibre of ladies splashing around. apologies for my rant the other day. i was wrong.

fri night we had an awesome braai. fillets. and corn. and ribz. luckily we only had half a bottle of rum available. it could have been nasty. sat we went out. sibiaco. but our night ended early when i was bounced. doorman didnt like my shoes. the swine. this in a country where people go to the shops bare-foot. and every second fucker has a mullet. what difference does a pair of shoes make when chicks are dropping c-bombs more often than kallis drops a catch? fucking kallis. fat bastard.

today i got a phone. the dude was genuinely amazed that i was shopping for a phone on my birthday. was kinda weird. but he kept beaming this huge smile at me and gushing happy birthday mate. friendly oke. but unnerving. the bus driver was chatty. and the checkout lady was going on about the weather. maybe it was just my day. but it kinda freaked me out. i dont like talking to strangers.

2009-10-16T09:06:00.004+01:00

queensburgh 1980's

so i landed in perth last night. jon and gem were there to pick me up. we climbed in the kia ute. and made for home. it took us almost 2hrs. perth is big. and we got lost. first time jon and gem had been to the airport. the evening air was cool though. and we had the latest killers album playing. a beast of an album. this made for a pleasant evening drive.

five hours on a budget airline is tough going. no food is served if you dont have money. i didnt have money. i could have starved on that plane. and they would have let me die like a dog. the bastards. so i needed feeding up. but nothing is open in perth past 10pm. except the dodgy kebab place. not good if sober. apparently there was a kiff pizza place up the road. but it was shut. as was kfc. but we lucked on a dominos. so i got pizza. took it home. we snuggled on the two man sofa. had a few cold hansas. and went to bed with a non-sweaty crack for the first time in 15 months. awesome.

we are staying in a residential suburb called wembley. it reminds me of queensburgh in the late 80's. detached square facebrick houses. no walls. no security gates. old cars. quiet roads. kids playing on the verge. lots of grass and trees. though not lush green like the tropics. but brownish. you can hear the wind blow. the only difference was that when i stepped out of the front door today i heard sheep bleating. rather than dogs barking. i smiled to myself. fucking aussies. and i walked past a drive-thru bottle store. dont see that shit in our country.

so alls good. except the chicks. singapore has ruined the world for me. all the girls here appear to be rather big. but perhaps its all just relative. please allah let it be relative.

2009-08-07T07:16:00.002+01:00

incubus

i haven't felt the way
i feel today
in so long
it's hard for me to specify

2009-06-10T10:23:00.004+01:00

bloodsport

“why do all the whores love me so much??!!!”

- Dan

macau. the vegas of the east. and the last bastion of portugal in asia. apparently. there wasn’t a portuguese person in sight. except for one lone security guard fucker. he looked dazed and disorientated. one of the stragglers left behind. probably wondering where all the corner shops and tearooms have gone.

anyway, so we arrived at night over an impressive undulating bridge into a shower of neon light. there is no strip as such. just loads of huge casino’s all over the show. a bit willy nilly. but this doesn’t blunt their earning power. they gross more than $6bn per annum. more than vegas. macau is so rich it gives each citizen a cash handout of like $10k each year. just for laughs.

so we jumped straight in there. we pooled funds. but in our excitement we failed to employ the fool-proof-83.333%-chance-of-winning-strategy that frank, taryn, and i developed during years of late night gambling at suncoast. we put it all on red. we lost. with nothing else going on went home (later we were to find out from a local lady that macau does have a swinging night life. unless you compare it with hong kong. or singapore. or anywhere else in the whole world ever. which was useful information. kinda. i guess).

the next morning we were up at 11am. bright-eyed and bushy tailed. using mike as a guide, we took four left turns and somehow ended up back outside our hotel. so we headed over to the big tower thing. home of the world’s highest bungy jump in the whole world ever. this was news to me. thought it was bloukrans. but apparently not. turns out bloukrans is the world’s highest bungy jump in south africa. trust me. i know. i checked the stats. macau tower - 233m. bloukrans - 216m. unfortunately, due to our tight scheduling, we didn’t have time to do the jump. but we did walk on the glass floor. we were true heroes. except for mike. he crawled around on his hands and knees and got sweaty feet.

like all true heroes, we needed to eat. and the manc needed to eat big. with the lingering portuguese influence, macau offers “one of the world's most intriguing gastronomic adventures”. so we headed to some place that specialized in portuguese-chinese-fusion cuisine. in theory this sounds great. in practice this means pork chop (chinese style – ie. battered and fried) on a prego roll.

i did spot bacalhau on the menu (though i fail to see the chinese connection here). luckily i warned the others off. fuck that shit. pure fear factor food. i remember when porto used to make it in london. took about five days to cook. he had to wear a nose peg. and duck out into the back yard every five minutes to get fresh air. and borrow incense to burn in the kitchen to get rid of the stink. neighbours used to complain about the smell. thought we were harbouring ginger folk.

after lunch we took a stroll through the old town. it is quite a nice town.

friday evening we hopped on the fast ferry to hong kong. checked in at the hotel. freshened up. and headed out for a few beers. lan kwai fong. now there’s a freakin jol my chinas. even the 7/11 is happening. and the girls are all hot. i love asian women. i love them all. every single one of them. they’re awesome. i think i love them more than scando’s. which is a big claim. but they just look so good in pilot uniforms.

anyway so after dan met some hot honky bird, the night quickly deteriorated. she took us to some club with a bouncer who liked to hug folks. various shots followed. as well as a few misunderstandings. i thought i had stolen a shot from some chick at the bar. i felt guilty and tried to pay her for it. but apparently it wasn’t her shot. a learning – never just randomly attempt to give a girl money in a bar. especially if she is hot. she will assume that you think that she is a hooker. she will not be happy. it will ruin any chance you may have had. if she is rank – no worries (just make sure you get the money back).

after a couple of young swiss girls (one apparently had an unusually small head – but i thought she was hundreds). a laughing philippino. some stage dancing. a few quality robot moves. an argument with twelve tax drivers. and a dodgy taxi home. we were all tucked up safe and sound in bed. except mike.

the next day we were up at 1pm. we took a tram to the peak. the peak is famous for one thing. and one thing only. jean claude van damme. and bloodsport. the best film in the whole world ever (other than thrashing usa – according to pete). bloodsport tells the real-life story of an american, frank dux (van damme), who was trained in the ways of ninjutsu by a japanese master of art. to honour his mentor, dux leaves for hong kong to participate in the kumite – an illegal underground, freestyle, full-contact martial arts tournament to which the world’s deadliest fighters are invited every five years. the peak is where dux trained by meditating whilst doing the splits. this specific exercise is widely acknowledged by all the great martial arts experts (including chuck norris) as being the single most important factor for dux winning the tournament. i paid homage. english people are ignorant.

we then headed off to some backstreet markets on both hong kong island and kowloon (chinese mainland – but still hong kong). the markets have some very rank shit. smells like bacalhau.

that night we headed back to lan kwai fong. now there’s a freakin jol my chinas. but the mojo wasn’t the same. so we pressed on to wan chai. we were attacked by hundreds of prostitutes. it was awesome. we thought we had lost a good man when dan was pinned down and dragged into the whore-house. but he pulled through.

i don’t feel like writing anymore.

2009-05-08T11:01:00.003+01:00

jungle railway

"the free time allowed me to pursue what became two of my favourite hobbies on robben island: gardening and tennis."

- nelson mandela

it was a long weekend in singapore. friday was a public holiday. labour day. it should be labour week. goddamn eastern work ethic. so i went to malaysia. the north east part. by train. i am really starting to subscribe to frank’s passion for trains. he loves trains. if he was a poet he would write poems about trains.

on a warm summer’s evening
on a train bound for nowhere

the journey was epic. a fourteen hour train love-in. i woke up in the morning. brushed my teeth. had a leak. hopped into a taxi. jumped on a fast ferry. and touched down on long beach, perhentian island. lonely planet’s number one pick of things to do in malaysia.

now tropical beaches are nice. palm trees. and white sand. and glassy blue water. and small colourful fish. and shit. but they’re all the fucking same. the whole world over. i wanna see some waves man. huge fucken swells. and sharks. the real mean fuckers. and scando’s. gimme some hot-ass scando’s. a tropical beach just doesn’t cut it if there aren’t dozen’s of topless swedes sucking cone-shaped ice lollies. the one’s that melt and dribble down your chin. sticky as shit. attracts ants. and flys. swarms of the bastards.

if i was a musician i would write songs about scando's. that's how much i love them. i attempted to write a song about scando’s on the island. cos there was nothing else to do. and i was missing them. but no luck. it will happen though. one day.

this world’s an ugly place
but you’re so beautiful to me

so i read mandela’s book. the long walk to freedom. didn’t realise he was such a left-wing militant fucker. always assumed he was the black gandhi. an eye for an eye and the whole world would be blind. but apparently not. can’t really blame him. he was married to winnie for three decades. sure to turn anyone into an edgy bastard. ready to unleash some violence.

it’s a long book. it took me the whole weekend to finish. then i left the island. sleeper train was fully booked. poor planning. or karma. so stayed over in kota bharu. islamic capital of malaysia. deep melodic praise to allah swam across the sunset. have no idea what it means. but i fuckin love that shit. very soulful. reminds you of the sky. and that everything’s gonna be alright.

so i hopped on the "jungle railway" train at 4am. the first six hours were kiff. the camaraderie of jungle people amuses me. what the fuck do they talk about? nothing happens. ever. they’re in the middle of the goddamn jungle. but they sure can ramble. and the jungle kids. they love trains. it’s like the highlight of the fucken decade when a train pulls through their shanty town. poor fuckers.

the last ten hours were not kiff. they were kak. i ran out of food and water and reading material and ipod battery. and then the aircon packed up. and the fuckers behind started eating. chlop. chlop. chlop. i’m all for bushy beards and free hugs t-shirts and jesus sandles. peace and love. but fuck me, when people start eating chlop chlop chlop it drives me fucken insane. fuck the forgiving feminine values, i wanna open a can of nietzsche whupass on the fuckers. do some real fucken damage. you know?

love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. if someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. if someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. do to others as you would have them do unto you.

2009-02-19T09:08:00.002Z

vesicare cares

an everyday series of emails discussing bladder issues.

dave:

oh... and i think i've developed your bladder issue bru!!!

kyron:

ha ha, vesicare man

http://www.vesicare.com/

this stuff sorted me out, so im now on one for ones. apparently the signals were firing to the brain too early, i.e. while the bladder was only half full, they were signalling "full". the needle on my pee dial wasn't working properly.

during the trip to SA, caught up with my old sa doctor for a proper check up (still rate SA doctors) gave me this stuff to shift the signals, and it worked wonders.

greg:

I have the same issues after weight training

kyron:

vesicare cares

dave:

what is it bru? a cream to rub on?

kyron:

no no, no witchdoc kuk man,

ha ha, where wud u rub it?

no its a pill, gets the bladder to do a william wallace "holddd!! holdd!!!!"

u take in more and more water, drink as much as u can, and at the end of the two weeks, ur bladder holding is stronger.

greg:

But for the bott leakage...

2009-02-19T09:04:00.002Z

urinal rules

courtesy of kyron. assume a five urinal situation.

pierpoint confused me today, took the middle urinal. U never assume the middle urinal as first pee'r. U go hard left or right, leaving a three urinal zone of love for the second pee'r.

i was all confused with my d*k half out my pants unsure which way to go, left or right. either way i only had a one urinal buffer zone, which is normally reserved exclusively for a third pee'r if any.

I hope u obey and follow the rules carefully. As first pee'r, u always go hard left or right. Never assume middle lane, ur not doing pee donuts after a night out.

2008-12-17T07:46:00.007Z

understanding harry: part 1

record:

5 years an auditor working for hills howard

durban nipple twising champion 1999, 2003, 2004

cook to porto and dave 2005, 2006

favourite sayings:
"hello, man!"
"show me the front of your bum!"

hates:
lewis hamilton
running fast
sick leave

loves:
nataliah matthew
gareth ducler
cristiano ronaldo
spastics

2008-11-25T01:32:00.001Z

dirty. fuckin. arry.

2008-11-24T04:03:00.006Z

it's a modown

so in response to the email i sent out regarding my tash (see below)... i got the following response from fingers lynch:

"everyone in my office just said the words 'bum' and 'fluff' come to mind.. all had a good laugh! good on you for trying dude.."

so lets remind ourselves of the last time fingers lynch had a "mo":

now contrast this to a veteran tash wearer such as myself:

there can only be one winner. vote below in the comments section. allah to bless the winner with a virile life full of of extremely masculine hairy children.

2008-11-21T08:41:00.001Z

for the love of the mo

this is an email about the very fabric of contemporary life. this is the story of a mo. a classic-magnum-pi-style mo. a real mo. none of this handlebar-mo bullshit. a proud mo. a non-conformist mo. a mo that can’t be bought. a mo that just is.

this is a true story.

i joined a movember team. i soon found out that this was a mistake. my motives for joining were purist. i’m mo sellout. my mo can’t be bought. but it can be judged. apparently. by financial gain. by whoring itself around for sponsorship. my mo is no good because i have exactly zero in sponsorship.

old man look at my life
24 and there’s so much more
live alone in a paradise
that makes me think of two

i’ve been judged by the other virgin-mo-wearers in my team. handlebar-mo-wearers. handlebars. what the fuck is that shit? that’s not a mo. it’s bullshit. all gloss. all fluorescent lighting. low quality stylized bullshit.

i’ve been judged by stylized people driving in their stylized cars through their stylized cities to their stylized work places wearing stylized mo’s. stylized mo’s which, just like their stylized-corporate-lehman-brother-type-employers, lack substance. pure façade.

love lost such a cost
give me things that don’t get lost
like a coin that won’t get tossed
rolling home to you

mo growing today, much like the music industry it seems, has become pure masturbation. selfish pleasure. mo growing was never about the money, the looks, the celebrity. it was always about something deeper. about soul. about free love. young love. about connecting. being one with god. blowing with the wind. flowing with the river. swaying with the trees. rolling with the hills. for the love of the mo.

and another thing. when the fuck did it become a mo? it’s a fuckin tash. more bullshit rebranding. lets package up a turd and sell it as a chocolate log. just add marshmallow. as long as it looks good. they’ll never know.

lullabies look in your eyes
run around the same old town
doesn’t mean that much to me
to mean that much to you

anyway. so it’s time for action friends. it’s time to save your souls. eat only fruit that has fallen from the tree of truth. drink only from the fountain of eternal wisdom. or peppermint tea laced with honey. do nothing to attract attention. feed some birds. click on the link below:

https://www.movember.com/uk/donate/donate-details.php?rego=1754271&country=uk

i don’t want money. i refuse to be a whore. i just need names. some proof that there is still some good in the world. unfortunately min donation is gbp1. go for min. goddamn all charities. except small independent ones.

i’ve been first and last
look at how the time goes past
but i’m all alone at last
rolling home to you

for tash pics please see:

http://au.movember.com/mospace/1729896

2008-09-27T12:51:00.010+01:00

blackhole sun

"it's really difficult for a person to create their own life and their own freedom. it's going to become more and more difficult, and it's going to create more and more disillusioned people who become dishonest and angry and are willing to fuck the next guy to get what they want."

- chris cornell

2008-09-23T10:51:00.002+01:00

productive life

i really feel like feeding some birds at the mo. but i don't have any birdseed.

2008-09-19T12:02:00.006+01:00

i never

i managed to melt my spicey lamb chops last night. really weird. they didn't burn. they just melted. never seen meat melt before. it just goes black and melted-like. i got a fright when i opened the oven. black stuff oozing all over the place. so i skipped the chops. had to make do with salad. with some cheese on top. went to bed hungry.

we went diving last wend. on an island off the east coast of malaysia. really beautiful place. and some cool chilled out diving. except for that fish. little fucker kept on biting me when i took off my mask during my refresher dive.

2008-09-09T10:54:00.002+01:00

legend

a year ago today three taches set off into the wilds of africa. strong and free and ginger. ready to stare adversity in the face and carry on regardless. i’d like to say that they came through unscathed. that they managed to tame the beast. but i would be lying. it was alarming how quickly they reverted to a feral state of existence. it was the pure beauty of the beast. africa. the tach graveyard.

one year on and only the hollow shells of the taches survive. broken shells. cracked polystyrene shells. that just crumble and burn. the taches have been lost to the jungle. existing only in the thick mist of rural african legend.

i hope that one day they’ll understand.

until that day…

2008-09-03T05:15:00.005+01:00

my team

the best tax team in the whole world ever...

2008-08-29T05:20:00.004+01:00

ratm

okay… this is a long post and is prob gonna bore you. and even if you get through it, most of you will wonder what the fuck i’m on about. but i need to write this… more just to get my own thoughts in line. i’ve been trying to make sense of a few things for a while now… i guess i haven’t got it all figured out just yet.

anyway, so i’ve had a little time recently and i’ve started listening to a lot of rage. and I’ve just finished reading a book called into the wild. it’s about a dude, chris, who after graduating from college, “gave his entire $25k in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet”, and fucked off around america living like a vagabond, trying to find some sort of truth. looking for some meaning in life. he ended up starving himself to death in the wilderness in alaska. fucken idiot. but i think, his story is touching. and perhaps a little relevant.

what i’ve found really surprising lately are the number of people i’ve talked to who seem tired with the world. tired with the system. people who i’ve always assumed to be driven. people who, just a few years ago, had professional ambition as wide as all the world. people who have found their soul-mates. people who have perfect kids. people who have a great family. people who have great jobs. who are good at their jobs. who are comfortable in their jobs. people who have more money than they could ever imagine. people who, materially, have everything. honestly i have been shocked. i had no idea this tiredness was so widespread.

so what is it with the system? what is it with all the bullshit?

chris’s issues were pretty clear. he hated the inequalities of the system. he hated the exploitation of people by the system. he hated the hypocrisy of the people within the system. it was all around him. in everyday life. everywhere. and he had the feeling that there must be something else. something simple. something pure. something not tainted by greed. not tainted by the system. something true. so he packed up his shit and walked into the wild.

he was however an idealist. and I don’t think the masses are that opinionated and concerned about ideals and other people and what’s happening at a higher political level. i think they are just disillusioned with their own day-to-day existence. the daily grind. and i think their disillusionment stems from some sort of detachment. a separateness. a lack of identification with what they are spending the majority of their time doing. and a feeling of inevitability. a feeling of, “this is what I have to do”.

“america touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and i have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. and in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. the only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve”.

fuck you
i won’t do what you tell me

anyway, chris seemed to get a lot of shit sorted out on his travels. and he wrote some classic passages in his letters:

“so many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. the very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. the joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

and:

“you are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. god has placed it all around us. it is in everything and anything we might experience. we just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.”

in fact there is no such thing as unconventional living. only unconventional thinking. our thinking is flawed. our basic logic, inherited from ancient greece thousands of years ago, is inherently unconventional. a system of thinking, “whose mythos has endowed our culture with the tendency underlying all the evil of our technology, the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn’t any good.”

“the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn’t very good”. i fucken love that. that sums up the whole fucken mess perfectly. our value system is upside down. we hold “good” subordinate to “reason”. and no, “reasonable” is not the same as “good”. you don’t sit in a dull job because it is “good”. you sit in a dull job because it is “reasonable”. i’m not gonna change my circumstances in life because i’m earning good money and i’m living comfortably. i’m not entirely happy, in fact there are big gaping holes, but that’s okay because what i’m doing is fucken reasonable. and so you become detached.

so are you standing in line?
are you believing the lies?
you bowing down to the flag?
you got a bullet in your head

actually, if our value system was the right way up, chris was incorrect when he said “we just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle”. if we put “good” on top of “reason”, make “good” the highest truth, we wouldn’t need courage to give up the “dull job” to follow something better. in fact, we would need courage to stay in the “dull job”. with a new improved value system, it would be logical for us to pursue the “good”.

from what i can see chris got his value system the correct way up. he got his shit in order. and he found truth. no reasonable person would fuck off into the alaskan wild with a bag of rice and a few tolstoy novels. i mean… tolstoy??? wtf? tolstoy would bore you to death. and that’s exactly what he did to chris. but that’s beside the point. chris didn’t do it because it was reasonable, he did it because it was good. and he had a fucken good time doing what was “good”.

I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!

“i think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature or with programs full of things for other people to do. i think that kind of approach starts at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. the social values are right only if the individual values are right. the place to improve the world is in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there”.

2008-08-12T10:00:00.004+01:00

a welcome email

i started work in singapore last week. i knew it was gonna be a bit strange. but didn't count on it getting super weird super quick. this is a series of emails i got from a lady in malaysia welcoming me to the team on the first day. let's call her lucy-lui. in order to protect her identity.

lucy-lui:

Hello David, welcome onboard..let me introduce myself, I am Lucy-Lui, handle SEPL.
Here is our tax team photo.

me:

Hi Lucy-Lui,
Thanks for your welcome and photo!!! Would be grateful if you could point out Lee Chong and yourself :)
It will be nice working with you.
Have a good weekend.
Cheers,
David

lucy-lui:

hehe. You guess...
tips : I am standing on the left front row. Chinese
Chong Lee is the tallest at the back. Chinese

me:

hahaha... thanks for the tips. it is nice to be able to put a face to names. unfortunately we don't have an updated team photo as yet :(
btw... that is a huge cake you guys have on the desk in front :)

lucy-lui:

i can imagine your face & body , let me put all the best part of the superstar into one. kekeke. as i heard that you are like Hollywood superstar :)
that is banana cake from secret recipe.

lucy-lui:

opppss.. did i said something wrong.. if you are not very handsome, my apologies.

2008-08-11T07:08:00.004+01:00

bali

when i went in to sign my new employment contract i sure did get a fright. 14 days leave. per calendar year!!! goddamn singapore employment laws. it's pure exploitation. considering i haven't had a full-time job since april 2007, i thought that was a bit rough on their part. so decided to head to bali for the wend for one last big chillout before starting, once again, to plunder the world's natural resources. i have no morals when i need money. i am pure rapist.

so i landed up in kuta. the hub of bali. loads of sea and sun and sand. and waves!!! but no scando's. buddha must be punishing me for a return to my evil work ways. so for two days i did nothing. i just chilled. for a change. i learned how best to fix a motorcycle. i dreamed of spurs and bentley and modric and gds and berbs. i watched sunsets. i drank beer. i oggled girls. i also thought about how the future rushes up from behind you, the past receding away before your eyes. like sitting on a train, in a seat facing the the back end of the train. and i decided i wanted to become an uncarved block. just like pooh.

"then what day is it?" asked owl.

"it's today!" squeaked piglet.

"my favourite day," said pooh.

and then i became a bit restless. so i went drinking. ace out. and it was happy hour. for three hours. two-for-one special. and i sat by the bar and started thinking about noah's ark and parallel lines and the highest truth. and pretty soon the pub (paddy's pub - go figure) turned into a night club. quality. so i decided to sit there and look pretty and bide my time until the right opportunity came along. so i sat there and looked pretty and bided my time. and continued to drink. and sure enough, but not quite soon enough, opportunity came knocking. by the time the pretty dutch girl with blue eyes came over to chat i was super rocked. and i fell off my barstool. for no obvious reason. i just kinda swayed and then fell off. she just left me on the floor. bitch.

so the next morning i needed to get healthy and when i woke up i went for an afternoon swim. it was about 6pm and the sun was just above the horizon, throwing reds and pinks and oranges across the water like skipping stones. not a breath of wind. there were only two of us in the line-up. myself. and a body-boarder. he had one of those old mach2 boards. yellow top. black rails. orange slick. it was one of the best wave sessions i have ever had. consistent beach break. peaking at around 3 foot. throwing lip and beep barrels. it was awesome. i was living without desire. i was becoming the uncarved block.

the sky could be blue

i don't mind

without you it's a waste of time

the last time i felt like that, without desire and at one with nature, was when myself and frank were frolicking in the waves in mozam and we pulled a kevin and perry go large. FLOATER!!! there was a bunch of dutch or austrian or some foreign european girls down current innocently playing catch with a tennis ball or frisbee or something. the plan was to watch their faces for signs of recognition as it bobbed through their circle: hey, is that a... FLOATER!!! cue jaws-like panic. splashing. screaming. a big wailing siren on the beach. general all-round mayhem. i panicked though at the last moment and chopped it into four neat quarters with three sharp kung-fu chops and it disappeared below the wave line. childish shit like that amuses me enormously.

the next day i moved on to balangan beach in the south of bali where i slept in a shack on the beach. it was very cheap. but very beautiful. and very rustic. and quite hippy. the beach was dotted with huge palm trees and surrounded by weather-beaten sheer-faced cliffs. there was was an awesome right-to-left reef break that was a bit too big for me. but great to see. like one of those exotic zigzag magazine photo-shoot locations. a real surfer paradise. i really liked this place a lot. even though i'm not a surfer. i'm a body-boarder. and body-boarders rule man!!!

the clouds above us join and separate,

the breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns,

life is like that, so why not relax?

who can stop us from celebrating?

2008-08-05T12:26:00.004+01:00

for pumpkin

when pumpkin, buttercup, and i were traveling in africa we would drink. heavily. just to pass the time. and dull the pain. we would then start discussing noah's ark. as normal drunk people do. buttercup would declare an unshakable faith in the story. something he can't explain. just faith. pumpkin would say the story is ridiculous. illogical. scientifically impossible. we would then start talking about the highest truth. and parallel lines. we had loads of discussions about the highest truth. and parallel lines. is faith any less of a truth than logic (science or mathematics)?

poincare lived from 1854 to 1912, a professor at the university of paris. this man was an international celebrity at thirty-five, a living legend at fifty-eight...

... during poincare's lifetime, an alarmingly deep crises in the foundations of the exact sciences had begun. for years scientific truth had been beyond the possibility of a doubt; the logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only their mistaking of it's rules. the great questions had all been answered. the mission of science was now simply to refine these answers to greater and greater accuracy... it was hardly guessed by anyone that within a few decades there would be no more absolute space, absolute time, absolute substance or even absolute magnitude; that classical physics, the scientific rock of ages, would become "approximate"...

... in his foundations of science poincare explained that the antecedents of the crisis in the foundations of science were very old. it had long been sought in vain, he said, to demonstrate the axiom known as euclid's fifth postulate and this search was the start of the crisis. euclid's fifth postulate of parallels, which states that through a given point there's not more than one parallel line to a given straight line, we usually learn in tenth-grade geometry. it is one of the basic building blocks out of which the entire mathematics of geometry is constructed...

... finally, in the first quater if the nineteeth century, and almost at the same time, a hungrian and a russian - bolyai and lobachevski - established irrefutably that a proof of euclid's fifth postulate is impossible. they did this by reasoning that if there were any way to reduce euclid's postulate to other, surer axioms, another effect would also be noticeable: a reversal of euclid's postulate would create logical contradictions in the geometry. so they reversed euclid's postulate.

lobachevski assumes at the start that through a given point can be drawn two parallels to a given straight. and he retains besides all euclid's other axioms. from these hypothesis he deduces a series of theorems among which it's impossible to find any contradiction, and he constructs a geometry whose faultless logic is inferior in nothing to the euclidian geometry. thus by failure find any contradictions he proves that the fifth postulate is irreducible to simpler axioms.

it wasn't proof but it was alarming. it was it's rational byproduct that soon overshadowed it and almost everything else in the field of mathematics. mathematics, the cornerstone of scientific certainty, was suddenly uncertain.

we now had two contradictory visions of unshakable scientific truth, true for all men of all ages, regardless of their individual preferences.

this was the basis of the profound crisis that shattered the scientific complacency of the gilded age. how do we know which one of these geometries is right? if there is no basis for distinguishing between them, then you have a total mathematics which admits logical contradictions. but a mathematics that admits internal logical contradictions is no mathematics at all. the ultimate effect of non-euclidian geometries becomes nothing more than a magician's mumbo jumbo in which belief is sustained purely by faith!

and of course once that door was opened one could hardly expect the number of contradictory systems of unshakable scientific truth to be limited to two. a german named riemann appeared with another unshakable system of geometry which throws overboard not only euclid's postulate, but also the first axiom, which states that only one straight line can pass through two points. again there is no internal contradiction, only an inconsistency with both lobachevskian and euclidian geometries.

according to the theory of relativity, riemann geometry best describes the world we live in.

2008-07-28T10:13:00.002+01:00

strawberry swing

yup... i'm still chilling. managed to get another 30 days in sing though. after a border run to malaysia on sat. it was relatively uneventful. but thought i'd let you know. just in case you were worried.

anyway, so the only exciting thing that has happened recently is "drinks club". "drinks club" was formed as a rival organisation to the girls' "book club". only "drinks club" is a little more honest about the activities that take place. being a "drinks club" the primary activity is drinking. it says nothing however, about abusing large-chinned coroner girls. chin-up. about watching venus williams perform live karaoke on stage in a high-class-pick-up-joint. about smashing champagne glasses on the floor. just for a drunken laugh. about being escorted out of the high-class-pick-up joint. for smashing champagne glasses on the floor. just for a drunken laugh. about heading to orchard towers. better known as "the-four-floors-of-whores". classy joint. basically it's a place that has four floors full up with whores. about pulling out the old-school break-dance moves. think the worm. this goes down well with prostitutes. apparently. about getting home at 5.30am. about waking up in the morning on the kitchen floor clutching a half-defrosted steak. not that any of that stuff happened. that i know of anyway. but if it did, the title "drinks club" wouldn't be entirely honest.

another exciting piece of news is that i've become known in sing circles as unemployed-soon-to-be-employed-dave. which is nice. considering the names i've acquired previously. aussie-dave. dangerous-dave. dodgy-dave. liability-dave. dick.

just finished "the power of one". good book. easy-to-read. a touch disappointed though. i guess i had super high hopes after speaking to others about it. thought it would be more profound. and possibly a touch more realistic. but a good book nonetheless. i'm on to the "tao of pooh" now. right up my street. a touch more intellectual.

loving the new coldplay at the mo. track 9. strawberry swing. quality. now the sky could be blue. i don't mind. without you it's a waste of time.

2008-07-24T08:03:00.003+01:00

an observation

the world is bullshit. in my opinion anyway. i came to this conclusion whilst drinking last night. conclusions are often best drawn whilst drinking. bullshit. it doesn't matter how many rungs you climb on the ladder. you can't escape the bullshit. because, as it turns out, the ladder is the bullshit. kurt cobain knew this. he got to the top and saw it for what it was: bullshit. and, most of the time, shit stinks. unless you're a dung-beetle. in which case, you eat shit.

i funkin hate interviews. they're bullshit.

she lives with a broken man

a cracked polystyrene man

who just crumbles and burns

he used to do surgery

for girls in the eighties

but gravity always wins

and it wears him out

2008-07-17T03:24:00.004+01:00

an update

hmmm... well... i'm still chilling... pretty much.

last friday myself and pete ventured over to errr... somewhere opposite boat quay to have a few quiet beers and wind down the week. pete managed to use his foreign charms to jump the queue. love the old-style colonial attitude here. let the locals fuckers waste in the queue... that's what i say. with beers costing $15 (R65) a pint, it was defo only gonna be a couple of beers.

fuck me. did we get shit-faced. pete missed paddling lessons the next morning. pete never misses paddling lessons. he loves backstroke. at 3am the bar had locked up and we were still outside swaying on our bar stools. pete still trying to convince me that some dreadlocked fucker's american idol version of "somewhere over the rainbow" is the greatest song in the world ever. wtf? there's no excuse for that type of behaviour. even if you are super rocked.

anyway, so in the interests of saving cash, i've been surviving on peanut butter sandwiches, beans on toast, and tuna pasta. and i don't eat fish. it just doesn't smell right. but it's cheap. like dopey's last round.

so when andrew "toot-toot" joubert told me that he was staying in the 6-star ritz carlton, i was super envious. we were locked up in an air-tight capsule in singapore's millenium wheel (picture london-eye) with a bunch singaporeans (who are ultra-conservative at the best of times), and all he kept banging on about was the food:

"the food bru. you must check the food. there's sooo much. chinese. japanese. thai. indo. malay. indian. prawns. lobsters. crayfish. stingray. scrape the chilli shit off though. and they have these fresh cooked strawberry cream pancakes. with ice cream. for breakfast dude. it's friggin incredible. and it's free. it's heaven. just don't touch the national fruit. what the fuck is that shit? oh my god. it's fuckin awful. i nearly fuckin gagged on the table. what the fuck is up with people's taste-buds here? it's like rotting meat bru... jussis, i need a huge fuckin shit. must be that fuckin national fruit."

he then let out a ripper. quality.

i can't waste time

so give it a moment

i realise nothing's broken

don't need to worry about everything i've done

live every second like it was my last one

2008-07-10T08:45:00.004+01:00

woochop

so it's nearly the end of my second week in sing. it's still friggin hot. although it has rained a whole lot lately. which gives the weather a sort of steam room effect. but there seem to be lots of very good looking oriental ladies wandering around. so it kinda evens itself out i guess. which is good. women are good. men are bad. i think. it feels like every arbitrary dude i walked past could knock me the fuck out with a bruce-lee-roundhouse-fly-kick to the head and a "wataaaaaaaahh". must fight like dragon. breathe in. breathe out. wax on. wax off. paint the house. scary man.

ja... so that's about it for this week. although i did get invited to the nomura asia equity forum on wednesday. by a very nice saffa dude who's name is daniel. although we call him niel. not sure why. just because, i guess. never really did get to the bottom of it.

anyway the conference was good. and great for my mandatory cpd (continued professional development) hours. and interesting. we talked about the global financial crisis. it's not looking good folks. time to hang in there and hope for the best. weather the storm. the food was nice though. and very expensive. japanese fruit. fifty times the price of normal fruit apparently. goddamn those peasants starving to death in the 3rd world. lets eat fuck off expensive strawberries and talk about their problems. and look at the good looking oriental ladies. gotta love it man. god bless the bourgeois. thank allah i'm one of them.

oh yeah... and also i got to have a personal audience with the minister mentor. impressed? you should be. he's kinda like singapore's nelson mandela. cross mr miyagi. he ruled the country from 1959 - 1990, overseeing the rise and rise of singapore. bright chap actually. very charismatic. some of his better sayings (africa take note):

the western world may accuse us if not being democratic, daniel son. of restricting opposition political parties, daniel son. but no-one can accuse anyone in government of being corrupt, of being fraudulent, of cheating or stealing, daniel son. and if you do, i'll sue you, daniel son.
if we in the government make a mistake, daniel son, it is because we made a mistake, daniel son. no-one profited from that mistake, daniel son.
what we don't want to create, daniel son, is a situation where the people expect to get something for doing nothing, daniel son.

2008-07-08T12:10:00.004+01:00

buttercup?

so i haven't heard from buttercup for a while. and it was beginning to worry me. buttercup was one of the trio who grew a tach and set off through africa braving wild animals, deadly diseases, and deep-heat. but since he returned to europe i haven't heard from him. so i asked pumpkin for an update. seems like buttercup is doing just fine:

"buttercup is still around and his usual self up to the same old same old. he announced to all that he is in fact a hermaphrodite and has a mexican male lover, who he has been seeing for some time now with thoughts of a family. he is partially blind in the one eye and suffers from narcolepsy, which is not a good combination. on good days he goes to work, on the bad days we see him wondering around masturbating in front of shop windows, squinting horribly and laughing hysterically. i get a call from the police once a week to come and pick up his unconscious unzipped self from outside java's coffee house. there is something about the coffee that sets off the narcolepsy. but not much has changed really, still nothing as exciting as when he went through his mid-life crisis."

ahhh. good old buttercup. a true gent. one of the very best.

2008-07-07T10:26:00.003+01:00

full up

"i am"... that's the hard bit. "i am". really get around to saying that and you're home, really mean it and you're full up, you're all inside. you don't have to want things outside you to fill the gaps inside you. you don't leave bits of you hanging around on objects in shop-windows, in catalogues or on advertising boardings. wherever you go you take your whole self with you, you don't leave bits lying around to get stamped on, you're all of a piece, you're what mister god wants you to be. an "i am", like hell he is. hell's bells! all this time i had thought that going to church was in order to look for god, for praising him. it didn't dawn on me what mister god was doing. all this time he had been working overtime to knock a bit of sense into my noddle, trying to turn an "it is" into an "i am". i got the message. that was the sunday i really signed on.

i was beginning to get the hang of this "i am" stuff. considering how important it was to mister god. i was finding it not too impossible to cope with. the tricky bit was looking inside yourself to see what bits of the works were missing. once you'd overcome that hurdle the rest was fairly simple. my first real peek inside myself caused me to slam the door in a hurry. "that's me in there!" holy cow, i looked more like an overgrown gruyere cheese, full of holes. "you're full up fynn", i now saw as an encouraging statement rather than a factual one.

after getting over the shock, i opened the door a crack and took another peek. it wasn't long before i was able to identify one of the holes. it was shaped like a motor-bike. what's more, i recognised that hole. it was an exact fit of the motor-bike in the shop-window down the high street.

after some practice it became more and more easy to identify the holes: a rather super microscope, one of these new-fangled television things, and a clock that told you the time in bombay, moscow, new york, london, and a few other places, all at the same time. there were bits of me all over the place, leaving identical holes inside me. i was, to say the least, spread out a bit. somewhere down the line it had all gone wrong. i was certain i wasn't born with these holes. it was those damned banners that kept on cropping up: "get on", "get ahead", "a motor-bike makes you someone", "a car is even better", "two cars, and, brother, you've hit the jackpot". i had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. the banners were inside me and they were rooted in pretty fertile soil. the more banners inside me, the more bits of me were outside me. "most of a person is outside." you can say that again.

- mister god this is anna

2008-07-01T09:59:00.004+01:00

singapore

it's friggin hot here man. super hot. i have sweaty palms. and a sweaty crack. going commando here can be quite slimey. it sure was bad planning only packing 2 pairs of jocks (to be used for emergencies only). i need some more jocks.

anyway, so i've been here for four days. it's gone so fast man. i'm currently staying in an apartment on the 17th floor. with peter. my mate. it's west-facing. i know this because peter told me. and we have braai's in his lounge and watch the sunset. it's weird. not only how east and west are relative, whilst north and south are absolute. but also having braai's in your lounge. it get's quite smokey. and you have to keep hanging your head out the window and waving and smiling so nobody calls the fire department. but that's singapore i guess. weird. and hot.

so no real news. other than that i haven't managed to get a job yet. and the canadian chick has yet to phone. which is surprising. i sure did make a good impression on her at the backpackers lodge on saturday night. jet-lagged and drunk. mumbling on about the ukraine. it was a pleasant evening. we ate dozens of little curried pigeon eggs on the way home.

today i bought some towels. it is useful to have a towel when you choose to leave home. as you may need to shower sometime.

i woke up this morning and got myself a beer

the future is uncertain and the end is always near

2008-06-23T19:58:00.004+01:00

outta here

"what i'd do, i figured, i'd go down to the holland tunnel and bum a ride, and then i'd bum another one, and another one, and another one, and in a few days i'd be somewhere out west where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody'd know me and i'd get a job. i figured i could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. i didn't care what kind of a job it was, though. just so people didn't know me and i didn't know anybody. i thought what i'd do was, i'd pretend i was one of those deaf-mutes. that way i wouldn't have to have any goddamn stupid useless conversations with anybody. if anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. they'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then i'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. everybody'd think i was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. they'd let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and i'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough i made and live there for the rest of my life. i'd build it right near the woods, but not right in them, because i'd want it to be sunny as hell all the time. i'd cook all my own food, and later on, if i wanted to get married or something, i'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. she'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddamn piece of paper, like everybody else. if we had children, we'd hide them somewhere. we could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves."

- the catcher in the rye

2008-01-07T18:51:00.000Z

billy

found these pictures whilst scooting round my folks hard drive the other day. i sure did love my billy. my 18th birthday present. the greatest beetle in the whole world ever. what a legend car. we used to totter around durbs. back end of the 90's and early 2000's. to varsity. to the beach. to football. to crash. to crowded house overport. to jonny's. hooking unsuspecting scooters on the back bumper. raming shocked mates up the backside (of their car). backing into invisible walls at 5am in the morning.

can't be held responsible
she was touching her face
i won't be held responsible
she fell in love in the first place

driving. sleeping. waking. laughing. singing. fighting. crying. screaming. hugging. dancing. drinking. vomiting. sexing. hot-boxing. high-fiving. thinking. pondering. smiling. loving. living.

for the life of me i cannot remember what made us think
that we were wise and we'd never compromise
for the life of me i cannot believe
we'd ever die for these sins
we were merely freshmen

i sure was bummed when billy was sold.

2007-12-18T12:15:00.000Z

slop shops and pharmacies

ja... so anyway. time for a final update. we're home now. what a relief. urban africa really is a shithole. honestly. no lies. every wall is a urinal. every sidewalk a garbage dump. every house a chicken coop. we couldn’t stand it anymore. we had to get out. yahweh bless durban. the land of milk and honey. the cleanest and most organised place in the whole world ever.

first stop in durbs: kfc. praise the lord. double crunch meal. heaven on a plastic tray. we’d been gagging for kfc since cairo. a quick learning for all you budding politicians and future leaders out there: a country cannot, under any circumstances, call itself a 1st world country until it has kfc. good old colonel saunders. goddamn the 3rd world.

second stop: a place on essenwood road called nomad’s backpackers. a german chick with an extremely deep voice and big flappy feet attempted to charge us more because we were south african. we sure did show her. made her hairy armpits sweat. there’s no room for discrimination in the new south africa. this is the rainbow nation. a first world country with fuckloads of kfc’s. how many kfc’s you got in germany? goddamn backpacker nazi!

third stop: swing chair by the pool. windhoek lager in hand. some spacey philosophical dude opposite me. an argument waiting to happen. and it sure did happen. and it sure did end abruptly when he seethed: the difference between you and me is that you are negatively minded and i am positively minded. he then turned his back and stormed off to his room. i suppose i should explain myself. and i will in good time. (a serious rant to follow at some stage). but if i’m honest with myself, he sure did sprout a whole lot of bullshit. goddamn spacey positive-thinking bullshit.

quick note: we had some quality (drunken) arguments on tour. all the trivial stuff. god and life. a lot of it centred around noah’s ark and scientific evidence and faith and the highest truth. we also had some quality discussions regarding parallel lines which we never quite resolved. can parallel lines ever meet? hmmm... puzzling. anyway, i love a good argument. especially now i’ve become opinionated. allah bless thee who is opinionated.

anyway, i’ve strayed from the path. africa. okay. so where were we last? malawi. blantyre. blantyre wasn’t too bad actually. one of the better east african urban centres. it contained a big flash standard bank and some sort of fake-chinese-rubberband-nando’s-type-restaurant. but no kfc. we had some beers at doogles with residents ryan and leon and talked about pissing into the wind and the strong breaking wind in africa. we then bumbled off to a place called twiga (giraffe in swahili). we are obviously before our time as once again the big-bushy-babe-pulling-ginger-tach failed to pull. but what can you do? i guess a lot of it is about education. and the current education system sure had failed your normal everyday african.

malawi was good to us. but we had to leave. the giant prawns in mozam had our tach’s smothered all over them. so we caught a series of brutal minibus-taxi’s down to tofo. the land of sand, sea, sun, and scando’s. except there were no scando’s. goddammit! where have all the scando’s gone? they used to fall out of the palm trees as soon as i so much as put one toe of my speedo-clad ass on the beach in an exotic location. oh well... can parallel lines ever meet? hmmm... puzzling.

there were however some beautiful young inebriated austrian girls around. but i didn’t fall in love. because i’m hard now. errr... well... no... not right now... and not hard like that... but hard... like errr... like sylvester stallone. sylvester stallone with a tach. can you imagine anything harder in the whole world ever (other than hobson’s six-pack)?

anyway so we lived in a three man cottage on the beach for six days. it sure was sandy. but we got to dive (with huge manta rays), and eat (not-so-giant) prawns, and drink cocktails, and stroll along the white silky shoreline at sunrise, and frolic and play-wrestle in the waves. it was like the most romantic holiday you’ve never had with two of your best masculine tach-wearing mates.

but the weather got bad. so again we had to move on. south to the giant prawn capital of the world. with it’s mediterranean-style architecture, flame-tree-lined avenues, sidewalk cafe’s and waterside setting, maputo is easily one of africa’s biggest shitholes. we’d had enough of shitholes... so we sampled the giant prawns (pretty good to be honest) and then we caught one last minibus-taxi home. it was our intention to buy all four seats in the three-seater row. fuck the “what you need to do is squeeze” mentality of eastern african transport. but south african minibus-taxi equals huge mercedes benz sprinter. three seats, three people. hallelujah! god bless the civilised south african minibus-taxi community. so at last we had some good luck. buddha knows we deserved it. would have preferred the tach-seeking scando’s. but we couldn’t complain. what an awesome last journey home. beeg smile.

it sure was a tough trip. glad i did it. wouldn’t do it again.

ps. pics to follow... sometime. when miguel gets his ass in gear. i don’t have any pictures cos my camera got mowed down by... i’ll stop bleating now.

the birds sang in the wet trees
and as i listened to them it was a hundred years from now
and i was dead and someone else was listening to them.
but i was glad i had recorded for him
the melancholy.

- patrick kavanagh

2007-12-12T14:18:00.001Z

eish

the first picture of us back home - crossing the swaziland, sa border. pay special attention to the tach's... real veterans now... awesome!

miguel's site (the easy life) has further details and pictures of our trip.

2007-12-12T14:05:00.000Z

mozambique

“pete had disappeared some time before, so ian cycled home alone. he went slowly, wanting to hang on to the feeling of detachment that had taken him over. a state of not-being. a state of no-time. no past, no present, no future. no decisions. he thought it would be good to stay like that for the rest of his life.”

- the other side of the bridge

at this early hour everything is one. the most beautiful harmonies on every level. as if nature is resting. renewing herself. the sparkle of the last of the evening’s stars are fading slowly in the purple western sky. the wind is just a whisper. the sea soft and smooth and cool. the dark swells, that had originated hours ago and miles away, out in the infinite ocean somewhere, back in somebody’s past, roll gently to shore.

the water rushes over your head and slips down your cheeks back into the sea. and it washes away all the world and all certainty. all truths slip through your fingers. you’re just an observer. outside the natural order of things. you’re everything that’s not. and nothing and nobody could ever know. and you hope with all your heart that they could understand. but you know they never will. you’re so isolated. and it’s so beautifully sad. and you wish it would last forever.

and then, sometime just before the end of forever, the sun of the new day peeps over the horizon. red and pink and orange and yellow. and you catch a distorted glimpse of yourself in the silver sea and you remember. and the warmth and the colours lift you and replace you into the one that is everything. and joy, great, high, as wide as all the world, swells inside your heart and brings a smile to your face. and you hum to yourself: the weight - the band. and you just know everything will be alright.

2007-12-10T11:36:00.000Z

home

"huck never returned from the territory, as far as we know. yet captain gulliver went home, wiser but also alienated and revolted not by the trip but by the domestic scene. unable to stand the yahoo smell that adhered to his wife and the sight of his savage-looking family, he comforted himself by talking to his horse and finding companionship in the stable. travel had changed him. you go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back. you think, i is someone else, like rimbaud."

- paul theroux, dark star safari

2007-11-30T11:43:00.000Z

oh ah glenwood

don't panic. we still have our tach's. and our eyebrow's. just. but it was a close call. we had to high-tail it out of there. we sure did leave a trail of destruction. couldn't risk another night. would have ended in disaster.

it sure was real while it lasted though. we boozed. and then we boozed. and then we boozed some more. and then i fell in love. with a beautifully sexy italian fire dancer named antonella. but she went off with some brazilian dude. goddamn brazilian dudes. so then we boozed some more.

it started off with a few quiet ones. about 5pm. just to pass time and watch the sunset. but then the sun rose. and the young american dude was missing an eyebrow. and had chunks shaved out of his hair. and the young glenwoodian dude was also missing an eyebrow. serves him right. he had never heard of henry ate. the youth of today! and the malawian dude was lucky not to be missing his dreads. and gary was jumpy. and james was juiced. and miguel was mangled. and frank was fucked. and i was bossies... again.

we sure did laugh: convo revolved around bonsai animals (knee-high giraffes, polar bears in kitchen freezers, little dogs that would result in a huge saving on peanut butter); all the dodgy anal conditions in the whole world ever; stupid americans and the fact that "sometimes the lord does deliver"; hunting rights at mayorka village and the killing of little bunny rabbits ("you little bastards"); butch cassidy and the sundance kid and singing in the rain; anyway... don't wanna bore you... we covered a whole lot of shit. and sometimes... shit stinks.

nakata bay. malawi. a place where dreams come true. and hearts are broken.

anyway. we high-tailed it out of there. onto the ferry. covered half the lake in two days. turns out we were a bit ambitious in attempting to paddle it. would have taken 3 months. you can never trust an israeli.

and then yesterday we very nearly crashed the entire malawian minibus-taxi (daladala) economy. we hopped on. and then refused to squash up. four seats. four people. that was our policy. and we stuck to it. doggedly. we would not budge... literally. at first the okes thought it was funny. then they were confused. then angry. then aggressive. the daladala ground to a halt. driver got out waving arms. the conductor was foaming at the mouth, spitting "this is a business". we sat impassively. shrugging. our fellow passengers felt mutiny was in the air. they were ready to join the revolution. hasta la vistoria, siempre. but the movement ended as quickley as it began. a big mama got on and plonked herself down on frank's lap. the whole crowd breathed in collectively. expecting fireworks. but frank was crushed. broken. he was suffocating. he had to give way or die. he chose life. he shifted over. the resistance was broken. yet another triumph of capitalism over the people.

so off to mozam tomo. the legendary tofo. sun, sea, sand, and scando's. hold thumbs.

2007-11-17T14:09:00.000Z

bossies winch

"kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in africa. it's western summit is called the masai 'ngaje ngai', the house of god. close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. no one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude."

- hemingway

kilimanjaro. "where ordinary people come to do extraordinary things". ha! whatever. bet they weren't expecting that: some dude with a frozen snot-ball tach going totally bossies at the top. staggering. dance-stepping. swearing and slurring. i'm a sloppy drunk at the best of times. but at the top of the tallest free-standing mountain in the world it got messier than porto after a tequila shot.

it sure was embarrassing. staggering into to base camp hand-in-hand with a scrawny buck-toothed tanzanian guide named ernest. the 63yr old canadian tannies who had zipped up and down were sniggering and shaking their heads. the porters in my party hung their heads in shame. frank and miguel, shocked and hurt, skirted off to the tent and kept a low profile for the rest of the day. i just gabbled, stubbled, and drooled uncontrollably. my mama always used to say, life is like a box of choc-o-lates...

it all started innocently enough. we decided to go the hard-core route. not the "coca-cola route". we gave up the log cabins, and the sauna's, and the hot horny scando's for the amazing views, diverse wildlife, and authentic experience along the "machame route". and we were justified. we saw some amazing cloud formations during our six days camping in the freezing cold and rain. we also managed to see a mouse. at the summit there is a piece of wood.

still it is all my own fault. i vowed after climbing huanyi potosi in bolivia that i would never in the whole world ever climb another mountain again. pete... where were you in my time of need??? you bastard. anyway... so i vow never in the whole world ever to climb another mountain in the whole world ever again.

i am now going to eat steers. drink beer. party. i hope. and then head off to malawi on monday.

my tach survives! so long. fuckers.

2007-11-17T13:16:00.000Z

a cute story

here is a nice story to make you smile...

i first picked up my hat in jerusalem. i liked him so much i swopped another hat in order to get him from stuart. he was just a young chap then, but it was the start of an awesome time in both our lives. we travelled and grew together. israel. egypt. sudan. ethiopia. kenya. tanzania. and as we travelled i began to love him. and he began to love me too. and he made me promise never to leave him. and i promised. and it made us both so happy.

and then one day, i left him. i left him on a bus. and i was heart broken. it was so sad. i moped around town. i even went bossies for a few days (though i blamed it on altitude sickness). i thought my life would never be the same. and it wasn't. something was broken.

and then another day i innoccently stepped onto a bus. and i put my stuff in the overhead storage compartment. and there he was. just sitting quietly in a dark corner waiting for me. a warm sensation ran through me. tears filled my eyes. and i said: that's my hat bru. and it was my hat. and i put him on my head. and he cried. and i cried. and we were both so happy. and we were complete again. and i promised never ever to leave him again. and i will never ever leave him again.

the end.

2007-11-07T11:49:00.000Z

karibu sana

eish... it sure has been a busy few weeks:

masai mara. fifteen 12yr old boy scouts. two scout masters. a guide named fred. a rotten stinking ostrich egg. you must drop it... away, AWAY. the deep heat incident. an overnight train. mombassa. idyllic beach. tiwi beach. picking coconuts. eating fresh fruit salad (with avocado). mango man. drinking tea with the isreali jim morrison. camp-fires. tusker. guitar. singing. swimming in the warm sea at 2am, short rains pit-pattering in the water around us. sleeping in the restaurant. stubbing toes. not showering for five whole days. probably the reason that my foot is now red and infected and swollen. plane with no doors. fear of the unknown. sky-diving. sensory overload. re-experiencing beer for the first time. matatus. lots of matatus. 24 people in a matatu. crossing tanzania border. tanga. dar es salaam. virgin kitty master medal wearer. for os. zanzibar. mysterious place: like timbuktu, or katmandu, or galapagos, or toti. stone town. white-washed buildings. thick stones. wooden balconies. narrow alleyways. easy to get lost. prawns. lobster. squid. octopus. dopey's soul mate. the devil incarnate. old four-eyed frank. mastering a manual scooter. getting arrested soon after. crashing soon after that. road trip. wind in our tach's. paje. the most beautiful beach in the whole world ever. scooting. running. sweating. sea spray from the ferry. debonaires. regular bowel movements. deep heat tucked safely away. quality. oh... and i picked up a ying ring somewhere along the way.

only downside: martin jol. i love martin jol. martin jol loves me.

off to killi tomo. wish me luck. my toes better heal soon. otherwise i may have to sacrifice one or two for the greater good of the group. the good news is that neither of the big toes is in danger. although i've always had a soft spot for all of my toes.

and he still gives his love
he just gives it away
the love he receives
is the love that is saved

2007-11-07T10:26:00.000Z

mambo jambo

it has recently come to my attention that my last few african posts have been full of scorn. downbeat scathing rants. my humblest apologies. it was never my intention to come across as such a moany bum.

sure we've endured some rough times. tough, tough times. we've had trains and buses and matatu's (minivan taxi's) and tuc tuc's straight from hell. we've been lied to, stolen from, sworn at, cursed, cheated, extorted, arrested, beaten, and tortured. well... maybe not arrested, beaten, and tortured... but just about. we've seen folks who are lepers, people who are maimed, disfigured, people who walk on all-fours. we've endured moments of gross incompetence. i mean: my camera got chopped up by a lawnmower goddammit. we've been shitting, farting, burping, and vomiting in almost every country we've been in. we've slept in bug infested sheets, out in the open under the rain, on muddy benches, and on dusty restaurant floors. and the toilets: foul-smelling shitholes... literally. we've been lonely, impatient, frustrated, angry, and broken-hearted. i've even had frank's deep-heat-smeared finger up my ass for fuck's sake.

but like "simple guy" little once said to me: ja... but it's the kind of hardship and complaining traveler's love. what's the point of traveling and not experiencing anything new? anything out of the norm? traveling within your comfort zone? in hardship is where you find the truth... it makes you seek. seek and ye shall find. that's what a wise man once said anyway.

besides there have been some good times. ummm... errr... like... errr... like that one time... ummm... in that hotel... ummm... in nairobi. we were bored and... errr... oh and tiwi beach. that was nice. and the boks winning the world cup. that was great.

also individual responsibility. that is good. no red tape. no blame culture (in everyday living - politics is another subject altogether). there are no railings on a ferry because if you fall off you are stupid. not because you dreamed of having sexual relations with your mother as an infant and therefore society is against you and it gave you suicidal tendancies which were exaggerated by the rail-less ferries which means you can sue the ass off of anyone you wish. no. not here. no lawyers. no attorneys. you fall off, you're stupid. it's your fault.

and the sense of community in africa. people smiling, and laughing, and chatting, and engaging constantly. kids outdoors, playing, screaming, giggling. there are no tv's, no radio's, no ipods to distract them. dialogue. genuine interest in the other person. warm and welcoming. sharing. and the smiles. beeg smiles.

i love the african philosophy and the african way of life. it's not overly complicated. it's simple. the way life should be. you order feesh... you get feesh.

TIA bru. this is africa. this is home. africa can be summed up by fred. our game range driver in the masai mara. the african world according to fred:

question: fred... what are we going to see today?
african answer: eish... let us just see... what we will see. (beeg smile).

2007-10-26T14:53:00.000+01:00

bmt

so there we were. in a hotel room in nairobi. three okes with tachs. two bottles of rum flowing through our veins. a tube of deep heat nestled menacingly on the double bed. it was the most savage game of shithead ever. bmt. and a set of iron balls. cos that deep heat was going the shithead's balls. brutal.

i lost. it sure was nasty. at first it was warm and cosy. like a naked cuddle on a cold morning. then the burn came. and then the tears came. and when the burn went we put deep heat on our nipples. it wasn't hot. and then the rather unpleasant incident happened. i was bending over innocently when frank smeared deep heat down my crack and onto my nads. it definitely wasn't just a flesh wound. penetration. and this time it burned like the fires of hell. i squealed. and then i cursed. and then i felt violated. i curled up in the fetal postion in the shower and cried.

sometime after the incident there was a knock at the door. frank with his mohawk and tach combo opened it half naked. the hotel security guard. deep heat and rum burned his nostrils. some dude with long hair and a tach was sobbing uncontrollably on the bed. a bald dude with a tach was massaging his nipples with white cream. the security guard's eyes became wild and frightened. like some super straight dude who had just witnessed a gay orgy. goddamn biggot. he asked us to keep it down. we were disturbing the other guests.

we sure must have made a racket. giggling. crying. shouting. squealing. and the convo must have been class: arrgghhh... my ass is fuckin burning dude!!! you touched my balls bru!!! can't believe you stuck your finger in my naught bru!!!

disclaimer: although there is no excuse for this type of behaviour, this is africa man. it is frustrating. and we need to unwind a little sometimes. these are trying times.

2007-10-26T13:27:00.000+01:00

chicarello

"oh harold" she sighed, stroking his hair, "you are so young. what have they taught you?" she brushed away the tears that fell down her cheeks. "yes. i cry. i cry for you. i cry for this. i cry at beauty - a sunset or a seagull. i cry when a man tortures his brother... when he repents and begs forgiveness... when forgiveness is refused... and when it is granted. one laughs. one cries. two uniquely human traits. and the main thing in life, my dear harold, is not to be afraid to be human".

- harold & maude

2007-10-22T17:30:00.000+01:00

it's the side of the mountain

that contains life... not the top. here's where things grow.

see the easylife for pics and the story so far.

2007-10-22T15:33:00.000+01:00

ethiopia

in 10 easy steps:

beer is super cheap. a big big bonus. and a huge relief after sudan. it's just not natural to spend any extended period of time sober. honeywine is also cheap. do not be fooled.

breasts are very abundant here. which is also a big bonus. you'll be sitting on a super packed bus and the young mother next to you will whip them out and start breast feeding. beware complacency though. you will zone out dreaming of a pair of firm breats (unless of course your a straight woman) and the baby will jippo all over your leg. the mom will wipe it off with her dress. the poo will have that strong sour injura smell. you will have 2 hours of the bus ride left. you will continue to gag for the full 2 hours.

the national dish of injura and lamb tibs is great. until you realise that it is the only dish. and it smells like poo. and it gives you jippos. goddamn injura and lamb tibs.

the sudan / ethiopia border crossing is the worst in the whole world ever. do not wear slops. you will lose them. wear big ass boots. and water-wings are recommended.

it is very difficult to catch a game of rugby here. even the world cup semi-final. boks vs argentina. locals look at you with blank expressions. it's rugby for god sake. it's the most important thing in the world. get with it!!!

ethiopia is the only country in africa never to have been colonised. and it shows. no infrastructure whatsoever. roads are shocking. if you can call them roads. buildings are shacks. telecommunications involve two cans and a piece of (super) long string. internet is the stuff inside your shorts used for support.

it is a little known fact that the simien mountains in northern ethiopia is the coldest place in the whole history of the world ever. even 3 litres of ouzo and naked cuddling with frank wouldn't help. not that we cuddled naked. i was only saying that if we did it wouldn't help. honestly. we're straight men. we have tach's. and cowboy hats. and frank has a whip. that he uses with great insecurity. we are straight. and we didn't cuddle naked. we considered it. it was that cold. but we didn't.

the mountain scenery is very beautiful. but we're not gay. seriously. we did not cuddle naked.

gondor is not africa's camelot or cuzco. it is, in fact, a shithole.

the 2010 ping-pong world champion will not be frank. it will be an ethiopian. you heard it here first. ping-pong is massive here. there may not be running water, or electricity, or coca-cola. but there are ping-pong tables in every village. and people ping-pong all day long. there is nothing better to do... what would you rather do? milk a cow? plough a field? pluck a chicken? hmmm... ping-pong it is then.

fuze-ball is also pretty big.

showers are cold. hot showers are cold. cold showers are cold. warm showers are cold. golden showers are cold. apparently. according to miguel anyway.

people treat pinkies like the risen messiah. folks with boils and leprosy and festering wounds come up and ask to be healed. one applies a bit of anti-septic and a plaster and sends them on their way. it's heart-breaking. but never underestimate the power of faith.

folks also tend to crowd pinkies. ten to twelve people deep. one's every move is watched. one's every word noted. one's every dollar desired. but like frank says, one gets used to it. celebrity. yup... i could do it. posh and becks. frank and dave. it could work.

ethiopia is the greenest country in the world ever. how they managed to create a famine out of such fertile land... errr... ummm... well... i'm not privy to the details.

i friggin love donkeys. so do ethiopians.

where did i go wrong
i lost a friend
somewhere along in the bitterness
and i would have stayed up
with you all night
had i known
how to save a life

2007-10-22T15:01:00.000+01:00

the town with no name

busing through ethiopia. rural town. a town with no name. brown. dusty. innocent and ignorant. pinkies are rare sightings here. as are quality tach's. twilight. bus breaks down. flat tire. someone spots us sitting by the window. a crowd gathers. wide eyed. gaping mouths. finger pointing. 10mins. 20mins. 25mins. the crowd expands. milling around. confusion and excitement fills the air outside the bus.

the light fades. electricity is rare in these parts. minimal lighting. darkness falls over the town like one of dopey's "moods". miguel cracks a glowstick. lumo green. super lumo green. sends it hurtling out of the window into the night sky. end over end. s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n.

a defeaning silence explodes over the town. all eyes fix on the glowing alien object looping through the night. the crowd parts. the glowstick thuds into the dust. green particles thrown into the air. momentary freeze. uncertainty.

someone makes a move. ruckus. diving. and kicking. and tugging. and screaming. tangled shadows wrestle on the floor. the green blinking. then darkness. silence. the glowstick zigzags away in mid-air disappearing into the night. disappointment is everywhere. loud cursing and hollering breaks out. crying. sobbing.

then gasps. the glowstick is spotted. waving from the top of the tallest building in town. two stories up. like a signal from the gods. a beacon of lost innocence. a material idol. the highest truth. the crowd rushes off to hunt the treasure down. wild eyes. crazed expressions. beasts of their own desire.

the bus pulls off. leaving one dude with twelve hours of fun. and a town with a lifetime of furious longing and heartache. and a community divided forever.

2007-10-20T14:52:00.000+01:00

exodus

fuckin A bru. nairobi. the promised land. the land of milk and honey. of steers, and milkshakes, and full english breakfasts. of public litter bins, hot showers, and sit-down toilets. of internet. of you and me and christina aguileria in the hot tub... all night long. quality.

i am sorry to report that ethiopia was not all rainbows and butterflies. in fact it was a bit of a backward hell-hole. super backward. so backward some small towns don't have coca-cola. so backward some folks haven't even heard of the mighty spurs. so backward... err... um... just believe me man, it's real backward. and the fuckin lamb tibs had me farting, and burping, and shitting, and vomiting all over the show. goddamn jippos. was guarenteed to get them after i lost my jippo-juice in the incident.

i'm hitching a ride

out of this no good town

on the bright side my tach is coming on leaps and bounds!!! had to use a bit of colour though. henne. it was too blonde. slight ginger tinge now. quality. frank's tach, however, is ailing. it took a backward step when he went to the barber the other day. even the natural ginger wisps couldn't restore credibility.

gonna try catch the rugby tonight. believe it or not... the rugby is huge here. the promised land. and then gonna try pick up some righteous american un aid slappers and hit the town. we can only hope.

and i wonder what they're saying

if we get lucky babe

and i wonder what they're saying

if we go all the way

shame about lucky dube. respect.

2007-10-20T13:33:00.000+01:00

sudan

in 10 easy steps:

alcohol is illegal. beer does not exist. it is just a concept. nothing physical. prepare to be sober.

ramadan is a bad time to visit sudan. religious tolerance is not big on the sudanese agenda. if they fast. you fast. end of. fuckin bigots.

donkeys are still a viable means of transport. god i love donkeys. my favourite animal. heeeehawwww.

homosexuality is punishable by death. apparently. for 3 boys trapping round with tach's and cowboy hats and calling each other "pumpkin" / "sweetpea" / "buttercup" it mean't we were skating on thin ice.

khartoum (the capital) is not the built-up, ultra-modern, megatropolis with kfc's that people would have you believe. it is, in fact, a shithole.

people wearing vests and / or shorts are frowned upon. they are assumed to be mad. it is okay if you are a foreigner though. people know you're crazy already - who the fuck would visit sudan?

you need a permit for taking pictures. otherwise they will hunt you down and destroy your camera. trust me. i know. they mowed my camera down at night. with a lawn-mower. vicious. there were bits of my camera strewn all over the lawn. half a lense. a bit of memory card. a fragment of casing. it sure was nasty. brutal. fuckin savages.

the blue nile is brown. the white nile is green. the colour where they join is murkyish. definitely worth missing.

when it starts raining and the taxi driver takes your pack off the roof and tries to shove it through the window but you say that it is okay on top because the taxi is super-sardine-packed already, make sure that he reattaches it to the top with rope. otherwise it will fly off at 100kph, bounce across the road, and land in a deep muddy puddle. the bag will rip and the jippo juice will break and leak over everything in you bag. you will get jippos the very next week. it will not be pleasant.

the sudanese folks are the friendliest and most generous people in the world ever. nobody wants anything from you other than easy conversation. they will offer you tea at every opportunity. and go out of their way to help you. they obviously haven't been exposed to the highest western truth of the "me, mine, my" philosophy yet.

2007-10-20T12:47:00.000+01:00

sing

i just kind of died for you
you just kind of stared at me

2007-09-29T17:43:00.000+01:00

a ferry to sudan

on a ferry to sudan. sleeping on deck. under the night sky. and a million brilliant stars. shining so bright. how awesome is the earth. the universe. the you. the me. the everything.

listen to me in the truth of your soul. listen to me in the feelings of your heart. listen to me in the quiet of your mind.

hear me everywhere. whenever you have a question, simply know that i have answered it already. then open your eyes to your world. my response could be in an article already published. in the sermon already written and about to be delivered. in the movie now being made. in the song just yesterday composed. in the words about to be said by a loved one. in the heart of a new friend about to be made.

my truth is the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the crack of the thunder, the tap of the rain. it is the feel of the earth, the fragrance of the lily, the warmth of the sun, the pull of the moon.

my truth - and your surest help in time of need - is as awesome as the night sky, and simply, incontrovertibly, trustful as a baby's gurgle. it is as loud as a pounding heartbeat - and as quiet as a breath taken in unity with me.

i will not leave you, i cannot leave you, for you are my creation and my product, my daughter and my son, my purpose and my self.

call on me, therefore, wherever and whenever you are separate from the peace that i am. i will be there. with truth. and light. and love.

2007-09-29T16:58:00.000+01:00

power of the dice

not much news here folks. mainly because we haven't been able to drink. seriously this place is not funny anymore. no booze at all. anywhere. crazy. we were told we could buy beer at the expensive, exclusive hotels. the hilton, the sheraton, etc. but all they serve is amstel zero. or grolsch extra light. or non-alcoholic bud. where's the fun in that? it's just not cricket.

we've spent much of the past 4 days in transit. ferry from aswan in egypt to wadi halfa in sudan took 2 days. and then the train from wadi halfa to khartoum took another 2 days. ferry was good. slept under the stars. read books. drank whiskey. train was bad. no lights. no aircon. no fan. loads of dust. the dustiest train in the whole world ever. felt like i swallowed a whole sandpit. we celebrated miguel's bday on the train. with a non-alcoholic beer. it sure was swell. we were feeling super sorry for ourselves on the last day. got off the train and didn't look back. super grumpy.

wadi halfa on the border was a friendly relaxed place in the middle of the desert. we had some good food there. lamb. and potato's. and beans. and some good coffee. had a kick around with the locals in abu hamed using the inflatable world on route to khartoum... where we are at the mo. camping on the side of the blue nile. centre of town reminds me of warrick triangle. it's a jungle here man!!! sudanese folks sure are friendly though. big smiles. white teeth. a walking talking toothpaste advert. it's cool.

so what of the team. you'll be happy to know that the tach's survived the travelling. they needed a bit of grooming this morning... but they escaped unscathed and are now stronger and thicker than at any time in recent living memory. we have our weekly shithead compo this evening. the loser is kitty-master for the week. big responsibility. so as you can imagine the stakes are high. and emotions get a little frayed. especially as we have no booze.

oh ja... jon "i was born on a backgammon board" frankish was born on a backgammon board. apparently. he has super human backgammon power. the power of the dice. it's unfair.

if you're going to san francisco
you should wear
some flowers in your hair

2007-09-23T17:35:00.000+01:00

salem egypt

we went fishing today. it was almost as successful as the rest of the tour. we caught nothing. not even a bite. five hours man. thank god we had the beer to keep us company. booze has been hard to come by lately. what with ramadam going on. we chose the worst time in the whole world ever to visit an islamic country. nobody sells beer. and black-market prices have gone through the roof. but we were desperate. there's only so much shithead and backgammon a man with a tach and a cowboy hat can play in his hotel room without getting restless.

and restless we got. it sure was nasty. using binocs to spy on the old flabby mommies with peach coloured bikinis suning themselves on the cruise boat outside our hotel window. we were desperate man. playing hotel volleyball with an inflatable earth. wrestling in the roof-top puddle. reading the bible. it was horrible. state of emergency. code red.

sudan tomo promises to be just as challenging. 40 lashes for anyone caught with booze. and that is in times outside of ramadam. goddamn fanatics. these people are nuts. i now feel like christ must have felt walking through the world: a psychiatrist in a ward full of insane freaks. how can you give up alcohol for a month. it's just not normal. not natural. and it's miguel's bday on the 26th. a bday without booze. it's just not on.

so as you can imagine. moral has been low. not rock-bottom. but low. it's hard to keep team morale up without booze. there's nothing to laugh and snigger about. thankfully we have the tach's to hold on to during these tough times. something to remind us that god does indeed work in mysterious ways. and that somewhow, anyhow, things will turn out okay.

2007-09-15T20:55:00.000+01:00

the raging tach

i do have a tach goddammit!!! it's there - stretched out like a dead rat on my top lip. thick and furry. with a rank damp smell. and bits of old food attached. how can you possibly not see it??? i admit it may not be as stand-out as miguel's or frank's... but it defo is there... it just needs a few more days of love and careful nurturing in order to realise it's true potential. and then the girls are gonna love me man. no female can turn down a man with a thick tach... and the feeling it gives her when moved lightly down the inside of her thigh. it is the sign of a virile young male. strong genes. ready to mate.

2007-09-13T19:22:00.000+01:00

the easy life

check out miguel's blog for an alternative (and better) view of our african bumblings...

the easy life

2007-09-13T18:42:00.000+01:00

the big blue

dahab sure has changed in the year and a bit i've been away. the strip has expanded both ways (north past the light house and south past the big blue diving centre). roads have been turned into pedestrian walkways. flashy new hotels have sprung up. miss 2007 miss belgium contestants roam the streets. honestly. why would i lie about something as serious as this? jimmy the switch got married. to an egyptian lady. although he still has his western girls on the side. apparently. mustafa cruised off to australia. with an australian girl. alex has a new english girlfriend. as well as the french one he's always had. jeff snuck off in the night leaving a bill of 12,000 egyptians. ibrahim bought a house. price of property is now 1,000 egyptians / sq meter. we were gonna buy at 450. dammit.

there are some things that haven't changed of course: there are still a whole lot of mohammeds all over the show. we call them mo for short. it's just easier that way. mango lassies are still the bomb. banana pancakes are still the way to go for breakfast.

went out for a few beers last night. just to cure the boredom. bad news. awoke this morning with a raging thumper. i had to get to the dive center at 8am. frank and miguel were only due at 10am. so i woke them anyway. but they went back to sleep. bastards.

dive was great though. el bells, the big blue. awesome awesome spot. one sort of has to dive through this chute and one pops out at 28m. one turns around and all one sees is a massive face of rock and coral. one looks up and it's blue. no top. one looks down and it's blue. no bottom. one looks to the left and it's blue. err... no left. one looks to the right and one's fellow divers are dwarfed by the sheer size of the rock face. sure does help one to reassess things. like why one sooo badly wants to grow a thick tach. or why ginger things are inherently attracted to one named frank. or why one and friends were sitting at supper tonight and discussing the purchase of viagra pills in order to pop them for breakfast tomorrow morning before putting on wetsuits and going to dive. hmmm... the beauty of the big blue.

we sure did bang on about god and the mystery of the universe last night. not good. oh yeah... and i'm reading the koran. interesting book. although probably not my scene.

god, i feel like hell tonight
tears of rage i cannot fight
i’d be the last to help you understand
are you strong enough to be my man?

2007-09-11T11:39:00.000+01:00

all systems go...

just got my sudanese visa. wooohooo. quality. was worried i wouldn't be able to get it due to my connections with israel. no... not my big nose. but rather the fact that i had been there recently. this means that we will be able to complete the cairo to cape town tour by land. the romantic way. no flights.

just have to wait for miguel's credit card to arrive in cairo. should take about a week. a learning - one of your first checkpoints when travelling to a dodgy foreign country should be to ensure that the expiry date on your credit card isn't 8 months old. so off to dahab this afternoon to do some diving. which will be good. and bring back some memories. mango lassies and banana pancakes. the canyon and the big blue. jimmy the switch.

otherwise travel has been uneventful. stayed at bianca's hostel for the night in eilat. she treated me like a son-in-law (after having tried to set me up with her daughter in tel aviv). she cooked me dinner and breakfast. and made me coffee and vitamen drinks. and let me sleep in the double bed. it sure was great.

at the border i met some politically active irish dude who had been working for a non-violent palestinian organisation in hebron in the west bank. he had been detained by israeli border control for 4 hours. a japanese dude who he met on the bus to the border was also detained. just cos they were talking. unlucky. told me a story about a girl he worked with who went through the border and was detained: she suddenly heard an explosion and asked what it was - the border police and performed a controlled explosion on her backpack. clothes, toiletries, shoes, books, laptop, everything up in smoke. was a good laugh.

frank never fails to impress. got to the hostel in cairo. the dude let me into the room and was chilling out waiting for the guys to come back. suddenly the door burst open and in marches frank dressed in a long white arab gown down to his ankles, leather jesus sandles, sporting a shaved head and a wispy ginger beard, munching dates with one hand and waving the koran around in the other. quality. had a good chuckle to myself.

2007-09-07T16:05:00.000+01:00

the holyland

you can see straight away why god made israel his chosen land. hot girls. warm sun. cool sea. and cold beers. paradise. heaven. what more could you ask for? one of the hot girls perhaps... but right now i'm happy just looking.

graeme and talia's wedding was great. one of those mtv "my super sweet 16" efforts with live bands and dancers and performers and tv cameras and paparazzi and great food and loads of free booze (quality booze). it was by far the most lavish affair i've ever been to. and the jewish folk sure do know how to party. graeme was buggered after his 17th dance in a row. we could tell. he was panting. heavily.

we managed to get pretty drunk on chivas regal. as per usual we ended up throwing grapes around the dance floor. pink target was semi-comatose in his socks swigging red wine out of the bottle. stuart was eyeing out one of the barladies. howard was banging one of the barladies. fred was moving in on the mothers (but getting nowhere with the gran). spanky was rolling on the floor in the lobby. graeme was panting. heavily.

otherewise the holyland has been good to us. and a little weird. jerusalem was weird. super weird. super orthodox. jewish and christian and muslim. lots of ritual. and kissing stones. and chanting. and dark clothing. and curly-fry sideburns. and bobbing and weaving. and nothing is historically true. nobody knows where anything happened. but they'll sell you the tour.

galilee was good. we rafted in the jordan river. and then took to skimming stones. and when we got bored we played stingers with grapes. nice.

the dead sea was salty. one learning: don't try to urinate in the dead sea. it stings. super badly. i know this because i slipped up. twice. and paid the price. twice. it wasn't pleasant. sunrise at masada is pleasant though. as are the sweet water springs just up the road.

eilat is great. the diving is average. but the dead sea diving is "one of the best spots in the world". we found a cool hostel (which doubles as a dog farm) and met a che guevara lookalike dude named yeti. random. but there are no coincidences in life.

tel aviv is the bomb. super party town. super sexy girls. super nice beaches. but also super expensive.

israel teaches you that (in all probability) jesus sure was a cool guy. he probably had designer stubble and a great six-pack. he wore his baggies low and didn't take shit from no-one. he liked falafel and enjoyed the occassional beer or twelve. he was a great party entertainer and would often turn water into wine should there be a lack of alcohol - as such he was very popular and had a super active social circle. we can also deduce from our israel learnings that mary was a super-babe.

christ you know it ain't easy
you know how hard it can be
the way things are going
they're gonna crucify me

off to egypt tomo. having issues with the sudan visa.

2007-08-24T16:02:00.000+01:00

i'm out

i'm leaving london for good this time. honestly. i've shipped my stuff back home. it's over. done. i'm out. the corporate dream is over. i'm going to live a simple hand-to-mouth type existence with a tribe of pygmies and their pet gorrilla in a tropical rainforest somewhere in southern rwanda. it's green. zero carbon footprint. except facebook. they better have facebook. god bless facebook.

so i look to my eskimo friend
when i'm down

anyway - apologies to those i haven't been able to catch up with in my 6 weeks back. you've been spared.

oh yeah - if you wish to follow my bumblings through africa click on the following link:

www.weak-kneed-winch.blogspot.com

i should be updating infrequently.

take care and may jehovah grant each one of you three wishes that will assist you in progressing along you personal evolutionary path.

2007-08-24T15:49:00.000+01:00

the after-booze bog

courtesy of greg

Dave is ok. He says he needs a booze putty though. The type with the pockets of air in between the rapid fire sliders. Starts off with fffffffttttt, and then bloomp, bloomp bloomp, bloooooomp. Prrrrrttttt. Your stomach sounds like a cat fight. I miss those. The relief is worth it all, even if it means you are passed by for promotion cause you lose all the respect of your colleagues after leaving your stall.

2007-07-16T18:37:00.000+01:00

krabi (20.05.07 - 24.05.07)

ao nang beach and islands around krabi including: koh phi phi, bamboo island, maya beach (location of the film "the beach"), and errr... some other islands and sunsets and stuff.

2007-07-16T18:24:00.000+01:00

night out with the lady-boys

krabi. southern thailand. good music. loads of booze. pole dancing. natal truckers cap. big smiles. fake boobs. over-the-top make-up. love you long time. pre-op. post-op. throat scars. bitch fights. it can only mean one thing: a night out with the lady-boys...

2007-06-27T19:20:00.000+01:00

holydays: travels in the east #2

arriving in bangkok from singapore is a bit like arriving in a shit-hole. locals call this shit-hole “the city of angels”. most other folks call it “bangkok”. bangkok - a city of neon lights and huge billboards. bangkok - a crazy hot, bustling city. bangkok - a city with no traffic control. there is nothing elegant here. on the surface anyway. any elegance was papered over long ago by crazy-ass commercial insanity. apparently pagoda’s and temples once littered the skyline. now all that litters the skyline is car fumes and a thick brown smog.

is the city i live in
the city of angels?

i arrived in bangkok on four separate occasions. and it sure does grow on you. probably because arriving in bangkok from cambodia is a bit like arriving in... err... the most modern place in the world ever. with tarred roads and hot showers and 7 eleven’s and shit. and i grew to like the place. unlike singapore, there sure is something dynamic about this place. the metaphysics of quality man. dynamic quality... the leading edge of evolution.

i stayed in khao san road. you’re not a backpacker until you’ve been to khao san road. apparently. but i say you can be anything. if you really really want to. reach for the stars. a universe of potential is within you. afterall, you are the product of four billion years of evolution. don’t waste it man. buddha knows it took a totally sick amount of time to produce you. anyway, scruffy bohemian folks with big bushy red beards and baggy orange pants and anklets are also the product of four billion years of evolution and they own khao san road. that’s the type of place it is. weird hippy shit happens there.

my living quarters consisted of a cardboard box and a bed. “box-room” would be an apt description. it sure is cosy. you can hear people snoring in the next room when you go to sleep. you can also hear other things sometimes. hmmm.

so... touristy bangkok consists of wats and pagoda’s and buddha’s. and markets man. everywhere you look there’s a market. food markets. night markets. clothing markets. amulet markets. there’s even markets in the shopping centres. huge floors full of markets. selling loads of legal illegal stuff. bangkok must be a musician’s / film maker’s worst nightmare. nightmare on khao san road.

three days into my bangkok experience i decided to get out of town. i wanted to see tigers. so the tourist info sent to see the bridge over the river kwai. not surprisingly, it looks a lot like a bridge... over a big brown river... named kwai. then i went on a train ride – why?. then they sent me on an elephant safari - around some mango trees in someone’s backyard. note: i don’t recommend the elephant treks in thailand – i got the sense that they treated the elephants really poorly. which is a shame. cos they are such lovely creatures. after that headed to a waterfall, stayed the night on a boat house, and rafted down a river. no tigers. bastards.

but no worries. it was time to party. and time for the islands.

2007-06-26T09:59:00.000+01:00

holydays: travels in the east #1

being in singapore is like being back in the “good old days” of british colonialism. we socialized in well-to-do wine bars. we relaxed in spa baths at the singapore “badminton” club. we dined at plush five star hotels. we danced at swish night clubs. we swigged pink champagne from imperial roof-top establishments whilst panoramic views hung from the glass windows like giant paintings in... errr... some very famous museum. martini’s, cosmopolitans, appletini’s, tequila sunrises, singapore slingers, bottles of vodka, and super expensive beers in chilled glasses. lobster tails, crayfish, caviar, rare-steak rolls, and white chocolate fondue’s. i felt like i was back in the 19th century. i was expecting to wake up in the morning, put on a safari suit, pick up a rifle, and head out into the jungle to shoot myself a tiger.

i didn’t really do much of the touristy shit in sing. i lived the life of an expat local. it is my preferred choice. see how the locals live. find out how a place operates. breathe in the native energy.

so i arrived on a friday. 3pm. there was just enough time for a five hour nap before i headed off to meet pete, pam, and dangerous dan for a night out on the town. we ate satay and drank tiger beer at some or other food court and then cruised down to the river to take our place amongst the elite. soon enough we were drunk. and landed up in a bar on the 179th floor of a building. pete bought champagne. pete never buys champagne. clearly singapore is a special city. delusions of grandeur sweep through the brain. and why shouldn’t they? we were royalty!!!

we headed to a bar in the marriot hotel. classy joint. i met and had interesting conversations with high-class prostitutes from russia and thailand. they made me feel special. prostitutes sure are good for the ego. then, acting on advice from an ex-work colleague (we’ll call him mike – because that is his name... and i want to give him the credit for finding the place), we stumbled into a place called “the four floors of whores”. great name. simple, but effective. no confusion to be had. i don’t usually get much attention... but here pretty girls clung to me like i was the risen messiah. it was heaven. but in heaven sex before marriage is frowned upon. so i left empty handed. goddman the ten commandments.

the next morning we stopped off at a buddhist temple hoping for a glimpse of the future and a touch of good luck. i was nervous about my solo travels and asked about them. kneeling on the mat, i threw the bamboo sticks and tossed the fish. the pink slip i received in return contained the words: IT IS A GOOD TIME FOR TRAVEL. freaky but true. but it was as gooder omen as any i had ever received. it had a calming effect on me. i was ready to travel ace out.

that afternoon we visited the singapore “badminton” club. i had heard about the infamous eastern "rub and tug" routine and was hoping for more of the same. but, unfortunately, it was all above board (so to speak). i did get stood on and walked on though. the chick even did the splits on my back. we relaxed in the hot tubs. and drank green tea. and ate food. and i managed to block one of the two toilets in the place. the local folks saw me coming out of the toilet sweating. they shook their heads and frowned. the eastern cuisine had not been good on my stomach.

sat night was more of the same. we caught the super 14 semi-finals - come on you sharks. and then clubbed at the ministry of sound. there sure were a lot of sexy looking oriental girls there. i was happy.

sunday we had breakfast at the fullerton hotel. i was hung and had sausage and bacon and mushrooms and fried tomato and scrambled egg and a double portion of baked beans. the other folks had the lobster and crayfish, etc. i felt common. but we got drunk on the free cocktails and soon we were belting out (super cheesy) karaoke hits at dan’s house. sentosa (the beach island) was the destination for sundowners. and that was then end of my weekend in singapore. quality.

i also had a few nights in sing on my way back to sa. we dined and drank in yet more posh restaurants and bars with neil, lily, naresh, dan, and the lovely marcelle. pete and pam sure do have a cool social circle going. also caught up with porto who was over in sing on business. goddman high-flying swine!!! i arrived at the airport for my flight home (2am) super drunk and wrote that dodgy post below. then i flew home.

so final impressions of sing: it sure is a modern city. more western than most actual western cities. and there sure is a strict set of social values in place there. this results in a very ordered way of life. and no crime. which is good. at the same time there seems to be a very strong set of intellectual values in place. they are at the forefront of technological progression. which is good.

however there is still something missing. and i can’t really put my finger on it. perhaps it is that these social and intellectual values are too strict. too static. limited scope to move. there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of dynamic quality around. the metaphysics of quality man!!! dynamic quality... the leading edge of evolution. art, music, literature. you wouldn’t want to be an artist in sing. it is not the most creative place. and sometimes without this creative force a place may grow stagnant and suffocate. but then i'm just speculating here. and i’m probably being grossly unfair having hung around in elitist establishments for the entire time. god bless modernisation and capitalism!!!

neil, porto, myself, and pete at a roof-top bar about two minutes before i was due at the airport to fly home

myself and the lovely marcelle (and lily's legs)

marcelle sure could dance... and she was pretty damn good at psycho-analysis too

yup... i sure was boozed

pete, the lovely marcelle, and lily

neil, pete, and myself outside the "badminton" club awaiting our "rub and tug"

pete, dan, and myself at the fullerton

pam at home... 32 sophia court... it has a very nice communal swimming pool outside

2007-06-21T17:11:00.000+01:00

boozed

i am super boozed. spent the night drinking martinis and then beer at some super to-do clubs in hotels aND CLUBS IN singapore. crazy ass. we got fre3 steak rolls in the first venue aS WELL. goddamn... i keep on hitting the caps lock button. am so sad to be leaving pete ad porto and neil and dan and lily and others. also met a really c ool girl nAMED MARCEL. but she's hooked up. all the best girls i meet are hooked up. it's a goddamn sshame. i'vegot sooooo much love to give. i think. anyway. i'[ve had a super holiday. it's `1aM INB THE MORNING. AND I'VE DRANK A SHIOT LOAD. goddamn those caplocks. i hope you all find love someday. i hope i find love someday. it's gonna be the longest flight ever. about 24hrs. why aM I SUCH A CHEWAP SKATE?????????

remember... when selfishness truely hurts... then the path is easy.

2007-06-19T14:36:00.000+01:00

holydays

it is my last night in bangkok. it is effectively my last night as a "traveler". it is quite sad. in fact it is super sad. i was really scared when i was heading here. but it has been fine. and i've even had fun at times. actually i've had loads of fun. been to some really beautiful places. and some not so beautiful places. met some really great folks. and some knobs. actually i haven't met any knobs. everyone i have met has been super friendly. and unique. and special. i have had some cool parties. and plenty of time to chill and read good books. five weeks. six books. lila. the green hills of africa. shantaram. fiesta. tuesday's with morrie. shantaram counts as two books - it is over 900 pages long. but a great book. i've despaired. but i've pulled through. and i have the most awesome memories to take back. i am sad. but i shouldn't be sad. for everything is written in the soul of the world. and there shall it remain forever.

i head back to singapore tomo to catch up with pete and porto. and then fly out on friday to south africa to attend greg and gail's wedding and then my sister's wedding the following wend. then back to londres.

and remember - a wise traveler once told me - everyday is a holyday.

2007-06-18T16:13:00.000+01:00

do you speak fwench?

i was chatting to this fwench girl i met at the guesthouse in phnom penh and she asked me the following question: "are you on holiday or are you travelling?" the question caught me a bit by surprise and i wasn't really sure what she was on about, so i replied: "errr... umm... i'm on holiday. how about you?" she lifted her head, peered down her nose and said: "oh no! i finished university four months ago and now i'm travelling." and that's where the conversation ended.

i thought she was being a bit snooty at first. but the question stuck in my mind and it bothered me a little. so i studied it: i came to the conclusion that "holiday" is a temporary break from routine. a power-nap to recharge batteries. "travelling" however comes with deeper connotations of "the search" or that one is trying to "find" oneself.

with regards to "travelling" and "the search" and "finding" oneself it is important to realise that the answers probably won't be found in the places you go to or the people you meet. these factors may assist you to find the answers, but in the end the truth lies within yourself and that's where "the search" needs to begin and end. and it is the sheer avalanche of time available whilst travelling that allows you to really get into the nuts and bolts of self discovery.

the key to travelling i think is to not try to fit too much in. kick back and relax. chill out. leave plenty of time to observe and reflect. preferably from the comfort of some elitist establishment where you can watch the peasants go about their meaningless daily routines.

i take a drink, sit back and relax
smoke my mind, makes me feel better for it small time
what i want is what i've not got
but what i need is all around me

2007-06-17T06:58:00.000+01:00

alrighty

some tame / dodgy pics from koh samui. two nights after the halfmoon party. one night after the escape party. we sure were buggered.

the only female in the pics is a french lady whose name i can't pronounce. i therefore called her mary. she is an auditor and works very long hours when she is not on holiday. mary took these photo's and put them on flickr.

the dude with the red shirt is an australian bosnian dude named elvis. i travelled with him for a bit and had a good laugh. he is currently in london having spent a week in brighton. he likes dancing and cute boys.

there are two other dudes in the first picture. they are swedish and were on holiday from leadership school. peter and lulu. they like to drink a whole lot. they are also very friendly people.

the other feminine looking dude in the pictures is me. just plain dave.

2007-06-12T11:22:00.000+01:00

splendid

i must say, i am rather liking cambodia at the mo. it is a really pleasant place to be and the chaps here are just swell. they have smiley eyes and a hearty genuine laugh. they potter around in their daily lives doing what cambodians do, and having a damned good time doing it. and they're not just looking to make a quick buck out of you. they just want to learn english. and the food here is good. it contains a lot of coconut milk and it is not as spicey as thai food. it compliments my stomach well. as does the angkor beer. it is very nice (when it is cold). cambodia really is jolly splendid.

cambodians have had quite a rough time in the recent past. the extremely violent khmer rouge regime massacered over 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. it was rather uncivil of pol pot (the khmer rouge leader) to murder that many people. they used to make people climb trees. those that reached the top were seen as peasants and were useful for working the fields. those that didn't reach the top were seen as intellectuals and were useful for fertilising the fields - even the intellectuals had their uses, pol pot said. in order to save bullets they used to bludgeon the people to death with blunt objects. and they did this in the name socialism. goddamn crazy swine.

so i am in battambang at the mo. got here via a very scenic but very long 7hr boat ride from siem riep. there is not a hell of a lot to do here. except kick back and relax and read books and drink beer and eat quality cambodian food. jolly good show.

2007-06-10T11:31:00.000+01:00

cambodia

crossing from thailand into cambodia is like crossing from south africa into zim; or from chile into bolivia; or from england into errr... wales. paved roads become pot-holed dirt tracks. bricked houses become stilted wooded dwellings sheltering used tractor tyres and plastic buckets and pieces of blue and red pipe and broken bicyles and wooden planks and all sorts of other shit. older folks squat on the side of the side of the road chewing grass, absent looks on their faces, just observing, probably because they don't really have anything better to do. children run around, all smiles, swishing sticks and throwing stones and waving at the passing busses. packs of maingy dogs saunter from shack to shack looking for scraps to feed on. gotta love the rural 3rd world.

oh my god
i can't believe it
i've never been
this far away from home

then you hit siem riep - suddenly roads are paved and loads of 5 star hotels spring up all around you. clean and slick and modern and impressive. very tempting. until you see the price per night. $150/night and rising steadily. goddamn. those korean package tourists sure are doing well. i guess i'll have to stick with my $4/night accomodation. basic. but i get my own fan.

the first day and a half i did a the angkor temple tour. they say you need at least 3 days to do the temples. but i was all templed out after the first day. don't get me wrong - they sure are impressive... in fact i would say that angkor wat is probably the pick of the temple ruins that i have seen in the whole world ever (although macchu picchu is still my favourite simply due to it's location in god's cradle). but once you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all. kinda like a boob. well that is my opinion anyway.

but there is one other impressive thing in siem riep: if you have ever driven the garden route in south africa you will have come across a sign with the words "the big tree". if you get out there and take a 500m walk into the forest, you will find a big-ass tree. it has a massive trunk. and it is like 1km tall. well... in cambodia there are hundreds of the fuckers. everywhere you look. gigantic branched organisms with leaves and roots and seeds. and they are super tall. and they have often grown onto and into the temples and absorbed some of the stonework like huge gnarled hands. pretty friggin amazing.

anyway - must go.

oh yeah - happy 30th bday hobbo for the 7th. hope you had a great day bro. lekker bly.

2007-06-07T15:00:00.000+01:00

shantaram

for this is what we do. put one foot forward and then the other. lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. think. act. feel. add our little consquence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. with love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. with longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. for so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. god help us. god forgive us. we live on.

2007-06-06T14:44:00.000+01:00

mayonnaise

apologies folks for the lack of posts and my mental condition over the past week or so. as you can see from my previous post the heat really got to me. infact, it was driving me insane. the place i had in ko phangan only had a fan. a quick learning: if you ever ever in the whole histroy of the world ever hire a room in ko phangan, make sure it has air-conditioning. otherwise you will go mental. trust me. i know. i was there man. i'm tellin' ya. it was friggin crazy man.

everything was warm. the fruit was warm. the water was warm. the bed was warm. my deodorant was warm. my toothpaste was warm. even the music was warm - i couldn't bear to put my ipod on. the room was a friggen sauna. it was soooo hot - even the scando's looked average. even the lovely camilla (praise be to allah) was not as hot as ko phangan.

this supernatural warmth accompanied me (along with heatstroke and dehydration) to the fullmoon party - of which i will write about later. the day following the fullmoon party i developed a seriously infectected throat. thereafter my tongue swelled with millions of small white ulsers to fill the gap between the top and the bottom of my mouth. then, just for good measure, my wisdom teeth started to push on through my gums and squeeze the teeth at the front of my mouth until they were super tender to the touch.

i was in agony. and everything was warm. and i had syrupy bacterial-spoiled rotten-meat-tasting saliva drooling out my mouth because i couldn't swallow and i couldn't spit. and it was warm man. that saliva. warm. goddammit. and i couldn't eat anything. and i battled to drink. and i had the shivers. and the shakes. and hot flushes. and warm flushes. and i took warm showers. to cool my body temp.

in the end i lost lots of time. and a dive trip to ko tao. and a ton of weight. and some of my tan. and a little of my sanity. but i pulled through guys. i pulled through. and it's strange the little things you thing of when you're near death. pinky. and cheetarah. and bushy. and sasha and bong. and digging trenches man. like loads of them. for no purpose at all. and then there's like this white light man. and your whole life flashes before your eyes. and the soul of the world rushes through you. like rain. like a torrential downpour. and it's so soothing brother (praise be to the laughing buddha).

anyway, enough of that. i'm back in bangkok now. and off to cambodia on friday. and i think i'll be okay. as long as i get an air-conditioned room. and a good book.

drive away and its the same
everywhere death row, everyones a victim
your joys are counterfeit
this happiness corrupt political shit
living life like a comatose
ego loaded and swallow

(feel my pain!!!)

2007-05-31T12:02:00.000+01:00

ko phangan

am staying on the middle island of ko phangan at the mo. not quite as developed as the more touristy ko samui but home to the world famous thai full-moon party on hat rin. the party is tomo night. and i am very nervous. not least because there are going to be 10,000 - 15,000 people there. but also because they have designated pass-out zones where cops watch you so you can't be raped or your stuff stolen. that's just asking for trouble. goddamn cops.

since i left ko samui 3 days ago, i have not managed to hook up with anyone and therefore will be going to the party ace out. yep... that good ol' winch charm managed to keep me free and single once again!!!

so what have i done here? well, i have had a whole lot of self dialogue. it's been freakin terrible. i actually get to feel the boredom you guys feel when you're in my company. i've also hired a scooter and scooted around the island, rocking up at a few deserted beaches. i've considered masturbating in perfect solitude in the middle of these beaches with the sun warm on my skin and the sand course on my errr... but for one reason or another, haven't got round to it. perhaps it's the fact that i've got a bit of heat stroke that i haven't been feeling that horny lately. perhaps it's the heat stroke that's making me write this shit. perhaps i just need a beer.

2007-05-27T12:11:00.000+01:00

cheese

and rice. just had a crazy crazy crazy-ass two days. it started on friday evening with a few heineken's at a beach bar. and ended with me having to pay 500 baht to some angry mob to prevent two mates being arrested by the thai police at 6am on sunday morning.

the rest is a bit hazy but included: a half moon party at ko phangan. buckets of hallucinagenic (well according to some dutch bird anyway) thai rum. rugby tackling random people. drunken bathing. losing all my money. losing my room key. losing my ying ring. losing my dignity. a forest. a french girl. grazes all down my right leg. some weird dutch folks. fire kites. dancing on tables at the ark bar on the beach. an aussie who smashed our table whilst doing a handstand on it. more rum buckets. vodka redbull buckets. some quality dance clubs. dancing in a swimming pool. an irish girl. errr... and a whole lotta memory blanks.

just chilling today... need the rest. off to koh phangan tomorrow.

2007-05-25T05:37:00.000+01:00

get in there

good news guys - my luck may be changing.

got up this morning. washed my face. brushed my teeth. flexed my pecs. and then headed out of my bungalow to the restaurant terrace overlooking the sea to have breakfast. ordered some eggs and bacon and toast and jam and fruit juice (i love thai food). then settled back into my seat to take in the view.

my view gazing didn't get far though. only about 20m to be exact. there in front of me were 3 topless ladies. hmmm. i was sure that i recognised them. suddenly it came to me - one of them was the beautiful scando that was sitting 3 seats from me in the internet cafe last night. bonus!!! i recognised her because of her super sleak tanned body and amazingly long legs and swimmingly clear blue eyes (yes - i was that close). the bandage on her leg also gave it away.

anyway - so i kicked back and waited for my breakfast, my eyes carressing her soft brown bee-sting nipples. then i noticed her mate - blonde and small with fuller breasts, she was even hotter. good lord. i was in paradise. thank you buddha. i promise to offer a lotus flower to you in thanks at the next temple i go to.

there's not much else to tell except that i had the most amazing breakfast view. oh... and they stay in the same place i do. oh... another quick story: i am on a budget holiday - so i demand to stay in the cheapest place ever in the whole world wherever i go (it's the backpacker way). the place i am staying in is approx gbp10 per night - so i was a little worried that i had been ripped off. then i met a local and had this conversation:

where you stay?
samui mandalay
you israeli?
no why?
always israeli stay in mandalay

score!!! if israelis stay there, you know that there is no cheaper place in town. that gave me peace of heart.

anway - just thought i'd keep you updated. use it. don't use it.

ps. i actually think the girls may be dutch, not scandos. there sure are a lot of dutch folks here.

pps. apologies if i appear to be a pervert - it probably is because i am a pervert. i have that desperate look in my eye again goddammit.

2007-05-24T15:32:00.000+01:00

arrgghhh...

NNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

spent the day on the beach today and kept a beady eye open. the scandos are very few and far between (although there is the most beautiful tanned scando sitting 3 seats from me in the internet cafe - she has a bandage around her leg... guarenteed scooter exhaust burn... there is a lot of them around here). instead this place looks a bit like english old age gathering with grannies having a topless droop-off compo. in fact this place reminds me a lot of the med. except the locals are oriental. and not snobby french folk.

2007-05-23T16:55:00.000+01:00

ko samui

i've just arrived, but i think i've found them. i can hear them. taste them. smell them. hmmm... scandos. they are here somewhere i tell you. they must be here. it's their kinda scene. sand and sun and fresh fish and beer and bronze tans and beach volleyball and all sorts of other beachy shit. this place is made for them. just need to make a plan to infiltrate their close knit circles. i reckon it's gonna take a lotta booze and a whole lot more peck flexing. but hey... i've never shyed (spelling looks weird) away from booze... and i've got a set of near perfect pecks (even if the left one is a little smaller and lopsided - it adds character).

will keep you informed of any progress.

2007-05-22T15:46:00.000+01:00

this is the story of a (thai) girl

thailand is full of old european looking dudes walking around hand-in-hand with beautiful young thai girls. you get kinda envious at first. but then you stop to think about it and it sure is sad.

on the bus to krabi, i sat behind a 55yr old aussie dude who had the most stunning thai lady i have ever seen. she was super super beautiful. young and innocent looking - almost like a porcelein doll. across the isle was this balding german dude who was interested in the process of acquiring one of these "girlfriend's". they struck up a candid conversation with regards to this...

turns out the thai girl was a "naive one" from the northern provinces sent to bangkok from her family rice farm to make money and support her folks. these "naive ones" are the best ones to have apparently, as the "ones" from bangkok are prostitutes and are just after your money - that is bad. the dude sends her 50 aussie dollars a month to support her and she is faithful to him and looks after him real good when he is around. this girl is 20yrs old. they have been together about a year. that makes her 19 when they got together...

19yrs old. i realise that some of the girls choose this way of life - fair play to them. but this girl was 19!!! how could she have chosen to make that decision??? when i was 19, i hadn't even been in a serious relationship yet (okay, i was super slow). i was still wet behind the ears, looking at the world with bright eyes. i was full of hopes and dreams of happiness and love (and spurs and scandos). the world was a wonderful place. a romantic place. contrast this to what the thai girl must be thinking and seeing of the world. how can you have any aspirations when you have been bought? what is the rest of her life going to be like?

at first i was pretty angry with the old dude - but i had a chat to him and he seemed a decent chap. i guess it's mainly due to the social and economic situtation in the country at the mo... and it sure is super sad. with all the wealth around in the world at the mo, one should never be able to afford to buy someone else's dignity.

waiting, watchin the clock
it's four oclock, its got to stop
tell him, take no more
she practices her speech
as he opens the door, she rolls over
pretends to sleep as he looks her over

she lies and says shes in love with him
cant find a better man
she dreams in color, she dreams in red
cant find a better man

talking to herself
theres no one else who needs to know
she tells herself
memories back when she was bold and strong
and waiting for the world to come along
swears she knew it, now she swears hes gone

she lies and says shes in love with him
cant find a better man
she dreams in color, she dreams in red
cant find a better man

2007-05-20T15:49:00.000+01:00

ao nang beach, krabi (southern thailand)

thai beer - $1

hire of scooter for a day - $5

one hour thai massage - $6

frolicking in the waves at sunset on an tropical island paradise with an islamic, vest-tanned, bearded, bosnian dude named elvis (who after a few beers later that evening turned out to be gay) - priceless.

there are some things money can't buy - for everything else there's mastercard.

2007-05-16T11:52:00.000+01:00

bangkok

in bangkok at the mo. khaosan road. backpacker, bohemian paradise. hustle and bustle and beer and hippies and beads and scandos and english folks on gap year. accomodation is basic. box rooms where the keys don't work properly. i am currently locked out of my room. i had to climb in through the window earlier.

weather is still super hot. and bangkok is super smoggy. the wet season means that there is a thunder storm every afternoon which creates a sauna-type effect and steaming roads. haven't braved the pingpong show yet... am scared to go by myself. i never was that great at pingpong anyway. little white balls bouncing everywhere. and paddles. freaks me the fuck out.

off to the jungle tomo - going to ride an elephant and look for tigers (toit like a toiger). then off to the beaches and the full moon party at the end of the month.

otherwise... just keeping it buddhist.

one night in bangkok makes a hard man humble
not much between despair and ecstasy
one night in bangkok and the tough guys tumble
can't be too careful with your company
i can feel the devil walking next to me

2007-05-14T09:07:00.000+01:00

god damn

first impressions of singapore... fuck my ass and call me nancy, but there sure are a whole lot of oriental ladies around here. i didn't expect sooo many. and they all wear mini-skirts. and they all have great pins. and some of them want to take pictures of you. and some of them are called tingting. and they give you business cards - "business consultancy services". and ask you to call them. it's the novelty factor i guess... being western and all. hmmm... i love oriental ladies.

it's not just the girls that are hot. the weather is super hot too. i've been sweating more than a hairy fat man in a sauna.

just at the airport at the mo. on my way to bangkok. had a hectic wend in sing. lots and lots of boozing at elitist establishments. will write more when i have time. also need to update for porto's bulls & wedding and south african road trip... the dial-up internet in sa is super slow.

anyway - must go. later.

ps. get in there spurs... 5th again!!!

2007-04-16T17:34:00.000+01:00

farewell

so the time has come for me to leave london after four looong years.

yup, it’s true... ladies, fear no more, you are once again free to roam the streets of london after dark without the nagging worry that you may get picked up by a drunk-crazed saffa with a dark aura and an age complex. gents, fear no more, you are once again free to roam the streets of london after dark without the nagging worry that you may get picked up by a drunk-crazed saffa with a dark aura and an age complex.

it sure is interesting to look back at the last four years and see how i have progressed as a person since leaving south africa – what is the point of life if you aren’t learning and progessing?

when i arrived in london i was in a stable long-term relationship and having regular sex. i was in a steady job, had a place to stay, and a bunch of cool young mates. i was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of youthful exuberance... a happy drunk, with a penchant for the unexpected, and a tendency to drop my pants in public. i had loads of questions, and a plan to change the world.

four years on and i’m desperately single and using a dirty sock for sporadic bouts of masturbation. i have no job, no place to stay, and gaggle of (effectively) married mates. today i am a sloppy drunk, with a melancholic streak, a sense of foreboding, and tales of woe for anyone who will listen. i have no answers – just the knowledge that i know very little, and a realisation that the world is changing me.

however, believe it or not, i have no regrets (except perhaps a few failed relationships... and that ginger straggler in wales). i guess it’s the old adage that the travelling is the best part of the journey, not the destination. it’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top - here is where things grow.

of course i’ll always be able to hold onto the memories: friday nights in the city. sat nights in clapham. sun nights at church repenting. mon nights and home. tues nights at home. wed nights at home. thurs nights at home. god, how i enjoyed those nights at home... with nothing to keep me company but a tuna sandwich and a wild imagination.

but i guess the best memories will always be the times when i laughed with mates... and we sure did laugh a whole lot. white stretch limos, thames jumping at henley, hedge jumping, the mystery of the missing keg (?), december pool parties, comatose cowgirls on the night bus, sleeping under bridges and under the mat outside the front door at work and under a curtain at the hilton, sandtraps in barca, no maite no. religious ramblings with fred, soul searching with hobbo, talking about “the one” with kirk, and about chicks with wiggy. the pyramids, and macchu picchu, and the eiffel tower, white hart lane, and the brighton diner. pearl jam, rem, greenday, placebo, the chilli peppers, and the nude girls. and lyrics and literature that mirror the soul. and memories of hopes and fears and love and guilt and utter despair (mostly related to the spurs). and smiles. good moments. great memories.

anyway... so... i am probably going to have a quiet farewell drink on wednesday. sometime, somewhere. it would be great if you could attend. i may never see you again. you may never want to see me again. but it would be good for your karma if you arrived. i hold great sway with the soul of the world. and i would def make it worth your while... allah will bless you with many rosy-cheeked children... and then ensure that they don’t get involved with any of buffy’s offspring.

should you not be able to attend... no worries... i’ll be back in london in mid july (unless of course i meet a thai lady-boy and elope to some northern vietnamese rice-paddy to see out my days as a buddhist dog farmer... or i die in a plane crash). i thought i’d write this soppy leaving email anyway. just to stir some emotions. i sure do love a soppy email. almost as much as i like homosexual romcoms. anyway... too much noise... i’m straying off the path here...

my basic itinery is as follows:

19 april – leave london
22 april – shit myself doing speech at porto’s wedding
23 april – drive the garden route
30 april – back in good old durbs
10 may – fly to singapore. go where the wind takes me.
23 june – back in sa
30 june – grumbies wedding
7 july – sister’s wedding
9 july – back in london

for those (sad) folks who wish to keep up-to-date with my travels, you can bear witness to my comings and goings at:

www.weak-kneed-winch.blogspot.com

alternatively, should you wish to use your time a little more productively you could visit the following site:

www.nakedfhmbabes.com

cheers dudes and dudettes... it’s been real. hope to see you on wed. otherwise have an awesome couple of months.

laters

d

the selfish, they’re all standing in line
faithing and hoping to buy themselves time
me, i figure as each breath goes by
i only own my mind

the north is to south what the clock is to time
there's east and there's west and there's everywhere life
i know i was born and i know that I'll die
the in between is mine
i am mine

2007-04-11T16:49:00.000+01:00

greg's big day out

a few chaps wanted to booze... greg's fiance had gone back to sunny sa... we therefore decided to have an impromptu bulls party. we decided on the big boat race in putney. we also decided on a speedo, kaiser chiefs beanie, homer simpson slippers, and a wooden suitcase in which to place our beers. the case was heavy. and so was my heart. another good man biting the dust.

we didn't realise the place would be soooo packed. but it was. super packed. greg was also super packed. the girl's were loving his speedo. and his super pack. the race was a bit of a non-event. cambridge won. i think. but folks kept boozing. and we kept boozing. so it was okay.

i don't remember much except some lady with webbed feet who lived in flat 132 opposite thai square. she was crying. apparently because of her abnormality. but she shouldn't have worried. because she was hot. i would have gone there. but then i'm desperate. but i've got standards. for the moment.

we ended up in clapham. kirk drew on greg's outfit. and my shirt. we drank. we danced. we dumped. actually we didn't dump... just needed another "d" activity. for asthetic purposes. it was a good night. i love bulls parties. it's just a pity someone has to get married afterwards.

2007-04-02T15:04:00.000+01:00

laugh of the year

click here for classic footage of kirk dancing to chopsticks in the hotel bar in albufeira. the old folks dotted around the bar loved it.

2007-04-02T11:50:00.000+01:00

burton

thinking about thinking of you
summertime think it was june
yeah i think it was june
laying back, head on the grass
children grown having some laughs
yeah having some laughs

you made me feel like the one

drinking back, drinking for two
drinking with you
when drinking was new
sleeping in the back of my car
we never went far
didn't need to go far

you made me feel like the one

i don't know where we are going now

wake up, cold coffee and juice
remembering you
what happened to you?
i wonder if we'll meet again
talk about life since then
talk about why did it end

you made me feel like the one

i don't know where we are going now

so take a look at me now

2007-03-22T15:04:00.000Z

big waves

i am truly awed by big waves - i am really sad to have missed these freak sea conditions in durban this past week. the last time we had similar conditions (1997? 1998?) i was out boozing with jade at about 4am in town (possibly crash) and we decided to go down to north beach to see what the monsoon waves were like. we grabbed some beers and ran out on the pier to get a closer look at the waves that were crashing over the railings. it wasn't quite as big or violent as the waves in the pics below... but it was awesome nonetheless - the swells rolling in must have been 10 - 15 ft ( i reckon anyway). anyway... that was just some useless rambling.

i've always wanted to go to hawaii for the pipeline classic. just a thought.

thanks to ryan for these pics.

2007-03-20T13:54:00.000Z

more destruction

good lord!!! more destruction... this time in durban harbour. goddamn you satan... leave durban alone!!!

2007-03-20T13:29:00.000Z

end of days... part 2

more pics of durbs. thanks to wiggy's mom (arguably the best site ever - love that viking hobbit picture) for the pics and words.

"See how we nearly washed away in the last two days!! We’ve had tidal waves galore! Due to the alignment of sun, earth and moon apparently (magnetic forces). Durban beach front washed away incl. Joe Cools, Spur etc. The rock pool at Toti main beach by Shad Place has washed away. We have no beach – the water is right up to the Promenade. The Island Hotel in Isipingo is flooded and Toti golf course no longer exists. Gale force winds and all!!"

okay... so my original prognosis claiming the end of days was a little misguided - apparently it's only the alignment of heavenly bodies that is cause of nature's wrath. but... who was responsible for lining up the sun, earth, and moon?... beginning of the chain of events that ultimately lead to the savage destruction of joe cool's?... satan's work?... hmmm... is there any other reasonable explanation?...

2007-03-19T14:14:00.000Z

revolution in zim

things seems to be coming to a head in zim. this video makes for interesting viewing - especially the interview with prof arthur mutambara (from 5.27 mins onwards). this dude comes across as extremely determined and passionate and you have to admire his bravery and will power.

the people are never wrong. it is we (the government) who make mistakes, and need to be corrected by them. - che guevara