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...