THE HEART IN THE HOME

I measure houses.  I see the full spectrum from the good to the bad and the ugly. 

I see lavish, pristine showcases, derelict hovels and pretty much everything in between. 

But what strikes me more than anything else has to be the way the places feel. 

There's the meticulously styled nouveau-decor environment that feels as if you've been sucked into the photo shoot spread. It's beautifully rendered, it's painstakingly arranged yet it's spiritless and sterile. 

These are houses (not homes) that haven't yet soaked up any real family energy or assumed an aura of having interfaced with haphazardly emotional beings of all ages and persuasions. 

The ones that have been lived in feel entirely different regardless of the decor. Some emanate warmth and whisper silently of long, blissful summers past when visiting family and friends clattered through the halls and blasted the walls with their laughter. 

Others are unspeakably melancholy. I seek only to do my work in those and move on before I feel the sorrow reach out and touch me. 

That isn't to say every deceased estate is a maudlin, tragic mausoleum of fragile, broken memories, no. Many of them still harbour rows of family portraiture, chronicles of flourishing children, burgeoning into maturity, seeding new life, sharing joyous milestones. They emanate a nurturing tranquility these homes. 

Yet some are just too despairing for words. One recently - room upon room of multiple lifetimes hurriedly crammed into boxes and garbage bags, no consideration given to what such trinkets or memorabilia might once have meant. The flotsam may as well have perished with the owner...

Wherever there have been animals, I can feel the difference. There's usually some sympathetic resonance within the walls.  

And often people just want to share a moment of something with someone simply because they're there and will listen.  

We should never stop listening and we should take the time to hear. 

And what you imprint upon your walls shall speak softly to the world long after you depart this realm. 

We are never far from the people and places we've touched.

INCONSEQUENTIALITY

                                                               Huh?

A friend urged me to write stuff about my life on my blog - this blog. Small, stuff, trivia even, as she was captivated by our journey, my wife and my journey from Africa to the smallish enclave of Adelaide, South Australia.
I thought about it. I mean, I'm already writing a book about this, I mused, precipitated by our disastrous honeymoon in 2008, which, in hindsight kicked off the sequence of events that led us to settle in Australia.
I've always said (in the ethos of Desiderata) everyone has a story to tell, sometimes many.
Some people just don't see it.
My life is a story - every day I see and experience magic around me, not least of which originates from my wonderful wife and our seven cats.
Then I realised something that's become manifest recently, kind of risen up and carped my diem - the idea of remaining in the present and talking about that.
The book is the appropriate forum for our anecdotal legacy, the trials and tribulations that got us here but the blog, I decided, should be a chronicle for the here and now...
until tomorrow then it's legacy once more.  
I wrestle with the demons that haunt me over a decision to become fully vegan, for example, when outside the magpies, my new friends greet me each morning hoping for a morsel of the pet's meat I've been buying to feed them....I've even resorted to donning latex gloves (my wife's artistry sometimes requires hand protection) such is my revulsion at dipping into the bloody, flesh-filled bag to hand out chunks of meat. It makes me gag at times.
Even owning (nay, WAITING on) cats has that inbuilt dilemma - they're natural carnivores, domesticated for man's pleasure (and what a consummate pleasure it is) so must it follow that one be part of that horrific cycle of abuse that is the meat industry? How does one get round it? How does one reconcile with the awfulness that is rife within it and still provide the necessary nutrition to the cats who are oblivious to my wistful agonising? Scour the highways and byways for likely roadkill or take out a classified requesting any donors who might have access to birds and rodents that have died of natural causes...?
Hardly seems plausible or even mildly pragmatic now does it?
I've started some research on the topic of animal veganism and have been surprised at what I've uncovered, however, I'd never subject my babies to anything without embarking on that road myself - no, not eating vegan catfood - simply becoming vegan myself.
This post wasn't meant to be about veganism or the debate over whether cats and dogs can thrive healthily on such a diet - arguably they can - it just seems to have meandered here of its own volition.
The magpies on the other hand, have no such quandaries to overcome - should I elect some day to proffer them non-animal titbits of a morning, they're free to reject them and forage for themselves, carrion and prey animals notwithstanding.
I can already hear the rampant carnivores among you rising up in protest, howling at how cruel that would be - forcing cats to become vegans when their natural instincts and biological imperative is premised on carnivorism and hunting. 
But that's all bollocks too. We abdicated that argument when we commenced the domestication process. The fact that we have all evolved culturally since then - yes, even cats - puts forward the potential to thrive healthily without contributing to animal suffering. We have developed alternative products and natural foodstuffs that allow this.
Here in Australia they have a love-hate relationship with cats. They bang on about how domestic cats, allowed to roam uncontained, decimate the local wildlife so they should be banned or at least confined or at the very least, restricted in their numbers. I'm all for that - all of it - to a degree. I personally think it's more cruel to confine cats to being housebound when their natural instincts are to roam and explore and hunt. Yet this is, by nature of urbanisation, a very prevalent phenomenon where cats are confined to apartments and houses for their entire lives. Is it cruel? Many a doting cat owner will vehemently disagree. And, like I say, it's become a normal lifestyle for millions of cats worldwide. They still thrive. They're the ultimate adapters - not for nothing were they accorded nine lives and a penchant for aeons of snoozing, you know.
I've circumvented that particular issue, however, by building the cats an external enclosure which, although not as large as I'd like it to be, allows them the freedom to explore in the fresh air on grass and soil and up trees and to come and go as they please through the cat flap in the scullery door. No cruelty there then.
I've also built a very large litter box in the form of an elevated corrugated steel planter which is embedded in the garden and roofed off so the critturs can enjoy the freedom of outdoor natural soil-filled ablutions without getting rain-drenched or having to use nasty, overworked kitty litter. All good so far.
Most cats, by dint of their domesticated confinement in suburban environments, don't have the luxury of hunting as they might have done in the days of their ancestral wildness - our cats are similarly restricted unless some hapless creature ventures into the enclosure through the fencing - then it's everything for itself.
So we play with them and we amuse them, not to mention the fact that they amuse each other. All the time.
So I ask - if they have the freedom to come and go as they please, have all the stimulation we can possible muster (there are jungle-gym improvements I intend adding - watch this space,) and are loved and cared for beyond all imagining, why would it be at all cruel to have them try vegan food if it has all the necessary nutrition and protein any domesticated feline might require?
I can't see the cruelty there except to imagine that the carnivorous human horrified at the prospect of themselves having to forego meat and animal products, imagine that that deprivation is in and of itself a terrible thing ergo it must by necessity be cruel.
I simply don't agree.
The crux of the biscuit (to coin a Zappaism) will, of course, be getting any feline with a particular palate such as ours have developed, to eat a new type of food other than Hills Science Diet original formula... vegan or no.
We've tried switching their diets once already when we bought a different type of Hills - the furball management pellets - our menagerie was horrified, down to a cat. They hummed and hawed and strutted purposefully away from the dishes harbouring the offending product until we caved and drove many miles to reunite them with old familiar.
I dread the thought of this potential again - but face it I think I must....
I guess it's only fair to say - me first then the cats, then the magpies...
Watch this space...

THE CAT CHRONICLES - 1

"Y'know that hard square bed on the desk with the massage bumps?"

"Yeah - the one he uses with the funny vertical picture screen on it...?"

"Yeah, that one."
"What about it?"
"They use that gizmo to talk shit about us to their friends..."
"They've got friends in that thing?"
"I think so..."
"How can that be?"
"I'm not sure but I saw a picture of us up there last night with a lot of writing underneath it..."
"What did it say?"
"What do you mean - what did it say - you know I can't read Human. I have no idea what it said..."
"So howcome you know they're talking to friends on the gizmo?"
"I've just got this feeling. This ninth sense..."
"They've got mini versions of the gizmo that they take to bed with them too - what's up with that?"
"I know - sad creatures aren't they. Tapping away on the screen when so much snooze-time is awasting."
"I've fixed that though."
"What do you mean?"
"I just crawl onto his right shoulder and snuggle there asleep. Pretty soon he gives up with the mini gizmo and just goes to sleep which is pretty cool..."
"That IS cool."
"They're an odd species aren't they."
"Sure are."
"But I love them."
"Me too..."
"What time is it?"
"No idea. Think I'll snooze."
"Me too..."
Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........

FOR THE LOVE OF CATS

We have seven cats. 

We used to have many more but intercontinental travel and feline politics whittled down the numbers. They're all still okay, let me assure you. By whittle down I mean - rehome amid much tearful farewelling. 

The remainder emigrated with us. 

One day, Jeremy Jinger decided to make our home his home yet little did that big soppy boy know he'd be trading the Magaliesburg terrain for the hills of Adelaide. 

To mix metaphors - cats are just the dog's bollocks. 

They all still look at me very wistfully as if to say: how the fuck did we get here? Or: better yet - where the fuck IS here? 

But they're happy. And that makes me happy. 

Never more so than late at night when the black apparition leaps onto our bed and snuggles in the crook of my arm while I try to read. Karen snoozes peacefully next to us, oblivious to the catman bonding going on just a foot away. 

This is Chakra, the most skittish and highly strung of the entire menagerie - a menace, a brat, a monster who'll hiss and bite you (emphatically but not viciously) if he doesn't get his own way. He's a cat. 

But when he climbs onto my shoulder, nestling in my arms and kisses my face amid loud, steady purring, he is pure love. He is my familiar. 

I fall asleep cuddling this cat and I'm sure at times we even share dreams. 

I love them all so profoundly - the chirpy little Shrew who tiptoes so daintily and never enters a room without announcing herself, Jeremy the Jinger Ninjer who's a quadrupedal purring machine, Beatle the butt-tickle collapsacat flopping at your feet for yet another rump rub, Jozi the manic mini marauder - claws clicking on the hardwood floors as she tears around the house dislodging rugs in all directions before attacking Chakra then complaining bitterly because he decides to reciprocate, the twins, Isis and Ozzy, brats both but pigeon pair curled up on the bed in their yin yang pose just too cute for words. Then there is my nocturnal shadow lover, Chakra asleep in my arms when he's finished bullying and terrorising the rest of the clan and is ready to settle. 

It's a magical part of my day. 

It's profoundly comforting and can be described, I guess, as contagious contentment. 

Try it. Love a cat. Or better yet - let a cat love you. They're the ones who decide after all. 

You won't regret it. Ever. 

THE NASTY OLD EXPAT

Don't you find it totally unsurprising that so many sanctimonious puff pieces "bigging up" South Africa while simultaneously slagging off the expat detractors who actually might have a legitimate gripe with their erstwhile homeland, are written by uber wealthy douchebags who are as remote from the coal face of South Africa's troubles as the distant émigrés they're criticising? 

My wife recently read me another one of these consummately vapid articles and I confess to having vomited in my mouth just a little when this saccharin bilge just struck such a disingenuous chord. 

I've always been an advocate of telling the truth - trying to call it as it is - yet it's evident every day that individual "truth" is subjectively formed by our individual life experiences and the reality that creates for us. And in no way is a corporate mogul's reality anything close to the daily grind of the people who still suffer the challenge of simply putting food on their family's table while facing the rigours brought about by uninsulated shack-dwelling, an absence of potable water or piped sewage or electricity. It's great when ESKOM's service delivery doesn't really affect you - well you can't bitch about something you've never had. Or can you? Maybe they're the ones who should be bitching louder and more vigorously than those whose service is continuously interrupted and who're subsidising the freeloaders who enjoy the interrupted service while not paying a cent for it. 

"We've been through worse and we'll get through this," this article bleats, as if this person is representative of the suffering masses and has been toyi-toying with a mob of underprivileged shack dwellers in protest against invisible service delivery. 

The resilience of South Africans - sure. The smiling faces - sure. The upbeat attitudes despite the most enduring adversity - of course, that's what I love about Saffers. We all do. 

So shouldn't these holier-than-thou pricks be cutting the expats some slack for having left, these resilient ne'er say die, upbeat people? I mean just how much pressure must there have been for such people to have resorted to emigration when they are effectively going against the very ethos of their being? 

The writers of such articles might not be according sufficient credence to the ordeals of the expats, certainly not while they're still sitting in their electrified security residences enjoying the seamless power from the standby generator and UPS system as they monitor the rise or fall of their diverse stock portfolio. All things that the beleaguered masses obviously face on a daily basis. Fuck, I hope the ANC don't impose sanctions against Israel coz that might mean I can't get that specific brand of tinned goods and that would be a total disaster. Hell, I might have to import the stuff myself in that case. 

The intimidated, hapless souls being beaten to a pulp for daring to speak out against the ruling regime or considering a change of allegiance in an upcoming general election, are most decidedly unconcerned about Israeli canned products and ESKOM tariffs as they harvest firewood in their irresponsible contribution toward global carbon dioxide emissions. The bastards! 

People leave and have left South Africa for a host of reasons and while perhaps most of them might be construed to have "negative" connotations, that can equally be seen as a positive move (and it is) as it means they're sacrificing for what they believe will be better than the situation in which they currently find themselves. 

I grant you this - many of the disadvantage souls still suffering at the hands of the "liberating" regime would give their last handful of pap to have a chance at a life elsewhere. But they'll never realise that eventuality as we all know. 

So, Mr Bigwig, please don't presume to speak for South Africans either at home or abroad. 

We aren't there because we elect to not be there - period. But that doesn't negate our right to an opinion of the place and if that opinion is couched in negative terms then so be it. As stated before - telling the truth is the only real way to be fair or representative of South African society - anyone can blow smoke and put spin on any situation and when you've got a vested interest in internal and foreign investment, this too is a good driver and motivation for positive spin. 

Nobody is saying South Africa is a shit place. It isn't. Nobody is saying South Africans are horrible, violent people - on the whole they're not, they're just the opposite. 

But what we are saying is that the maligning of the safety found in the so called nanny states to which many emigrate isn't founded either and if that's to be done then it should be fair to ask if the puff-piece writers consider it to be normal for a society to endure around 47 murders per day and upward of 120 reported rapes on a daily basis. 

That isn't simply a challenge to be overcome, that's indicative of a seriously flawed and I'd go as far as to say, a broken society. 

But the hypocritical dickwad sitting in his Ivory tower typing away on his MacBook Air isn't affected by those stats in his world in the same way that the people who elected to move to a safer environment are no longer affected by it. And if the decision to move  elsewhere is what was needed for those people to attain that status then good luck to them I say. 

We moved away for entirely different reasons but it's safe to say we weren't unaffected by violent crime - we had our share of that. 

For us, what was most compelling was the simple fact that the governing party for which I'd harboured high hopes when Mandela and Mbeki had been at the helm, had been systemically usurped by a new, insidious agenda from within, spearheaded by Zuma's nepotistic cabal and they had merely succeeded in eroding the ethos of the party in favour of disingenuous and wholly self-serving agendas at the expense of the populace while simultaneously and covertly fomenting unrest and arguably as much racial tension as obtained under apartheid. 

They've had my support and my pound of flesh and we've endured the good, the bad and the ugly for a very long time and it was simply right for a change. 

Any expat has, by default, lived, loved and endured South Africa generally for a fair portion of their lives and as such have the right to an opinion on the place whether they live there now or not. Most émigrés that I know have made enormous sacrifices when leaving their homeland - it's been the hardest decision they've ever made and for the most part (ourselves included), they're not necessarily walking seamlessly into cushy jobs. They're starting their lives from scratch often jobless and watching any savings they might have had when selling up to leave, disappear as they reestablish their lives in a new culture while trying to meet the rigorous demands of work visa requirements. Notwithstanding the fact that the Rand hasn't exactly helped those transitions in any way at all. 

And I'll warrant that many of those expats are better placed to offer a more realistic "coalface" take on the country than some privileged yuppie who's condescendingly placing judgement on them. 

Don't diss the place unfairly, sure but don't pretend to be something you're not and that the county isn't going through upheaval and crisis and that it's a normal society in which the majority of its citizens feel safe and are content. 

That's pure fiction, I'm afraid. 

I will always love South Africa but I certainly won't pretend it's something it isn't. I sincerely hope the people remaining there have the will and the stamina to turn it around, for radical change is certainly what it needs, not some head-in-the-sand sanctimonious fantasising from behind a laptop. 

So simply put to all those who continue to slag us expats - fuck right off! 

BUSHWHACKERY OR OBAMANATION - DIFFERENT FLAVOURS OF THE SAME DISH?

Democracy isn't the competition it's made out to be with such and such political party opposing the other one. It's all part of the system of delivering the same, or very similar, legislation and governance over the masses while maintaining the illusion that the electorate actually has a say in that governance.  

In the case of the "conservative" Republican administration of GW Bush versus the "liberal" Democratic one of Obama, it was only the delivery and the form of criticism that adopted different flavours, however, the political agendas are essentially the same. At least with Bush, it was overtly obvious that he was a dictatorial scumbag who had a desire to start a war in the Middle East based on a contrived premise. And he did. The rest, as they say...

Obama's security goons have taken the deception and subterfuge to a whole new level as they've utilised modern technology to obfuscate, spy (mostly on their own citizens), mislead and generally augment their smorgasbord of dirty tricks while stonewalling the "real" media who've attempted to report on their covert agendas. Charismatic, articulate presidents do not an ethical democracy make. Obama has proven this beyond any reasonable doubt as evidenced by the outcry from the US media as his being the most opaque administration in that country's history. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media has simply become Obama's bitch and are an integral part of the problem. 

Simply put, our governments deceive us and lie to us as a matter of course and only when caught out do they offer up excuses or what they euphemistically like to call explanations and rationale for their insidious behaviour, the hoary old chestnut of which is usually - in the public interest and/or in the interest of national security, which is obviously why it was so confidential in the first place. 

So what they've done here is set the precedent that it's okay to be untruthful if the situation warrants it, which always puts me in mind of Nicholson's iconic line in A Few Good Men: "You can't handle the truth!" to which we must all say: "Try us or at least let us make an informed decision about that!" 

I know it's not just me but that most people I know have the feeling that the politicos who have been elected to public office seem, somehow to be the enemy or at the very least, disdainful of the people whose asses they kissed to put them there. 

And that simply isn't the way it should be. 

We don't need a change of party at the elections. We need a change of system. This one just ain't working. 

Inexplicable thermally inspired human behaviour - aka Hot And Cold

Inexplicable thermally inspired human behaviour 

I first noticed this phenomenon as a data centre infrastructure project manager way back in the 80's - the innate and inexplicable inability of clients (read: people) to discern environmental thermal variations. 

Let me explain.

A data centre is a big, self-contained, self-regulating box in which all the computer servers that run a business or indeed the world we know, are housed and protected. Here these myriad processing or networking devices sit in stacks in row upon row of cabinets so inevitably they are producing heat as they go about their business. You've felt the heat from the fan at the base of your laptop or your desktop computer - well imagine hundreds, sometimes thousands of those all huddled in one room cumulatively discharging their hot air into the surrounding space 365 days of the year nonstop. It gets hot in there pretty quickly.

So there's an obvious need for temperature control in the data centre or the devices, robust as they most certainly are, would eventually overheat and malfunction with potentially disastrous consequences - erm...a banking network might go offline, your local ATM might shut down, your search engine application might crash and so on...

But that isn't the point.

Machines, like humans, operate at optimal efficiency under ideal conditions and the temperature at which they'd set the thermostats in the early data centres was around 19 or 20ºC which is the desired average return-air temperature at which the air conditioning units operate - in other words, much colder air (say around 14 or 15ºC) would be supplied (usually underfloor or via ducting) by numerous cooling units to the inlets of the servers and the heated air discharging from the back of them would return to the cooling units to be cooled down again in a perpetual cycle. There was a permanent heat source (the servers) and a permanent cooling source and both ran 24/7.

Now for humans, (and of course it varies) the optimal temperature at which we feel most comfortable - Goldilocks syndrome - not too hot, not too cold  just right - is around 23 or 24ºC.

So just imagine, if you will, a data centre that is operating continuously at an average temperature of 19ºC. In summer in South Africa where the daily average temperature is around 28 - 30ºC, walking into a 19ºC environment is going to feel very cool. After a while, if you're just sitting or standing in there, it begins to feel cold.

Conversely, when in winter the average outdoor temperature may be as low as 6 or 7ºC, 19ºC actually feels "warm". But it isn't - it's still just 19ºC. It's us who are simply being subjected to lower ambient temperatures thus the sudden influence of another 11º of "warmth" has an immediate and significant effect on us.

But the pinnacle of terrestrial evolution seemed incapable of working that out, even when the handily placed thermostats in the data centre read 19ºC. The facilities operator, having just walked in from a bracing winter morning of 7ºC feels HOT. Ergo: the room is hot, ergo: the systems are about to crash, ergo: he must log a call with the data centre support contractors responsible for the cooling system because clearly it's broken..

I cannot recall how many times I received nuisance calls under such circumstances where I would slowly yet patiently go through the routine of asking the obvious questions:

Are there any alarms on the HVAC units? 

No...

What is the temperature reading on the thermostat displays? 

19ºC...

Are there any alarms on the servers themselves? 

No...

Do you know what the present ambient temperature in Joburg is? 

Um - not sure - maybe around 8 degrees...

And the computer room is 11 degrees above that right?

Yeah....?

Well, that's all you're feeling - the difference between 8 and 19 degrees of temperature.

Right?

So there's no problem.

But it's HOT in the computer room....

(Patiently) No, it isn't. It's nineteen degrees in there - it just feels HOT because it's very COLD outside...

Huh? No, it's HOT in there....

Well if you wish us to despatch a technician to verify that the data centre temp is nineteen degrees, it's going to cost you money unnecessarily. 

But it's HOT in the data centre...

And so it would go on.

Then there are the office workers who exist in another reality altogether. They suddenly discard all rationality as winter arrives when they have to brave 7ºC between the house and the car or the walk to the station then again between station and office. No longer is 23 or 24ºC the optimal temperature for them - now this has been promoted to 30ºC or higher and everything in the office building has to be set up that way. Alternatively local heaters are set up close by and they slowly roast themselves over several hours like chickens in a broiler.

It's beyond any rational comprehension. HVAC systems have to work overtime and the heating bills skyrocket.

It's the same in the car - the heater is set to maximum because that's why there is a maximum right?

I would visit office buildings in South Africa on winter mornings where instant sweating would be induced in these hot, oppressive spaces but where women (mostly) would be wandering around in this 30º environment still huddled in jackets and scarves, wooly pants, boots and so on. It used to blow my mind - still does.

And then you head into the city on that winter evening and the very same women are parading around in skimpy outfits for the sake of the latest fashion trend with nary a goosebump to be seen while you, dressed like Nanuk of the North, are freezing your ass off.

Go figure.

AM I A BOGAN?

A friend of a friend, an Aussie, remarked the other day that some people considered it "bogan" to like Pink Floyd, which got me to thinking...

Here was me imagining the bogan concept to be the Australian equivalent of the American redneck, the Jerry Springer Show fodder on which US TV audiences seemed to gorge as readily as they do their buckets of KFC or multiple Big Macs. 

Did I have it wrong? I mean, I don't like Pink Floyd - I love Pink Floyd.

This required some introspective scrutiny and perhaps a little research on the topic.

Variously, google, wikipedia and the urban dictionary paint a pretty clear picture of boganism which can be summarised as follows:

The typical bogan lifestyle involves wanton promiscuity and copious alcohol intake with scant regard for birth control, typically loud aggressive females, quieter but no less aggressive males who regard a typical breeding season as any Friday night that comes along...

They are regarded to be of low social status, an uncouth, unsophisticated working class, singlet wearing, oftentimes mullet or mohawk coiffured subculture renowned for its hideous bad taste. Old model, muscle Holdens or Fords will be parked in the cluttered driveways while their owners swill beer, talking footy, showing off their most recent home-done tattoos while Cold Chisel, AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Rose Tattoo or any other harder form of classic rock is pounding away in the background.

So far I'm thinking I haven't quite acquired the credentials for boganism as far as the modern understanding is concerned.

But there's a catch - as with the white-trash Zef subculture in South Africa, championed by that potty-mouthed duo going by the name of Die Antwoord (hoozit, Yolandi,)] boganism has ironically achieved an "in" status - it's actually cool to aspire to the style...if you're under 30. If you're older, you flip and look down your noses at them.

Yes, it appears, only stuck-up toffee-nosed snobs are the ones who use the term to derogatorily describe a person supposedly less cultured than themselves, which, by default would make the cultured snobs potentially less cool than the bogans. Does this make any sense to you?

Bear with...

What had to happen here, I mused, was a bogan checklist had to be transcribed wherein I would enter the notations to resolve this dilemma once and for all. I mean, Pink Floyd is at worst psychedelic rock and at best prog rock but it's never been your typical chug-chug, leather jacket and anti-establishment hard rock with anarchic mantras issuing forth (except perhaps momentarily on Another Brick In The Wall Part II - but that was more of an anthem and it was lifted from the autobiographical angst of Roger Waters' troubled childhood.) Syd Barrett and the lads were nowhere near Rose Tattoo, Cold Chisel or even Midnight Oil...but I digress...

1. Dress code: stubbies shorts, singlets, Ugg boots, monkey hoodies, thongs (flip-flops not anal-floss) and home-done tattoos - nope, not even close with the exception of a single, small tattoo up on my right shoulder that I did design but then again, I earned my living as a commercial illustrator for a while in South Africa and the design was rendered by a professional studio in Cape Town so I think that cancels out the home done tat aspect, don't you.

2. Coiffure: mullet, mohawk, long strange looking goatees, single-stranded pony tail, mutton chop whiskers, skinhead - nope again. I have the goatee but it's always trimmed to a No 1 in a kinda designer-stubble arrangement....my hairstyle - traditional shortish with a modicum of product tickled through it - far too metrosexual to be bogan, I'd wager.

3. Mode of transport: Holden or Ford - old model muscle car (in constant state of upgrade and/or modification,) souped up ute - nope. Sad old suburban Subaru Outback station-wagon with auto transmission - about as anti-bogan as you can get, I think.

4. Diet: junk food, predominantly burgers, fries, fizzy drinks, copious quantities of alcohol, particularly beer - oh and cigarettes, often hand-rolled. There may be the occasional spliff involved here somewhere as well - I'm a vegetarian, I don't touch alcohol but do relish a good non-alcoholic beer (ow, I think I got clipped on the back of the head by a passing bogan who heard me using good and non-alcoholic in the same sentence...) and cigarettes - nah, not since 1983. Doob? A bit while growing up but like Bill Clinton - I never inhaled....pfffffttttt...

5. Musical preferences: (As previously noted) classic rock bands from the 70's onward, listen to classic rock stations on the radio and go mental for AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Guns 'n Roses and on and on (and, I'm told, Pink Floyd) - now this is where I do, in fact, start devolving into the realm of the bogan as I have a particular fondness for this genre of music into which I would not specifically place The Floyd, however, if this means the bogan virus is in my blood then it's been there for a very long time - over 40 years, in fact, and it hasn't mutated into an all-consuming pathogen that has driven me to meat-eating, smoking, drinking, muscle-cars, dodgy hairdos, a penchant for home-inked tats or the desire to attend family reunions to pick up chicks...

6. Sporting code preferences: footy period - oh and cricket - meh, not me really. I know the story about the argument over what ballgame would win favour on some colonial cricket pitch way back in the Aussie day when they decided after many hours of dispute to combine them all - rugby, soccer, Gaelic football, netball, lacrosse while wearing their wives' shirts and shorts and this strange pastime eventually "evolved" into Aussie Rules Football which holds sway until this very day for reasons that may become known to me over time. But as a buff old traditionalist, I still prefer that pinnacle of ballgames, Rugby Union followed by soccer. Cricket - it's okay but ever since Hansie put the kibosh on the thing with the match-fixing shenanigans, I don't know if you can trust the process any longer. And T20 - that's more about bums in seats and cash in the bank than it is about cricket but hey, what do I know

Conclusion:

So if Pink Floyd fandom or even worship renders me bogan then I think there might be hope for this subculture yet - there must be bogans in charge of some of the radio stations in fair Adelaide such as Classic Triple M, which in and of itself is a very good reason to hang in this wonderful city.

I'll bet you this - nary a Justin Bieber tune has ever aired itself on the stereo of a bogan muscle machine in a tinny-littered driveway and if that remains a trend in the average boganvilla then I think I could happily be labeled a bogan albeit a very, very watered down version of the breed. 

See ya!

Australian Quirks Part II

It's a logical thing to comprehend that at a purely intellectual level one mustn't calculate the Rand AU$ exchange rate in one's head every time you reach for a handful of mushrooms or avocados, packs of butter, litres of milk, tinned goods, toilet paper and, of course, if you're of that persuasion (as most Adelafricans undoubtedly are) meat and grog. In a word - essentials. 
My wife, who's been here for a year already and is earning at some level in the local currency has long since forgotten about the abject horror of this phenomenon: going pale and cold when realising what you'd pay for this or that item in South Africa and hesitating with your hand poised over the supermarket trolley while you play the Adel-newbie mindgame of Is This Essential?
And as illogical as it may be to try and make the comparison, being a newbie, I still do it, especially as I'm not earning local disposable income yet and am effectively paying for stuff with my hard earned South African Rands where the R5 you'd hand out to a car-guard (remember them? The only creatures on the planet, other than cockroaches that are likely to survive a nuclear armageddon...) is just 50c here and doesn't feature as actual money. The fact that the coinage here covers a face value of R20 puts it in perspective - a perspective I am still struggling with when one pays the equivalent of R50 for a cup of coffee or R80 for a bowl of chips...
Yes, I know you can't really do that but I still do. Sorry. I try not to but - well...erm...ja, you know the story - you've all been through it.

Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - is more expensive here if you work it on the direct comparison basis (and yes, I heard you the first time - I know you can't really do that...) - that is with the exception of one thing that (it would appear) Australians never actually buy - that's right, non-alcoholic beer! 
Oh, and bank charges - I love the bank charges here - far from the usurious  theft that is perpetrated in South Africa. 
And here's the thing - for a society that's so well behaved (for the most part), sticking to speed limits, honouring honesty box type trading (I love that too), paying their fines, not bribing cops - they are very diligent at avoiding the drink-driving phenomenon and cautiously monitor their intake if they know they'll need to drive afterwards.
Which would make you think they'd be all for lighter and even non-alcoholic beers... I personally stopped drinking alcohol way back in 2001 and it was a mission to get non-alcoholic beers back then, very hard indeed. The ethos toward beer without alcohol was much like a business exec's attitude toward their morning java-fix - if it was decaffeinated, what was the point? 
But things have changed since the days of the insipid, watery tasting piddle they tried to pass off as alcohol-free beer - there are awesome 0% beers around nowadays that are wholesome, full-bodied and actually taste like beer and one of them, Birell is made right here in Adelaide by the only Australian owned brewery left in the country, Coopers.
And, even using the direct exchange comparison, it's still cheaper by the litre than any non-alcoholic, or "unleaded" beers we got back in South Africa, all of which, it must be said, were imported.
So why don't they sell it in bottle shops? 
Why don't they sell it in bars? Why don't they sell it in restaurants? 
Why only in the supermarkets or Dan Murphy outlets exclusively? 
It makes no sense. Well, not to me at least.
Unless the only reason for which people think beer was put on the planet was for us to get drunk every time we partook of it and/or be over the legal limit...Surely not? 
Don't people like beer for the taste of it alone?
I know I do. 
I mean, hey - they even got Charlie Sheen on the stuff for pete's sake - and he's got tiger blood! 
But then again, I don't eat meat either so I guess I'm not a real South African or Aussie to begin with. 
Yet even in our anarchic, sort of first-world/third-world hybridised society that is South Africa, most bars had Becks Blue or Cobra zero or Bavaria Malt - there was usually an option but not here.
It amazes me.
When one politely enquires of the beerista (or whatever one calls the accredited retail specialist at the bottle shop or pub) if they might stock any non-alcoholic beers, they regard you as if you've just appeared from a shimmering ovoid interstellar craft and are surely not of this galaxy or perhaps even this universe. 
There is, however, certainly one constant in this shared universe (unless it's Dan Murphy's) the answer to that question is always - no.
What's not articulated vocally perhaps is the: what good is beer without alcohol, mate? 
And so it goes...
As mentioned: in a society where one can encounter a scenario with two old tannies armed with hand-held clicker counters at a local fair, who are monitoring the number of people in the alcohol-serving zone ensuring that at no time would that number exceed 200, you'd think they'd give a little more mileage to a decent, Adelaidian home-brewed beverage that offers a wonderful option to beer drinkers who'd like to have more than perhaps just one....You would think...
Then again, if that's all I've got to worry about, I guess it's not such a bad deal. 
There's a helluva lot to be thankful for and believe me, I am. 
Perspective is always a great leveller of playing fields.
Cheers! 

ON OUR PERCEPTION OF WOMEN

It isn't just the portrayal of women as figures for physical objectification: the whole western cultural phenomenon (certainly where it's progressed/regressed to) is based on essentially superficial validation. The lure of the Hollywood filmstar paradigm and the generally flawed male ideal of acceptable/beautiful female body types certainly perpetuates this.

I love erotica (one man's erotica is another man's pornography) - sensual art if you will - but there is always an energy imbued or conveyed in any image that discerns its essence - that is to say - a creation which can be viewed as collaborative from the perspective of the photographer/artist and the model on an equal footing. In that sense it's not only equitable, it's empowering for both participants and, it has to be said, many women elect to follow such careers without selling out their gender.

Many, of course, don't.

Even with consensual adult collaboration, there can still be abuse on the part of one or other of the participants and, let's be frank, it's usually the man. It is in these instances that the exploitative nature of innate misogyny is evident.

And that's my biggest problem with any of this - exploitation and the perpetuation throughout the world of this unbalanced and misogynistic perception of women, which is, in my view, what's fundamentally wrong with our species.

I do, however, take great solace from the reality that one of the reasons such behaviour is still embraced by so many men the world over, is simply because they feel threatened and are still labouring under the misapprehension that subjugation and physical might is where human empowerment lies when, in fact, they know at some subliminal level that women, the creators of new life, are those who harbour true power and that it's contained within. The tenuous male stranglehold on the planet is slowly but inexorably loosening.

it is evolving in the right direction I do believe albeit slowly - too slowly for my liking. So for women it must be excruciating.

And there is that single word I look to when viewing any relationship between people regardless of gender or circumstance - respect.

We need that in spades and it should be the innate nature of what we're about both through nature and nurture - I think the latter feeds the former even if it's over generations through soft inheritance, which I feel certainly has validity. And even if it doesn't - we should be teaching our sons to be respectful of women, all women, at all times.

Oh, and as an aside - if we were to eat less meat or none at all, I firmly believe our behaviour and consciousness would rapidly and collectively evolve to allow us to view others of our species as something more than just meat suits too - especially women...

Image credit © Jan Saudek "Beautifully Imperfects"

HOME, HAGGIS AND HONEYMOONS - A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME...

The story of our eventual arrival in Adelaide is a very long, bizarre and convoluted one. Suffice to say, it became so strange and, at times, beyond comprehension, that I was compelled to chronicle the events in a book, as yet incomplete, and with the working title, Home Haggis And Honeymoons...

Y'see, I knew that would pique your interest. 

What transpired beforehand, commencing in January and February of 2008, where Australia and more specifically my sister's house in Newcastle NSW and my aunt's place in Ipswich Qld, which were part of a two week visit in a broader six week itinerary that took in Easter Island and Tahiti, culminated in something entirely and inexplicably different.

The upshot of it all was that we never actually reached Easter Island or the Tahitian atoll of Mo'orea where our dream wedding was to take place - this all bought and paid for in advance - no, we ended up stranded in Sydney instead on that most patriotic of occasions, Australia Day. Which, in and of itself, is a short story worth telling.

No matter what we tried to do and how we tried to do it, the universe would drop a very solid portcullis in our pathway and after many attempts at either removing or charging through the obstacle, we grudgingly and oftentimes very emotionally, elected to divert around the impediment and stumble through the doorways that did deign to open up for us.

These impediments, many of them, would manifest throughout the trip items such as botched visas (or lack thereof, courtesy of an inept Joburg Travel Agency) or luggage being sent to a city other than the one we arrived in, wallets being lost in Australia's busiest city on its busiest night then found again and many less significant but no less disruptive or aberrant events.

We felt like pawns being moved against our will on some gigantic chess board where each move contradicted the planned strategy we had already mapped out and try as we did to influence the hand that was poised to pick us up and deposit us on an altogether unfamiliar square, this proved futile. We began to simply accept our fate, stopped fighting the inexorably spinning wheels of the universe and let ourselves drop into the slipstream of wherever the hell that would lead us. Acceptance. Acquiescence. But always the curiosity of why...

I know Rabbie Burns, Scotland's poet laureate would simply say in a sage brogue, "The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft aglay..." but come on, Robert - what the fuck! 

And coupled to the insanity of recreating an entirely new trip that didn't include fascinatingly mysterious spiritual workshops on Easter Island or traditional island wedding ceremonies on an idyllic coral atoll in the Pacific, we had to deal with the massive time lag between Oz and South Africa just trying to get some semblance of recompense or commitment from our hopeless and, it would eventually transpire, devious, travel agent. We were stuck in Australia. The rest of the trip was in the bin so we'd make the most of it and just deal with the fallout when we got back to Jozi.

And thus, instead of azure oceans surrounding us 'neath swaying palms looking out across an endless horizon over little umbrella-bedecked cocktails, we found ourselves in a camper van (or RV for the more abbreviatedly inclined) in the middle of the Simpson Desert just outside Alice Springs. 

....where, it has to be mentioned, we became intimately acquainted with feral critturs whose reputation precedes them in the great red landmass - no, not wild camels - but flies, millions of the little bastards that would relentlessly pester us whenever we'd venture forth from the RV to explore some exotic location or other.

Ironically, prior to this, we'd been enormously amused, while gazing from the cabin of the Merc Vito, at a stream of tourists emerging from a tour bus, all replete with full-face fly nets like an envoy of some weird beekeeping cult...Apiarists Anonymous? Oh how we laughed at them.

An hour later while sprinting back down the dry river bed at Simpson Gap, windmilling our hands over our heads to beat off the kamikaze fly swarms, oh how we understood them...

As luck would have it, a little while later on the trip, while traversing the West McDonnell Ranges, we came upon some locals who were to introduce us to the that most wondrous of unguents, Desert Dwellers fly repellant, which, we soon found out created some kind of X-Men type mutant energy barrier around you which caused the flies to drop into an attack formation buzz toward you with malign intent then swerve away at the last moment when the Desert Dwellers force field made its presence known. To this day we still have tubs of the stuff from that trip. Although, it has to be said, the city flies are much fewer and further between thank goodness.

I'll save the rest of the yarn for the book, suffice to say we had a magical time driving round the Outback, exploring, getting quietly and spectacularly married in the shadow of Uluru but there was one occasion when the whole trip had just got to me and I spat my dummy while railing at the skies, yelling: "Just give me one, unambiguous sign that what we are doing is okay and we are meant to be here then I'll shut up and accept it all - no more questions asked!"

That was when we saw the sign to Honeymoon Gap, turned onto that road in the middle of the Australian wilderness and saw a huge white painted name on the tarred road surface. It simply said "PAUL."

True to my celestial promise, I made no more profane utterances.

It's pretty hard to argue with that especially when your whole body is awash with goosebumps...

We have photographs of me in the Honeymoon Gap road with this painted graffito in the foreground.

For the rest, I guess I'll just have to finish the darn book...

THE STORY SO FAR...

I love being here in Australia - it's all so new and oftentimes odd....but in good ways, you understand.
It's not that I'm a stranger to the place having visited numerously over the last three decades and having travelled a bit of the vast red continent but there's a quantum difference between visiting and actually living in a country.
I've waxed ad-nauseam on the things I've encountered along the fringes of the eastern seaboard where most of my Aussie family are dispersed but, as fate would have it, Australian Immigration placed us in a State we'd never encountered before, viz: South Australia. In its capital city, Adelaide.
Why?
Well, good question and one we're asked frequently by locals.
"Why Adelaide?"
And it's as if they want you to say you lost the immigration lottery or that Sydney was full or Brisbane had banned Saffers or Melbourne was too expensive for us - like that. They're perplexed (some of them) when you say you've ended up there as a result of a state sponsored work visa that made up the balance of our immigration points shortfall and placed us in this region...
They nod, sagely. Ah, so it wasn't your decision then - that kind of a nod.
"But we love it here," we stress. They pause.
"Yes, we really do. We've been to New South Wales, Queensland, inland to Northern Territory, the desert, y'know - traveled around a bit and to be honest - this place is really amazing - maybe our favourite spot so far..."
It's like Australia's best kept secret - a lot off the beaten track, even by Australian standards. A small city - the twenty minute city - everywhere is kinda twenty minutes from you - the city, the beach, the hills, you name it. It's a low population growth area. It's great.
"Hell," we say, "we lived in the sticks to get away and out of Johannesburg. Adelaide is a nice size - it's manageable...and it's picturesque. It's a beautiful place."
Then they're really pleased that you love their city - they can tell your enthusiasm is authentic. You're not blowing smoke up their asses in the hope of employment, although the thought is never far from my mind right now, it has to be said.
In this enclave we arrived - no family around us, no friends that were known to us prior to our arrival, no jobs, nothing - stark reality biting hard - almost as hard as the exchange rate that eats up disposable cash better than pac man ever did. Eek...
And in sharp contrast to what we see on the wire about insane xenophobia back in South Africa (not that that represents the average South African mindset, we know), South Australians welcomed us with open arms. They're accommodating, they're helpful, they're friendly and they genuinely want the newbies to succeed and prosper here.
It's not that they're throwing jobs at us, no - everything comes at a price and you have to work at it and they are real sticklers for doing it right but hey, after the systematic erosion of standards in the industry in which I worked back in RSA, it's refreshing to have systems that cater for every little eventuality - sometimes, I curse it and hanker for the tacit anarchy of Seffrica, moan that Australia is leaning a bit too far in the other direction - why is everyone so darn well behaved all the time...?
And then I remember why I wanted to come here in the first place - I actually wanted some of that normalcy.
Then there are the quirks that perhaps escape some - like the wheelie bins on display throughout the suburbs. And I'm not talking about just on garbage day, no. There is no qualm whatever about having a well manicured garden fronting the street with your well-washed trifecta of wheelie bins proudly placed in some position of prominence almost as a feature of the facade, their shiny yellow, blue and green lids gleaming in the morning sunlight.
I personally am for having the things behind the gate and fence and only roll them out on the weekday in question to have the squealing, hissing, red-eyed monsters (hated by cats everywhere) embrace them with their precision hydraulic grasp and dump their contents into the confines of the beasts before they rumble up the hill back to their cave for another week. Garbos (no, not the Greta type - the dustbin variety) belong out of sight - erm, no, not really. Or maybe it's just here in Mitcham but I've noticed it elsewhere.
And the routine, the scheduling - it's great. I've become a suburban garbage aficionado - I'm out there with my box cutter on a Thursday evening (every second Thursday evening - they alternate between organic waste and recyclable from week to week) slicing the corrugated cardboard so I can get a little more into the receptacle and ensure no overflow between now and the next fortnight - I know - it's absolutely pathetic. But I love it. Shit works.
I'm a waste management consultant just like Tony Soprano was....not...
I even have two separate plastic bins for the glass bottles and, don't you love South Australia - they still give you back 10c on every bottle you take down to the recycling depot.
I rake the fallen bark and leaves, I whip-snip the grass and clover, I build the mulch pile and I leaf blow (I swore I would never own one of those ever.....) the leaves into manageable piles - all the things I've never had to worry about before.
From the self serve petrol stations to the handling your own credit cards in the check-out card machines in stores, you become a whole lot more independent very quickly and life becomes a well-oiled machine where nothing is taken for granted any longer.
Ironically, we had a power outage here in Blackwood just over a week ago and it did not make me in one iota nostalgic for ESKOM and its rolling national load shedding bullshit... Load shedding - a politically correct euphemism for "we're switching power off because we spent the money and didn't maintain or upgrade the power grid when we should have" I guess "load-shedding" is much shorter and has a less introspective or honest ring to it.
Difference was, I went online and found, instantly, what was going on and when power would be restored and it was. My wife who's been here for almost a year already hasn't experienced any anomalies in the power in all that time - still, I guess, shit happens.
Anyhoo...I'm sure that I shall land a job in the very near future with the correct degree of effort and dedication to that task at hand. We labour under no misapprehensions when it comes to that facet of being here too.
We have no silly expectations and are quite willing to do what it takes (without quite resorting to the Ned Kelly model of personal remuneration) to make that work.
All the while, I'm mesmerised by the flocks of exotic birds (that have not and are never likely to become a nuisance) all around me, the ponderous koalas, the possums, the fire warning klaxons and the general goodwill I always feel when I meet and greet Adelaidians.
We've got a very long way to go but I still feel as sparkly as a wheelie bin lid albeit hopefully not quite as full of shit as those magnificent receptacles might be.
And just for now (perhaps it will change when we become citizens) we shall keep our garbos out of sight until absolutely necessary.