Q & A

Posted on May 9, 2017 by John

Watching the live panel debate, Q & A, on TV last night, I was struck by the intelligent response from the former Leader of the NSW Liberal Party, Kerry Chikarovski, to a question raised by a One Nation supporter in the audience.

The elderly audience Member asserted that ‘Islam’ was a big problem facing ‘Australians’.
Such an absurd statement was dutifully countered by the free thinking panel but Chikarovski’s offering shone a slightly different light on the populous phenomenon of right wing hate groups marginalising Moslems.

To paraphrase, she essentially said that if intelligent, fair-minded individuals constantly deny air time to groups like Reclaim Australia and One Nation, then we in effect, are marginalising them, which is the very thing we accuse them of doing to minority ethnic groups in Australia. We should listen to them and engage them in the conversation, no matter how absurd their claims may be. A percentage of the population do react to their own fears without the capacity to delve beyond a knee jerk response.The audience member went on to claim that radicalised Moslems read the Quran, which is why they do what they do. Moderate Moslems don’t read the Quran so much.

Panel member Lydia Khalil, a Defence and Counter Terrorism expert, responded by saying that in her 15 years of analysing the causes of terrorism, that it’s not really about religion.
“There are very specific and idiosyncratic reasons why individuals commit acts of violence which have nothing to do with religion. They’re marginalised. They’re on the fringes of society,” she said.

She added that most ‘Islamic’ radicals like ISIS, don’t read the Quran. They pick up on certain statements or ideas offered by ‘Recruiters’ and then marry them with their own need to lash out at the world. To confuse these individuals with practicing Moslems is a convenient over-simplification and utterly baseless.I have to confess to feeling embarrassed for the One Nation supporter as she proudly voiced her total ignorance of Islam. It also struck me that she was approaching a complex issue with a narrow mind. She has synthesized her fear into a broad target and was prepared to demonise an entire religion. Now isn’t that pretty much what the Islamic extremists do too. So our One Nation supporter actual has similar personality traits to the radicalised youths who are drawn toward a simple solution to their own fears.
Interesting how conflict occurs more readily when the protagonists have enough in common.With that in mind, I would be far more concerned about people who share the views of a One nation supporter than I ever would be about our peaceful Moslem community.

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A Unique Heritage Town

Posted on May 9, 2017 by John

Extract from the Blog of a Gap Year Traveller: ( Aboard Harmony of the Seas 3 ).

Friday 14th March. 2025

Arrived at George Town’s enormous Lim Guan Eng Port. Impressed by the massive cable car, ‘the Dozen Island Project’ and the 16 lane bridge connecting Penang Island to the Mainland. The Port Towers has an amazing mural depicting the old Clan Jetties that used to occupy the Lim Wharf.

We took the short Monorail ride to the enormous Transport Hub at the junction of Victoria Street and Armenian Street Gaut. From there we were ferried by motorised Pedal Carts to the 9th Wonder of the World. My eyes filled with tears as I gazed lovingly upon the ‘Bicycle Mural’. A moment I’ll never forget. We waited patiently for an hour for the opportunity to have our photo taken next to it.

Progress has finally saved this area from stagnation and the old buildings that were once a blight on the town streetscape have now made way for attractive skyscrapers. Armenian Street now has a 33 storey Tourist Centre, a Heritage shopping Emporium and there’s the 46 storey Khoo Towers with the first 3 floors housing the most beautiful temple I’ve ever seen.

The real highlight of my visit and the main reason for wanting to stop off in Penang was the Singaporium in nearby Acheen Street. Accessible from Armenian Street via the Jagdeep Mall, the 88 storey high Singaporium houses a 1,000 square meter scale model of Old George Town ( circa 2000 ). Wow, it must have been an amazing place when people actually lived in the town.

We spent the rest of the day visiting museums ( The Upside Down Hipster Cafe & Bubble Gum Museum, The Corruption Museum, The Head Up a Dead Bear’s Bum Museum ) and escaped the heat at Carnarvon Street Water World.

All in all, a great day exploring a unique Heritage town.

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A Blast from the Past

Posted on May 8, 2017 by John

Armenian Street, George Town.

Not that long ago you could walk down this old street and feel it smiling back at you.
Sure the buildings were in various states of disrepair but they exuded a kind of harmony that comes with the unfettered passing of time. The old uncles and aunties, trishaw riders, school children, business owners, hawkers, all akin by virtue of the tacit fibres that weave together any long standing community. Now that’s all changed. The old shophouses are painted purple or bright yellow, they sell post cards, ice creams, souvenirs and host flash-packers. Almost no community left now, just generic tourist crap.

This talented Lithuanian street artist painted a mural of two children sitting astride a real bicycle melted into an old wall and, lo and behold, hordes of tourists started queueing up for the privilege of having their photo taken next to the mural. They pose with inane peace signs and gawky smiles. I guess it’s to impress their friends on social media.
All day, everyday, the tourists come to this trifling shrine of extraneous junk to photograph themselves effecting some kind of expectation of what it means to travel. Wearing tight shorts, a lacy blouse and a big floppy sunhat, another little Asian princess climbs down from her pedal cart to construct a self-obsessed pose in front of the famous icon. Ice ball in one hand, a peace sign with the other, she poses and smiles sweetly for the doting boyfriend juggling camera, cigarette and credibility.
I try not to watch but the predictability and futility of it all is compelling. Part of me views these people as unconscious and achieving nothing of any worth. On the other hand, they are smiling and having fun. My gripe is at what cost?
What has been sacrificed for these people to enjoy the kind of generic fun they could get by playing with their smart phones. The unique qualities of this beautiful old town have been unconsciously trampled to dust by the masses herding toward that ‘tourist attraction’.

I read somewhere recently about a seaside town in Portugal or Spain or somewhere on the Mediterranean where the historic old streets were being over-run by trash tourism. The locals, or at least the ones who weren’t making any money out of the tourists and just wanted a normal place to live, were getting really pissed by what was happening to their town. There was this new sculpture of a clown on a tricycle wedged into the base of an old wall. It looked like the clown was juggling the clumps of moss growing on the wall and the mindless went nuts for it. They’d jostle to get near it for a look. Whole bus loads would come from all over to see the stupid clown. The old buildings and markets and local artisans didn’t matter anymore. All the tourists wanted was to photograph the clown.
If you wanted to raise your status on social media, just post a photo of yourself making a peace sign next to the clown and you were the shit and a bit.

Perched on a hill overlooking the town stands an old fort with grand ramparts, stone merlons protecting the inner courtyard and a number of old canons. The fort was used in medieval times to protect the town from invaders trespassing from land or sea. It was now mostly abandoned and its history all but forgotten as all the tourists were otherwise occupied taking photos of themselves next to the clown sculpture. Rumour had it that, unlike in Penang with Seri Rambai at Fort Cornwallis, one of the canons was still in working order.

Some of the locals hatched a plot to rid their town of the awful tourist hordes . A canon had not been fired in anger from the fort since early in the 18th century but it was time for a big gun to once more protect the town.
In the early hours of a Sunday morning, with all the town tucked up in their beds, a band of partisans broke into the fort, stole the working canon and wheeled it down the steep path and into town. They set it up facing the clown, loaded a large canon ball, checked that there was definitely no one within target range and then blasted the bastard into oblivion.
The immense boom resounded through every boutique hotel, hostel and chalet in town. The streets quickly filled with confused locals and tourists alike but there was no sign of the culprits. All that was left of the iconic symbol was a huge hole in the old wall and a big pair of copper clown feet.

You would think that would put a halt to the tourist frenzy. The late clown was the new ‘heritage’ and without it, what was this town now worth?
Unfortunately, what the band of mercenaries had not counted on was the resilience of the tourist invaders.
Once word got out that a canon had blasted the shit out of the town’s icon, every man and his dog wanted to come there to have their photo taken making peace signs next to the giant hole in the wall.
More hotels & cafes sprung up nearby – The Hole in the Wall, The Missing Clown, Canon Blast Coffee.
The whole thing just got uglier, proving that violence never solves anything.

The TRUE story of KOMTAR

Posted on May 8, 2017 by John

During the latter part of the 20th century, a large commuter rocket from the planet Tau Ceti E* was blown light years off course by a massive cosmic storm. Lost in space, it eventually plummeted through the Earth’s atmosphere and crash-landed in the centre of George Town, Malaysia.
The rocket’s unexpected arrival obliterated several blocks of old Chinese Shophouses while simultaneously deleting a surprised group of onlookers from the Hokkien gene pool. A huge firestorm then shattered any hope of a relaunch and left the alien occupants stranded here on planet Earth.

The good folk of Tau Ceti E* had been part of a mass exodus from their planet which had been completely taken over by tourists from all corners of the Galaxy.
Their once beautiful planet had been rendered almost uninhabitable by the invasion of mural-hunting, selfie-taking Foreigners.
They had decided to abandon their world in search of a new planet in which to establish a community untainted by the hideous ravages of tourism only to now find themselves stranded on a planet inhabited by strange ape-like creatures called humans.
A delegation from the Malaysian Immigration and Customs Control came aboard to negotiate terms of settlement and after much discussion the aliens, despite dire warnings of the inevitable catastrophic outcome, agreed to teach the local people everything they knew about how to make money from Tourism and Corruption in exchange for being granted MM2H.

Unfortunately, within one month, most of the aliens either succumbed to pollutants in the atmosphere or starved due to lack of nutrition in the food.
Despite their sad demise the Alien legacy lives on. In less than a month they were able to show the Earthlings how to set up awful trash shops and tasteless retail outlets throughout the rocket complex and laid a blueprint for dozens of novelty museums that would one day keep future generations of shallow souls suitably distracted from the bureaucratic mismanagement happening 20 floors above them.

And that girls and boys, is the true story of how the big ugly blot on the landscape known as Komtar, came into being.

The Masses

Posted on June 17, 2016 by John

The more technologically advanced humankind becomes, the more despairing are our attempts to reconcile good sense.
A tiny proportion of the population are smart enough to invent cool new stuff and the other 99%, who have only recently evolved from jellyfish, get to play with it. We then falsely assume that everyone is getting smarter.

What the vast majority of people eat, play with, listen to and buy, is sub-standard. Human beings are essentially gullible apes and perfect fodder for those looking to exploit that vulnerability.
In general, what the masses want is the well packaged, inferior version of what ever is available. The pscycology of human desire revolves around the seed of expectation planted by those looking to profit from feeding that assumed need. The genuine product, service or performance is typically overlooked by the majority because the energy that goes into its creation is an honest attempt at quality and not just the glitzy packaging. The punter has to be interested, proactive and more than a touch cynical if they are to find anything of worth.
A classic example of this phenomena is TV advertising.
Two of the areas of sales that I have background knowledge of, the Pool & Spa Industry and the Health Food Industry, both advertise regularly on television.
Without fail, those who have a large, credible presence on TV have an inferior product or service. The better the product the more you will need to delve a little deeper to find it. If it’s in your face yelling ‘ buy me ‘ , then chances are it should be avoided. Except of course for the masses who will demand it – they saw it on TV, so it must be good.

Nowadays the Food Industry rivals the Tobacco Industry for its unscrupulous production and promotion of consumables that are mostly tantamount to poison. It’s a crime against humanity that Governments appear powerless to control.
The multi-billion dollar food industry is controlled by cartels who exploit our contrived addiction to sugar and salt. The masses are food junkies barely aware that their health is being compromised by these trusted brand Companies. Watching morbidly obese people pushing their shopping trolleys laden with biscuits, soft drink, chocolates, chips, frozen dinners and packaged food around a supermarket is actually heart breaking. Seeing a long line of cars queuing at a fast food outlet is just madness. We really have lost our way. Food should equal nutrition but we now eat to feed an addiction to poison. The food industry has led us down this dark path and anyone who sparks any kind of protest is howled down as a nutter. If you want to eat the kind of food that nature intended for human apes, then we need to separate ourselves from the masses.

The Music Industry promotes mediocrity. That’s what people want. Pretty people who don’t have much musical talent. An actor can become a pop star. The world’s best composers, singers, guitarists, pianists etc, are not in the Top 40 Charts. It’s only the discerning listener or genre-based fan who is able to uncover real musical talent. The masses are fed formulaic twaddle.

In Asia, if you set up a shop selling colourful, plastic objects that have no apparent use beyond catching your attention, then the shallow masses will ensure that you make a healthy profit.

A tai chi master with a huge on-line presence has tapped into the masses’ interest in healthy pursuits. Essentially it’s about filling that niche demand for self improvement without effort. With just 10 minutes exercise a day you can achieve supreme health with the ‘magic’ of tai chi. Of course it’s rubbish but people are tripping over themselves to sign up. Meanwhile a tai chi instructor promoting the real art and all the effort required to achieve genuine reward is teaching half a dozen committed souls in a back street studio. It’s a metaphor for why we should delve beyond what is popular if we are serious about adding quality to our lives.

In conclusion, we shouldn’t be so gratuitous as to not pay heed to circumstance. Any attempt to avoid popular choice by being disingenuous with regard to seeking quality will result in us becoming different, like everybody else. However, unless you are content with playing the victim; the mindless, gullible fool who feeds voraciously on spin, then be skeptical of everything with a big marketing budget.
The masses accept what it appears to be not what it really is.

Next time you want to complain about the Government, remember, it was the masses who voted them in.
________________________________________

People in Glass Houses …..

Posted on June 2, 2015 by John

Hi to all our family & friends,

We hope that you are well and if you’re in Melbourne, keeping warm.
I wrote this letter over a week ago and then decided not to send it, as I
felt there was not enough interesting things happening to warranty any
narcissistic discourse. Anyway, Veronica insists that I send it, so blame her
if it puts you to sleep.
Here’s a bit about us and our on-going struggle to remain sane in Malaysia.

Travelling with Lotus Bud can put some pressure on my ought for equilibrium.
The girl has a vivid imagination.
Prior to every flight , Veronica evokes a series of scenarios that all end badly.
Major headline badly. The Airline goes broke. A 20 car pile up en route to the
airport has us missing the plane. We go missing over the Indian Ocean.
We plough into a mountain. You get the idea.

We’re about to fly out of Tullamarine, when the pilot’s voice comes over the speaker.
Veronica turns to me all worried and says. “Do you think he sounds a little depressed”?

We made it to Malaysia without incident and slotted back into life here as if it was no
more than a new day dawning.

We have been back for 6 weeks now. It’s been a busy time. The house is always in need
of maintenance. We’re teaching tai chi every morning. Lots of socialising and we have
some great new neighbours moved in behind us. I’m working on building websites and
Veronica is continuing in her quest to make the perfect sourdough loaf.
Things that we take for granted in Melbourne, like shopping, can be full day expeditions.

The latest sport to catch on at our house is cage fighting. Well, not exactly MMA stuff but
it’s pretty brutal. How it works is you put one ageing white man inside a mosquito net
with a Malaysian Aedes Egypti Mosquito and let them fight it out.
As I’ve already established in previous epistles, the local mosquito is clearly smarter than
the local human population, so this is not really a fair fight.
Hurricane Hanna up against Aedes Invisibilis. I can’t even see the little bugger as he ducks
and weaves around the canvas. I take hit after hit, itching and scratching, swinging and
missing.
I turn the light on and he’s no where to be seen. Light out and he laughs in my ear. He’s
cocky and I’m pissed.
In martial arts we learn that winning is one step closer to losing and losing is learning.
I’m a loser but my enemy is gaining weight. Eventually he can hardly fly under the weight
of my blood and I move in for the kill.
There are lots of fun things to do in Malaysia.

I have a lump in my neck. On my thyroid to be precise.
Decided to go to the hospital here and get it checked.
I rang up and explained my problem to a receptionist at the hospital.
My English being as bad as it is means I have to repeat myself many times
before they have any idea of what I’m banging on about. I usually hand the phone
to Veronica and she translates my gibberish.
Eventually it was all arranged. I was to see Doctor Wong, level 5 in the new wing.

Next day at the hospital I registered at the desk and was then ushered into a waiting
room. Apparently I would be going into room 7.
Sure enough, Doctor Wong’s name was on the door. Doctor Wong, Colorectal Surgeon.
I pointed this out to Veronica.
“Do you think they think I’ve got a pain in the arse instead of a pain in the neck?”
She immediately went to the reception desk and relayed our concern.
She returned and explained that apparently Doctor Wong was good at either end,
so we’re all good.

It seems like Veronica and I always manage to assign a significant portion of our time
abroad to visiting Doctors and Hospitals. It’s a form of time management.
We thought Lotus Bud had dengue. The doctor said it was too early to tell. It takes
about 5 days before a blood test will show a result.
He wrote out a prescription anyway.
We then went to the in-house dispensary, Veronica asked the girl what the bottle was.
“Medicine Ma’am”, she answered.
“What kind of medicine”?
“No Ma’am, just medicine.”
“What’s it for”? persisted a now plighted Veronica.
“To make you better Ma’am”.
“How? What’s it made of? What’s in it? What’s it do?”
“It’s medicine Ma’am. It makes you better.”
At this point I thought it best to just take the bottle and go.
Veronica was naturally a touch frustrated but I saw it as a brilliant metaphor for life
in George Town.
Actually, no one has a fuckin’ clue what they’re doing, why they’re doing it or what
might exist beyond the walls of their own insensitivity.

We stopped for a drink at a teh tarik stall in an alley off Hutton Lane ( no doubt soon
to have it’s name changed to something like Abdul Bin Raman Najib Razak Muhammad
Lane ) and low and behold there’s a temple roof rising over the back wall of the lane
and we’ve never seen it before. I asked the elderly proprietor of the 50 year old stall,
what the building was.
“It’s a temple sir.”
“Yes, I can see that, but what kind of temple? Buddhist, Hindu?”
“I don’t know sir.”
All these years and he doesn’t even know what is right next door. Unbelievable but
absolutely typical.

It’s so hard to get good staff here. Restaurants, cafes, trades, any business.
As a friend of ours recently explained.
“If they’re any good then they get poached or leave for higher pay.
If they’re just average, then they’ll stay with you until you have to kill them”.

I pinched this paragraph from an email Veronica sent to her Mum. It pretty much
nails everybody’s health problems here.

Every virus here is blamed on the weather, especially at this time of the year it seems.
Never mind if you have a sore throat, cough, cold, fever, headache, stomach ache,
toe ache, menopause, swollen glands, rash or probably even tooth ache, it’s all blamed
on the weather.
The heat, humidity, rain and storms are responsible for it all!!! Never mind that people
are in and out of air-con every few minutes. That a trip on a bus is deadly considering
the number of people who never think to cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze
and the fact that no one washes their hands after using the toilet even if they work in a
restaurant. That the Dengue Virus has risen by thirty percent in the last two years
because people throw their rubbish in the drains and block them up so the mosquito
larvae multiply. No, no, no, it’s the weather that’s responsible for all of this!!!

Veronica’s love of all things coffee has enriched our travel experiences no end.
When you’re walking down back streets and alleyways looking for trendy cafes, you
inadvertently discover the soul of a place. A vibrant local scene usually exists there, like a
an honest heart beating unseen beneath the skin of tourist sites.
It’s not only great places we discover but interesting people. Today we met a coffee
importer called Willy Wee. He wasn’t interesting but his name card is now a cherished part
of my souvenir collection.

I guess to understand this little story you would need to know that the best known shopping complex in Penang is called Gurney Plaza. It’s like a poor man’s Chadstone or Doncaster Shopping Town. It’s located on Gurney Drive near the famous Gurney Hawkers, all named after Sir Henry Gurney, former High Commissioner of Malaya who was killed by Communists during the Emergency.

Anyway, I needed to strip mould off an outside wall and figured that a high pressure water
cleaner might do the trick. Do you see where this is going?
I walked into a Chinese hardware and tool centre on Beach St and yes, I asked if they sold
Gernis.
They looked at me quizzically for a few seconds before one brave soul stepped forward and said, “Sir, you’ll have to get a taxi. It’s too far to walk”.

Is it bad karma to promote your own good fortune? Can positive assertions invite ill fate?

At the time of restoring our 135 year old house in Penang, we spent countless hours in
coffee shops and restaurants in the company of kindred spirits, listening to their horror
stories. Nearly everyone we knew who was also restoring an old Chinese shophouse was
having a disaster with the contractor or tradesmen or both.
Roofs that leaked, pipes that burst, ill-fitting woodwork, poor tiling, budget blow outs,
worker truancy, miscommunication and work done badly etc etc.

We would sit back contritely listening to the carnage, glowing in the knowledge that Uncle
Chan and his merry band of misfits was crafting our dream home.
This group of artisans were considered too old by most prospective restorers.
Why would you employ people who should be retired?
Why?
Because they had experience and skill. To top it off we had an amazing Project Manager
who listened to all our ideas and offered many creative options of her own.
We had a dream run.

Ok, enough smugness. There had to be some karmic payback for all that good fortune,
albeit five years later. Last Friday it arrived on a motorbike sent from hell. His name was
Yurgis, a cheerful young Indian man and he rode in with a small posse of Vietnamese foot
soldiers.

Yurgis works for Richard who possibly has some kind of pact with the devil. Richard makes old style glass windows to suit heritage houses. He came highly recommended and word of mouth is usually the best assurance. I rang Richard.

To begin with, we received a quote to put glass windows inside the wooden shutters upstairs, with the stipulation that we could retain the old shutters and the fly screens.
Similarly, downstairs the glass would have to compete with both wooden casement windows and screens.
No problem, they could build a separate frame. They would also fit magnetic sprung glass over the downstairs bat windows and fit glass frames in the upstairs vents.

We are regularly the victims of smoke, dust, chemicals, car exhaust fumes and noise coming in through the old shutters. It’s a romantic notion to live in a house without glass but you soon realise that it is seriously compromising your health. Clean air and safe living is not something that has ever occurred to most Penangites. They just mysteriously get sick and die too young. It’s an act of God or whatever deity is assigned responsibility for their particular brand of human stupidity.

A week after receiving the quote, Yurgis rings me and tells me he’s coming now to start work.
I wrongly assumed that this meant fitting windows. It actually meant that Yurgis needed to
bring someone else in to recheck the measurements.
Yurgis and his Vietnamese side kick, walked around with tape measures, shaking their heads while mumbling and grumbling in Malay ( the lingua franca for all foreign slave labour here ) until finally a phone call had to be made. We figured there was a problem. No point in discussing it with us though.
10 minutes later, in walked someone we assumed must be Richard. No point in saying hullo, we just live here.
2 minutes later they all walked out. Yurgis told me it couldn’t be done as they leave.
We actually felt relieved, it didn’t feel right.
Then for some stupid reason I said, “What about the bat windows and vents. Maybe we could just do them”?
“OK”, says Yurgis and then he disappears.

Another week passes and we hear nothing, we feel reprieved. It’s ok, we don’t want glass
anyway, do we?
The phone rings. It’s Yurgis.
“Mr John, we come now and start work”.

They turn up on motorbikes within minutes of the call. In struts Yurgis with two scrawny
Vietnamese workers carrying tool bags and window frames.
They spread themselves out without a moment wasted before scratching, bumping and
knocking over anything that might have some value to the inhabitants.

The vent windows don’t fit. No problem, they’ll just shave bits off.
One worker takes off with a saw and comes back 5 minutes later bleeding profusely from
a cut on his face.
Yurgis hands him a tissue.

They need more light. The worker who isn’t bleeding tries to force open a window that
doesn’t open.
“Stop”, I yell but he keeps on wrenching.
“Tell him to stop Yurgis, it doesn’t open”.
He stops but only after damaging the catch.

The silicon bottles are jammed and the silicon gun doesn’t work.
Bits of plastic get sawn off the tubes. Still doesn’t work. A window frame falls out and dents the floor.

Yurgis leaves, bolting our door from the outside and effectively locking us in. Let’s hope a
fire doesn’t start now. Idiot. He rides off on his motorbike and comes back 15 minutes later with a new silicon tube.
It appears to work but one Vietnamese guy gets his hands covered in silicon and Yurgis
manages to stop him from wiping it off on our furniture.
He hands him a tissue.
It won’t wipe off properly, so he goes down stairs and Veronica manages to stop him just
before he clogs up our drain.
He comes back upstairs. The window frame falls out and lands on his foot. It bleeds.
Yurgis hands him a tissue.
I can’t watch anymore and go down stairs for a break.

A terrified Veronica orders me back up stairs to keep watch.
They want to fit filthy windows. I stop them and together we clean the glass. They giggle
away in Vietnamese making fun of the silly white man.
The windows get banged into place with what seems like a lot of unnecessary hammering.

The whole circus moves down stairs.
Ho Chi Minh drags the ladder into place, climbs up and starts unscrewing the fly screens.
Veronica screams. “The fly screens must stay”.
“You want to keep the fly screens”? inquires Yurgis.
I look at him in disbelief, not sure whether to laugh or slap him.
“You are doing separate frames,” I remind him.
“Oh yes Mr John.”
“Do you have the frames?”
“Yes sir.”
“Where?”
“At the factory sir.”
“Really? Are you able to get them?”
“Yes Mr John.”

They all leave and come back 90 minutes later after making the frames.
They look ugly and need staining.
A tin of stain gets opened in our lounge room and ….
Veronica screams. “Get out, you can’t do that in here, I’m allergic to chemicals.”
They look at her as though she’s just confessed to some heinous crime.
So they sit outside the front window on the 5 foot way and …..
Veronica screams again.
“Get away from the house you stupid idiots, the fumes are coming straight in the
window.”
They edge a little further away like scolded dogs.
I asked Yurgis what will happen once the frames are stained? Surely they will smell.
“No smell Mr John”.

They finish and bring in the frames. They stink. Veronica can’t scream anymore and
retires to the back of the house, a defeated woman.
Then the banging starts. I have no idea why but they hammer the living suitcase out
of the frames, the windows and anything else that makes a loud noise when banged.

Then it all goes quiet.
“We are finished Mr John”, says Yurgis.
First time he’s actually shared anything with me. I’d got used to trying to guess the
next step.
“I will come back tomorrow and fix the windows,” he adds.
They were fitting a magnetic catch to the bat windows, so I assumed there was some
drying time needed.
“You mean once the silicon has set,” I inquired.
“Yes, Mr John. Can you pay me now for the workers?”
He handed me two bills. I needed to pay for the labourers now and balance tomorrow.
I paid and they left.

The next day we were just leaving the house, I opened the door and there was Yurgis
standing there. He had a small ladder in his hand and his worker friend was carrying a
trowel with a small bucket.
“How did you know we’d be home?” I asked him.
“No need sir, no problem, we just come to fix window”.
“How were you going to get inside?”
“No need sir, we can do from the outside.”
“What do you ……. ” . I turned around and got a horrible shock. They had knocked all
the plaster out of the wall around the windows. It looked like the aftermath of an
earthquake.
“You have some faulty with your brick sir”.
“Damn fuckin’ right I do, you’ve smashed the front of our house out.”
“You didn’t know sir? Never mind, we can fix it.”
Ho Chi Minh scales the ladder and starts trowelling plaster all over the wall. More bits
of old plaster start flaking off as he applies the new. It’s an awful job. The new plaster
starts cracking as it dries. The wooden window frames are covered in plaster. The 5
footway tiles are speckled with dripping plaster and crumbling bits of wall. It’s a
disaster.
“Do you have any paint Mr John?.
“Why?”
“i will paint the wall sir.”
“GO AWAY!!

Yurgis rings me twice a day looking for his money.
“My boss wants payment.”
“Have you told him what a complete cock up this job has been?” I ask.
“Yes sir, he knows.”

The day after hell opened and Lord Yurgis, Prince of Darkness rode out from the
underworld, a bad tempered Lotus Bud and I decided to go to Gurney Plaza.
We’d ordered a fridge that was to be delivered in one week. That was 5 weeks ago.
It was time to go into their main outlet and vent some frustration. It wouldn’t change
anything, because no one gives a toss here but at least it would feel better having a
bit of a yell.
I could see that Veronica needed to let off some steam but to her undying credit she
stayed remarkably calm as we walked from store to store encountering sales people
who almost unanimously proved that the Malaysian education system is farcical.
No wonder they queue up to come to Australia to learn to read and write.

Things were going well as Veronica browsed through Harvey Norman, finally stopping
to look at a bread machine. There was a big sign next to it that said ‘Bread Machine”.
The machine itself had ‘Bread Machine’ emblazoned across it and the manual sharing
the same stand was also titled ‘Bread Machine’.
A salesman sidled up to Veronica and in a most informative way told her that it was a
‘Bread Machine’.
Veronica looked up at him. I could see the steam slowly percolating.
“I know it’s a fuckin’ Bread Machine. Do you think I can’t fuckin’ read you stupid man!”
She walked away and quite calmly added.
“I feel better now”.

As mentioned, we decided to upsize our fridge. SEN Electrical is on Level 7 of Gurney
Plaza and they gave us a pretty good deal. Stock will come in from KL in a week. That
was 5 weeks ago.
The day before we went into their store at Gurney, Veronica rings them.
“Hullo, is that Sen?”
“Who?”
“Is that SEN Electrical?”
“Hang on please.”
Someone else comes on the phone. Veronica continues.
“Hullo, is that SEN?”
“Wait one moment please, I will check.”
Veronica looks incredulous. She covers the mouth piece of the phone and tells me
that whoever she’s talking to is having a good think about the name of the company
they work for.
After about 5 minutes they come back on the phone.
“Sorry miss, there’s no body of that name here.”

Our fridge finally gets delivered. The driver was a really nice guy, even carried our
old fridge into a neighbour’s house. 3 hours later we’re walking along Beach St and
the phone rings. It’s SEN.
“Sorry Miss, the fridge driver can’t find your house.”

Welcome to Malaysia.

Just Follow

Posted on February 26, 2013 by John

The mindless masses are moving in for the kill.

The witch hunt has begun. Only 7 months before we can all sink our blunt knives into the ‘Gillard’ government and be rid of them.

The people of Australia deserve better. Unfortunately they will elect an ‘Abbott’ government, so they won’t get better. In fact, they’ll get far worse but that’s another story. For now, it’s all about putting an end to all the pain and suffering.

Why a reporter would choose to venture into the bogan heartland of outer Western Sydney to seek answers completely escapes me. Perhaps it’s all a parody but I fear it’s more about gleaning opinions from the stupid folk who represent our moronic majority. The people who will vote out a Government who, despite a relentless media propaganda campaign against them, actually managed to invoke some innovative policies.

“And how will you vote in September sir”? asked our intrepid reporter.

“I’m a hardened Labour voter and all my family have always voted Labour but I’m going to vote Liberal”.

“And why is that sir?”

“Because I’m sick of seeing all these ethnic people taking over the place. We should send them back to where they came from”.

Then she interviews a store owner.

“I can’t make a profit anymore. Julia Gillard should come down here and work in my shop for a day and see if she can make a profit. She has to go.”

I just wish the reporter had asked this bozzo whether he’d ever considered that he might be a shit businessman. No, it’s Gillard’s fault.

Come September, Australia will get what it deserves. The morons will have a honeymoon for 3 months while Abbott does nothing, then the whinging will start. Nobody ever learns but two things are certain.

Abbott will privatise the NBN, putting us back in surplus. That man would even sell his mother to balance the books. Secondly, our hardened Labour voter, still doing it tough in Penrith, will never admit that he voted Liberal.

We are apes who act like sheep. Just follow.

Happy Invasion Day

Posted on January 25, 2013 by John

In a local pub, somewhere, anywhere.

A monkey wrench of Tradies sit busy mastering plastering over any remaining vestiges of adolescent sobriety.
Jason reckons Ushtraya should be for Ushtrayins and those ‘boat people’ should fuck off. He’s never met a ‘boat person’ but they still mess up his life.
His grandfather hated Wogs and his father hated Slopes, so I guess it’s a tribal thing. Fortunately he never got religion. He’s banging on about the ‘missus’ , ( the bloating Sharon ) mercifully underpinned by alcohol and seemingly unaffected by formal education. She would have had a white wedding if she’d got married at 12.
Track suit pants, a supermarket trolley full of chips and soft drink, a tattoo on her left breast, she hates Moslems, they have no respect for our way of life.

Between them they earned $150,000 last year. That’s what’s great about this country, even the lowliest bogan peasant has a voice. Ignorance has a genuine place in the debate. They never go to the city, why would you, there’s everything you need down at the local shopping centre. Jason reckons the only good thing about the city is the airport. They’re off to Bali again next week.

Jase is notably the ring leader, he talks louder and more often.
“yeah, nah, obviously, I spose the boys played well. At the end of the day you have to take it one day at a time and obviously I spose the boys weren’t good enough on the day.”
Everybody agrees, wise words from Jase.

Little Mick McMick reckons Julia Gillard is a cunt.
Mick’s a plumber. He got his head stuck down a toilet only 3 days into his apprenticeship. Instead of helping him, all his workmates just kept pressing the flusher. Now he calls everybody a cunt.

Mack’s a butcher who saves his deepest cuts for the Queen’s english.
“Mate, she’s a red-headed clown mate.”

Now an Abbott Government would scrap multi-culturalism and replace it with policies that would strongly encourage homogenisation of the community. Forget about African festivals with their vibrant music and colour, Chinese New Year, Vietnamese restaurants and Flamenco dancing, we’re all off to the pub to join Jase and his mates on Ushtraya Day. Surely someone knows a good Abo joke?

It’s the perfect souvenir of your holiday in George Town, Penang.