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)

play misty for me

brogo, 20 mins north of bega
 

oysters out of tumblers

…down at bob's oyster farm, pambula, with bob, rakesh and bob's cuz brett… oysters oysters everywhere and I don't even eat them… fasting and also I lost the taste for them for some reasons I can't figure out not so long ago, no kidding… does anyone know a cure, other than eating them, for a complete idiot not liking yummy fresh oysters straight off the water?…

...once bitten twice shy, thrice bitten...

…up at the new local produce shop in cobargo, called 'sweet home cobargo', nick the co-owner, told the story of the days he did hitchiking in malaysia…of the three races, only the indians picked him up - never the chinese or the malays…he offered no insight into this curious bit of experience... I, being a malay myself, can't give any either...the malaysian lingo for a white man is 'mat salleh', an everyday malay name which is in the case of westerners, corrupted from 'mad sailors' harking back to the days when drunk colonials were roaming the streets of the empire...nowadays we do these things in the confine of bali... but I don't think this has any bearing on why nick wasn't given lifts whilst hitching for a ride over there; I'm sure the malaysians harbour no hard feelings towards an aussie and as far as bad blood between them and the brits are concerned, they have moved on since independence 55 years ago... which got me to recall the day I found myself up close with two hitchhikers here on the coast's princes highway...

…I think it was partly because I have moved to the country, to the south coast, that  my attitude to people's sincerity  and general anxiousness to others doing you in or ripping you off has been lax to say the least… in canberra where I have lived for 30 years, you tend to get wary of people in pubs and nightclubs who try to bludge  drinks off you or even rip money off you; these bullshit artistes don't mug you or anything crass like that - they know you and you them… some have been drinking with you for yonks - no, they are more subtle than that… one comes up to me after not saying hello the whole day stuck in front of his favourite poker machine, and says that he needs to get home to get his wallet and whether I can lend him the taxi fare… and it's pretty established that lending people money in a place where there are pokies is the last place you'd expect the debt to be repaid in...another asks whether I can buy her a drink, a bottle of breezer please, thank you… and throughout the night she does her usual round of asking men around the pool table to buy her the not-so-cheap drinks… then there are the assorted sob stories from those you have known for years who tried to elicit ten or twenty dollars off you… there was a well-paid public servant working for the tax office who was always broke due to his gambling habit and who got me and others to buy him his beers though he never shouted back, got usually drunk and slept in nearby glebe park because he had no money for the cabfare home… he went to work the next day straight to the office building across from the  park bench… I have known this guy for more than ten years…

central tilba, overlooking from paradise hill

…so being at the coast my guards are naturally down… one sunny friday afternoon at the turnoff to central tilba on our way to narooma, we picked up a young couple - kylie and john… my friend the driver, had never in her entire life, ever picked up a hitchhiker as was her policy… until that day… conversation was cordial enough - they gave me a tip on where in narooma you can have a good game of pool, like at lynch's; they said they were from the town and that was where we dropped them off… as we drove off, my friend suddenly had this weird urge to check her bag lying on the backseat floor where her purse was… the $110 cash was gone… I said to her that we just put the loss down to local weekend tax… hopefully, with the $110, kylie and john would have a smashing weekend at the place to be seen in: narooma's pub-with-the-million-dollar-view…

…a proverb that is clearly not true : the best things in life are free...
...but then again if you like beautiful vista, pleasure from a hobby, 
fresh air, the sea and sand, breeze in the trees, 
love and people that you love, sound of a creek, 
rosellas in the backyard, things you love doing, 
freshly laid eggs, looking at the clouds, ...

chortle

…why do people tend to laugh when someone slips over a banana skin or has a custard pie slapped into their face?… one theory explains that these types of situations make you feel superior to other people…the person who tripped, or who received the pie, has been made to look silly and that makes you feel good… in fact, it makes you feel so good that you laugh… many jokes make you feel superior to other people… in these types of jokes, people appear stupid because they have misunderstood an obvious situation, made a stupid mistake, or have been made to look stupid by someone else… according to the superiority theory, these jokes cause you to laugh because they make you feel superior to other people… the famous philosopher, plato (427-348 bc), was one of the first people to advance the 'superiority' theory… but he was not a fan of laughter… he thought that it was wrong to laugh at the misfortune of others and that hearty laughter involved a loss of control that resulted in people appearing to be less than fully human… as a result, he urged people to refrain from laughing… jay sommers, producer of the comedy show 'green acres' said that americans are so conditioned to the laugh track that if they don't hear it they don't know it's a comedy show…

a hapless crimson rosella, got itself trapped in the chook pen for the scratch grain mix…but got itself out of the situation eventually, bega valley shire ©070812

'I laugh until it didn't hurt'…

…did you not know that… laughter can help reduce pain?… in the book, anatomy of an illness (as perceived by the patient), norman cousins described how he used laughter to overcome the pain of arthritis… cousins reported how ten minutes of laughing at marx brothers films could lead to over two hours of pain-free sleep… his experiences have now been supported by years of medical research… research with rheumatoid arthritis sufferers has shown that laughter helps relieve both the intensity of pain, and the degree to which patients find such pain bothersome (described in funes, m (2000). laughing matters: live creatively with laughter. dublin: newleaf)… but why should laughter reduce pain?… one theory concerns the link between laughter and chemistry… endorphins are a special chemical produced by our bodies to help reduce the effects of pain and handle stress… some researchers believe that laughter produces endorphins which, in turn, help to deaden the effects of pain… (lifted from laughlab: the scientific quest for the world's funniest joke. the british association for the advancement of science 2002)… so now you know...

ps. ...and years of lab research have uncovered that films involving john cleese and peter sellers are especially good at making people laugh and feel better about themselves and their lives...