my drinking buddy suddenly changes into a woman

    my  friend transforms into a sheila and it has nothing to do with the schooner of beer in his hand…in the three years I thought I knew the guy he gave no signal, no hint, not a bit of clue he planned to bat for the other team… one day he was doctor hatta, primatologist specialising in orang hutan, the next she is doctor angelina, primatologist specialising in same...

...one night when I was at the pool table in the mooseheads pub in canberra, in walked this young man with his uni buddies… I thought he was an indonesian… not all asians can tell other asians apart you know, well I got it wrong on this one anyway…this went on for five nights and on the sixth, as both of us approached the bar, he started with, 'you malaysian kĕ?'…

...hatta was a brilliant bloke sponsored by the australian national university to study apes… whilst here his beautiful wife came from sarawak, an east malaysian state of north borneo, to live with him for a year or so…everything was hunky dory…

...when her time was up she left for home and hatta continued completing his stint studying everything one need to know about orang hutan…

   after I moved to the coast I regularly came up to canberra and hatta and I always had drinks together…about half a year ago his facebook profile changed…on it he became angelina…I was only mildly surprised and didn't put much of anything into it - facebook people have all sorts of names and profiles out there, real, imaginary or pseudos…but I jumped on my bike, gunned for canberra and gave hatta a call…

...a woman met me on the grounds of the university and her smile was unmistakably hatta's…as I hugged her, she asked, 'notice any difference mate?'…'yes, I can feel your bra straps'… then she cooly slipped into the ladies which was a little bemusing...

...that evening was a farewell get-together for angelina organised by her many friends at the australian national university outdoor wine bar…it was a beautiful spring night; a jazz trio was playing, the crowd was warm and smiles...and angelina was resplendent and happy with her equally beaming boyfriend, a lecturer at the school of music nearby...

 
   doctor angelina is now back in her hometown of kuching in sarawak…she is the first and only malaysian primatologist, male or female…this little info surprised me considering the fact that orang hutan being exclusive to borneo and sumatra and their existence gravely threatened there're not many more specialists like angelina to protect these people of the forest…

…in the village where I grew up there was a transexual and she fought the taunting and the hassle by turning the table and flaunting what she was and what she got…by playing along with her community the intimidation lessened and disappeared altogether…she accepted being the brunt of jokes and innuendos and made herself the centre of attraction wherever she turned up - to a point where she gained the respect afforded a minor celebrity…on another occasion at a popular waterfall, there was an attractive transexual in a short red dress that attracted boys who were milling around her like flies and we could see that she was enjoying the adulation…in a culture of strict dress code and stricter gender separation she certainly was the exception big time... 

...the last time I heard from angelina on facebook she was in tears…her home country people are giving  her a hard time…she was insulted while queueing at the local mcdonald's… ;(

milkshake stalls kneeshakes

  ...it is easy to pinpoint when, exactly, I first became fearful of heights… it is most likely to have been when I was 25 and in london studying architecture, going up the glass stairwell to the second floor of selfridges department store and looking down onto oxford street below… it is harder to know why my knees decided to turn to jelly…

...I'll always remember selfridges not least because of that onset of vertigo but because of my first encounter with dame edna everage... not the flesh and blood version but close enough... she was in madame tussaud's wax and sitting in all her colourful glory in the huge store window clutching a bunch of gladioluses and beamng to the oxford street shoppers... even after being told otherwise by an aussie I just met, I wasn't convinced she is actually a man...

...on the way to australia via malaysia  with the same aussie, I stopped by to visit my family in segamat... when I told my mother about my newfound curse she suggested taking me to see a local indian shaman who treated his patients by dousing them with flower-petal water... I didn't go for the twaddle and I didn't have the heart to tell my dear mum why either...

   ...with the phobia I am missing out on heaps of views around here… the michael lerner viewing point  a kilometre south of bermagui, the cliff on the left before the cuttagee bridge, the steps leading down to the blue pool in bermagui, the walking tracks around the rocky edges of the tathra wharf, the high cliff of potato point, are all beyond my reach…

I envy people who can enjoy views from high above in this case a bushwalker admiring

mount little dromedary from paradise hill in central tilba nsw ©160512

  ...there're two popular routes you can take to go to canberra from bermagui in the south coast... up the clyde mountain in the north or climb the brown mountain in the south... the distance is about the same: 6 km further northbound...

                                             

the stark hills beside the highway approaching cooma nsw ©061010

...because of my vertigo, I prefer to ride my motorbike to canberra going up the brown mountain down to nimmitabel then I don't have to look down the ravine on my right... be warned that there's no servo until that snowy mountain town of cooma... your last chance to fill up to take you the 115 or so kilometres would be the cheese town of bega... coming home i hug the clyde's mountainside on my left all the way down to nelligen towards batemans bay... the bonus of coming home this way is you can stopover in braidwood and takeaway their special dojo bread... from batemans bay you have two choices to go south: take the princes highway passing through touristy mogo, then the commercial town of moruya, cute bodalla and its pasties, narooma for fresh fish and turn off the highway on the left for another 30 km to coastal bermagui... or if you prefer the slow cruise down, take the coastal route to batehaven, denhams beach, surf beach, lilli pilli, malua bay, rosedale, guerilla bay, tomakin, mossy point, then the sleepy beach of broulee, meeting up moruya on the princes highway... to see the beach again, follow the coast and stop awhile for a bite at a trendy cafe in moruya heads, then to pedro point, congo and meringo... sneak off into the side roads again to see the sea at tuross head, potato point and dalmeny...

 tilba tilba dairy farm on princes highway
just before the turn off to bermagui ©250811

  ...there's no continuous road along the coast which is such a bummer like there's an unbroken but curly road from bermagui, tathra, merimbula, pambula, all the way along the coast south to eden; you have to keep coming back to princes highway... now that there's a 42-million dollar roadwork at victoria creek that section between narooma and central tilba renders traffic to a stop and wait bit of bother...one turnoff to mystery bay then the last detour leading to the causeway of beautiful wallaga lake  through small beach communities along the thirty or so kilometres to bermagui, the town author salman rushdie was going to to stay with some friends when he met with a near-death incident in milton and the first suspects were the people eager to carry out the fatwa death sentence on him for the million dollar bounty... it turned out to be a run-of-the-mill road accident involving a farm truck... the police officer ('the most exciting thing to happen in milton') at the scene scored himself a nice marked-for-death autograph...

corunna lake ©170611

   ...even in the virtual world things can get a bit hairy… I still play video games a carry-over of the years when I get to meet my son every saturday and we spent it playing video games to get to know each other… games such as prince of persia, assassin's creed or skyrim where you have to scale giddying heights or balance walking on a single plank will give me the heebeejeebees…

…but by a quirk of chance I now know an instant fix to my vertigo… I discovered it whilst having to go up canberra's black mountain tower with my son and his grandparents…everyone was out at the viewing platform having a fabulous time and i had to contend sitting in the cafe facing the wall nursing a strawberry milkshake… then it got me, the sugar-hit to be precise… inexplicably the glucose high came with an instant superpower of kryptonite proportion… I could lean right out to the edge of the railing and for the first time was able to view canberra city from that once-dizzying viewpoint with not a twinge of kneeshake whatsoever… it was weird to have this sudden ability…all because of a thick shake?...they say you can find just about anything on the internet but i'm yet to find something to pin this on...

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beach is a life

shags on a rock, hayward beach (camel rock)

linga longa - a secret joke of the double meaning

  it was in pambula on the far south coast of new south wales, that my friends bob of canberra  and rakesh of fiji in a car and i was on a motorbike following a couple of kilometres behind, and that as i approached the bridge a kilometre south of the town, the car had stopped and rakesh was taking pictures of bob posing in front of the road sign 'yowaka river'…i asked bob what gives?…'don't you get it?' he pointed to the big sign with a cheeky grin…well i haven't exactly been living the sheltered life of a frog under a coconut shell, the malay used to say: 'yowaka' does sound like a  favourite aussie catchphrase 'you wanker' given usually in a jokey way to friends and foes who're up themselves…

…and that brings me to another curious river-name sign…and this one's about five kilometres or so before you go up the brown mountain from the tiny town of bembooka on the eastern side of the great dividing range…and the sign says 'nunnock river'…now 'nunnock' sounds a lot like a very rude malay vernacular the equivalent of 'cunt'…my elderly egyptian lecturer, dr. el erian, who taught us arabic at the canberra college of advanced education (now university of canberra) once told the story that before he first went to england to study, he made an effort, first and foremost, to learn every filthy words and rude gestures the english locals might throw at him…in that same fun spirit i would suggest you equip yourself with some of these colourful malaysian terms if ever you decide to embark on a west-malaysia tour so you know where you sit among the hospitable locals and can join in…now i say west malaysia because i've never been to the eastern part of my country of birth…the two parts are separated by the vast south china sea and are very very different in terms of people, cultures, land, food, flora & fauna, etc…they probably have their own separate set of dirty terms...

...one east malaysian from sarawak divulged to me a name they call the west malaysians: 'lipas' which means 'cockroach' describing the creeping about of the mostly military men sent by kuala lumpur...

  to friends who tell me of their planning to holiday in malaysia, my first reaction is 'don't go there'…understandably they're a bit surprised at this seemingly atypical discouragement but, i tell them, the last time i went back there in '88, my mother country didn't impress and in fact i hated that it wasn't as i remembered it before i left for england in '75…it was hot and sticky and the mosquitoes as big as your head, the swarm i mean, bugged me a lot...they are rampant and dominant now that their predators have severely been reduced due to the fact that natural habitats have been replaced by miles and miles of palm oil trees and highways…which also add to the country's increased temperatures...those critters are out to murder you…fair enough that you can closet in air-conditioned cars or condos, but most houses there do not know the meaning of fly screens…the locals don't even sleep under mosquito nets anymore…tough, used to it, immune to mozzie-borne diseases, plain blasé, or simply idiocy, call what you will…if the pesky mozzies don't get you, those smoky mosquito coils surely will...my family and friends found it bemusing that i carried a portable one-man mosquito net wherever i went up and down the peninsula visiting my nine brothers and sisters…so there is a place far worse than queensland where the mozzies are in australia...

  elsewhere in this blog i posted the malay word 'mat (pronounced 'mutt') saleh' which is a real malay name for a male person but by which the locals may also refer to you if you are white…it is not a rude word, just a generic term, a corruption of 'mad sailor'…then there are the usual list of swear-words: 'pantat' (vagina), 'koteh' or 'chuni' or 'lanchau' or 'konek' (penis), 'chelaka' (damn you), 'mampos' (death to you), 'la'nat' (curse on you), 'anak lahabaw' (sonnofabitch)…funny enough i can't, for the light of me, think of a malay word equivalent to 'fuck you'…perhaps we haven't advanced that far yet haha…or we might even use the popular english version albeit in the local brogue...

…then there are gestures…when sitting on the floor, which may happen on many occasions, the height of rudeness is to show the soles of your feet to people, socks or no socks - for a man, sit cross-legged, or if it is too uncomfortable, do what the woman do - tuck them under you, that is sit on them or bend your knees to the side…and walk in front of people sitting on the floor with your hunched bowing posture all the way until you've passed through…always pass or receive things with your right hand and if you have to point to someone, use your right-hand thumb please…

  there are place-names around here on the south coast i could've sworn were first coined by some intrepid malaysian indiana jones type…'bunga bunga' a beautiful greendale halfway between bermagui and tanja, means 'flowers' in bahasa…near there along that beautiful quiet road where the cows are grazing, you come across 'murrah' unintentionally meaning 'cheap'... then you find 'jellat jellat' somewhere between bega and kalaru on the breathtakingly scenic flood plain, which almost equals 'licking' in malay…

  i have been told that this is one of australian children's favourite books from four decades ago about a cute rabbit:

  now 'pookie' (or more precisely 'puki' in malay) is the height of coarseness in the malaysian vernacular, which simply means 'cunt'…in history class i remember our teacher, encik (mr.) yusof, noticeably  paused when he came across the surname of the italian explorer amerigo vespucci (which normally at that time malaysians would say vespuki...rude), and almost blushing himself brownish pink, quickly pronounced it as 'vespuchi' (as it should be accented i found out years later)…in the late '60's a movie caused quite a stir when the main character called out: 'pookie adams! pookie adams! i love you!'...then there is 'butoh' or 'bhuto' as in the japanese dance-style and benazir bhuto, the late prime minister of pakistan…'butoh' (new spelling: 'butuh') - the extreme of rudeness and insult when said to someone's face, describes the genital area... when i was a kid, the malaysian tv and radio read this famous surname of pakistani politics, at that time pertaining to benazir's dad's name, as zulfikar ali 'batto'…

...but i still don't have the heart to tell someone i know in canberra that her poodle's name is also an extremely  crude word for the genitals...

  so if you just got yourself a child or a dog, may i suggest that you also grab a booklet of 2000 names to choose from, complete with  their meanings and root-words...even that is no guarantee that we will get it right...like this guy who was named 'taragon' by his baby-boomer parents probably during the purple haziness of the late '60's ...even though it isn't particularly a rude first name, he hates it and calls himself  't'  nowadays and i don't blame the poor chap...

  one person's prose is another's imprecation you might say…but my next door neighbours' boat is painted big with the name 'cock-a-leekie' which at first i thought sounds like a very brave announcement to the whole world how those 60 year olds prefer their sex and have thus given a very rude name to their vessel even by australian boat-naming standard…until, by the grace of accident,  i come across that very same string of words in a sentence in a book by richard flanagan, titled 'wanting': 

she had stuffed the mutton with oysters, 

made sure the cock-a-leekie was just as he liked it 

and the croquettes of chicken not lacking in imagination 

and the spiky pigeon feet poking perfectly 

like winter birch trees from the top of the pie.

   i was momentarily ashamed of myself for harbouring such kinky pictures in my head of my nextdoors and their boat in the middle of the ocean...but more for my ignorance of such deliciously exotic culinary term for a scottish chicken soup... i bet tucked in the australian front yard or maybe moored in a cosy marina, there is a boat somewhere with the intricately calligraphied name 'spotted dick' painted on its side...

   thus i come around full circle back to why i began blogging these double meanings…it started when a friend volunteered to help john the local carpenter paint the sign for the house-name of a client from bingi, a beach community near congo which is near moruya…the sign reads 'linga longa'…what was she thinking, this nice old lady who commissioned the wooden plaque? perhaps naively she wants her home to say to guests: 'stay a little bit longer'…or more to my point, perhaps she, with tongue firmly in cheek, wants to convey the meaning for some ulterior tantric reason; 'linga', after all, does mean 'phallus' in the indian language …might as well put a sign up by the front gate in pink neon: 'big dongle'...

some rude place names

muff (northern ireland)

bastard (norway)

twatt (orkney, uk)

dildo (newfoundland)

wankie (zimbabwe)

climax (colorado, usa)

dong rack (thailand-cambodia border)

donk (belgium)

intercourse (pennsylvania, usa)

brown willy (cornwall, uk)

turdo (romania)

fuku (shensi, china)

wanks river (nicaragua)

shag island (indian ocean)

sexmoan (luzon, philippines)

wet beaver creek (australia)

dikshit (india)

chinaman's knob (australia)