LINGERING IN BANGKOK

Bangkok's Sky Train courtesy of Wikipedia

It didn’t feel like he lived here anymore; although he had tried hard enough in a number of different locations to make it work. He was just lingering in Bangkok; trying to sort out his next moves. “You’re lost, aren’t you?” another Australian asked, and he nodded, yes. A few hours later yet another Australian made exactly the same observation. And once again he agreed.

His mind was in overdrive thinking of ways to make a substantial amount of cash in a hurry.

The best option, which he had no idea whether he could pull off, would involve about three months on one of Australia’s most luxurious properties, pulling in he hoped more than enough to clear up lingering annoyances while writing the biography of the scion of one of Australia’s richest families.

It was just the sort of assignment he needed in just the right location to clear his head and get back on his feet after being thrown for a sixer by his own stupidity; not just falling for the easy lies of love Thai style, but going on an outrageous bender subsequently.

For the first time in many years he had been off the stabilizing medication that killed cravings and had kept him functioning as a more or less normal person throughout the first decade of the millennium, and being turned into a public fool was a brutally hurtful outcome for what he had been naively convinced by another falang, a foreigner, was a genuine relationship and to abandon his reservations. “You would be a fool not to take this chance for happiness.”

Huh. The money he had wasted building what he had been convinced was the foundations of a life together still irked. Stupidly scarred and stupidly drunk, “the beast in me”, to quote the Johnny Cash song, had been seen out on the town, all over town. Everyone to know.

He had been one of the only people if not the only person in the country on the highest dose possible of the stabilizing medication he came off the day he left Australia; and it had in the end been for many many years been the only thing that had really helped. Meetings, endless meetings, worked to a certain degree. He swallowed the gospel as much as he could and enjoyed some of the people he met. But there had never been an off switch. Being a workaholic, the responsibility of having children to care for, a demanding high profile job, a community radio program to run and various other interests had boxed him into a respectable enough corner.

Nobody ever saw him at his worst.

“People like you normally die,” Pat the Rat, one of Sydney’s most infamous drug and alcohol counselors, had declared 30 years before when he had been referred to her as a difficult and persistent relapse.

“Every now and then things get so bad they develop a desire to stop. But usually they’re dead before they get there. They know they should want to stop. But they don’t.”

He was a little miffed at the time. Wasn’t it supposed to be her job to fix him?

But as strange as that day he had spent with the renowned pioneer of twelve step programs into Australian detox centres had been – he tagged along while Pat the Rat dealt with a parade of hard cases and shivering wrecks of street alcoholics – can you believe they won’t do medicated detoxes here? She asked in reference to one particularly messy patient. At the end of their two or three hours together it didn't seem like she had interviewed him at all. But her astute summing up, transmitted to him later by his group counselor, who had arranged the whole thing, remained with him forever.

And all those years later he came back to Thailand; and thought everything would be fine; even though he was abandoning all the struts which kept his life in place: the psychiatrist who had been so helpful. He had told her things he had never told another living soul. And the medication one of Australia’s leading addiction experts had placed him on and which had worked so well in killing the cravings which had previously played such havoc; and the work, the kids, the friends, everything which he had used to transform himself into a respectable and affectionately regarded if perhaps somewhat eccentric reporter.

Nobody expected journalists to be normal anyway; it was part of the old mystique of the profession before it became just another technical “skill set”.  

And for a while everything in Bangkok was fine.

He went to meetings. He stayed sober. He met people from all different parts of the world. Which was a pleasant change from some of the relentlessly boring bastards he encountered back home.

At first he was enthralled by the beauty of Bangkok - which had been little more than a sprawling shanty town when he first encountered it as a young man and was now one of the world’s most dynamic cities.

And after having been a single parent for so long; and not having re-partnered, as all the studies indicated was the best way forward for personal happiness; not having to sleep alone proved a delight, even if an expensive one.

He had virtually never slept alone from the time he discovered you didn’t have to until the horror of heading towards 50 enveloped him, and while he knew - as some people commented = an astonishing number of people around Sydney, in those final years, when he went to bed he slept alone.

His sputtering affair with a woman down the road went nowhere; and for a while every time he looked at a woman all he could see was the word “TROUBLE”.

As for men; 50 was 500 in gay years.

That he had been manipulated by a foreigner and his Thai boyfriend into believing that age didn’t matter in Thailand, that they thought about these things differently, remained a resentment he should have dispensed with long ago.

And years later, after a string of odd encounters, after being pursued from place to place, after being made a fool of and having made a fool of himself, what had once been affection for Bangkok had become more of a wistful stare; a gaze across the crowded food courts, an affection for the final days of Pat Pong, Bangkok’s first red light district and soon; no doubt, to join the sprawling shopping malls and glistening condominiums which were transforming the city. The dilapidated air of Super Pussy and other fading go go bars, including Electric Blue where his Australian mates always seemed to meet someone who made them happy, would soon be a thing of the past; of that there was little doubt. His desire to photograph the fading tackiness before it vanished was yet to be realized.

Gold Porsches, black Mercedes, cars worth small fortunes were everywhere; as the Bangkok streets became increasingly crowded. Cars were status symbols. Walking was for peasants.

The traffic was slowing at a kilometer a year; and was already seemingly at a standstill in many different locations. But if they didn’t have to, people wouldn’t take a half hour walk.

Neon pink and blue, occasionally yellow and green taxies also cluttered the streets. As a result of the “mai dee riotic” – bad traffic, during his time here he had become a great fan of the “moto cie”, the motor cycle drivers who could weave you through the traffic like maestros performing a particularly complex dance; and who rarely tried to overcharge you unless they picked you up in a tourist zone such as Nana on Sukhumvit.

And so he looked at things as if he was looking at them for the last time; the towers, the cranes, the street stalls, the beggars and colourful touts, the bars and the restaurants and the crowded atmosphere of Asia,; the excellent food, the incommunicative stares of any major public transport system, except the Bangkok Sky Train was a state of the art engineering marvel moving massive numbers of people in an astounding efficient and non-confrontational way.

He had only ever witnessed one robbery.

He had never seen a fight despite the thousands of people cramming onto the trains at peak hour.

And whether he stayed or he went, there was much Australia could learn from Thailand – in particular that over-regulation kills not just creativity but commercial enterprise. A good deal, probably more than 90 per cent of the street life that makes Bangkok such an interesting place and provides a living for so many of its population, would be illegal in Australia. 

So much of antipodean life has been killed off by the local, state and federal governments who cannot help but keep on passing law after law after law. And killing all the freedom of which we had once been so proud. The raw beauty of capitalism; that if you sell bad food then nobody’s going to buy it; or you’re flogging something that nobody wants then you’re not going to be standing on the street corner for very long; means that soon enough you’ll go out of business or provide what the public wants. And that includes; in the myriads of stalls that fill Bangkok’s streets, some of the world’s best food; cheap clothes; reading glasses and sun glasses; toys; art works; wooden carvings; as well, of course, as those insane flickering laser lights only a tourist would be mad enough to buy. And the infamous clutter of restaurants, karaoke bars, massage parlours; and hectare after hectare of some of the most up-market and superbly designed shopping precincts the world has ever seen.  

SAME SAME

Francis Bacon

The same loneliness that had gripped him when the children were growing up, when he had spent night after sleepless night working, pacing, thinking, sometimes communicating on the internet with other night owls or people in other time zones. He couldn’t cruise the late night bars because they lived in a dangerous part of town and he was the only adult caring for them. And now, essentially, the feeling was the same. There was no one there; or no one close or sympathetic. Not that he could expect any such thing anymore, no longer being a physical beauty or endowed with sufficient billions to provide the illusion of power or attractiveness.

Now the sounds of derision echoed through every street, haunting, and he wanted out, any way, anywhere. These were the times he had known as a child. These were the times he had known buried beneath the lead aquarium that became his waking consciousness during the lengthy middle years of a life that had passed too quickly, and these were the times that had descended on what passed for old age, 60 years.

He hadn’t meant to get here.

And as corny as it sounded, he felt jealous of the 20 somethings frolicking around him, so obviously enjoying their lives, enjoying a drink and each other’s company, flirtations and outrage and gossip, none of which he was a part. It was a wonderful time to be young; the freedom, the music, the color of everything. His wasn’t a stony silence, it was a gap partly from the language he still struggled to surmount; and the fact that he just wasn’t like them. You’re suffering from terminal uniqueness, some old soul would say; but there weren’t that many of the old souls left anyway.

Everything was a trap.

He had forgotten how to enjoy himself in a normal way.

Pursued for so long, many of his possessions had disappeared until he was honed down to a simple bag and a simple life. But at least now he had a computer back, and could do some of the things he liked to do.

Why he should feel so bleak in such a fascinating city he had no idea; except that he didn’t trust anybody anymore; and therefore didn’t feel many close friendships. Those he had known in his country of origin had fled and in turn he had fled the country. Disease had killed so many of them; but so had the excessive lifestyles they had once thought were such pioneering adventures. So was the ridicule. The Kai Jow Aeks were back, as if he had never understood him either. Which of course was why he had been so amply indulged. Because he had long stopped thinking anyone would love him just for him.

But the Kow Jai was a simple insult they felt entitled to make. The news that he had to wait several more days for his passport had been the last thing he had wanted to hear. He had no plan to fill the interminable days. He had lost his love of what had seemed one of the most fascinating places on earth. And knew, instinctively, the only way to ever get it back was to leave, and come back a new person, with a fresh approach, a fresh determination. If that is what he chose to do.

The lack of a computer since he had been driven from the 31^st floor of his small condo in the ITF Tower on the corner of Silom meant that rather than living in Bangkok, he had simply been lingering, wandering from one cheap set of accommodation to the next.

And Phuket had proved much the same, staying with friends in the middle of the island, far from the action, even far from the beach. The last time he had felt so strongly he was in the wrong place at the wrong time had been not long before the birth of his daughter, when, on the island of Crete, where his partner had thought it would be nice to bear their second offspring amongst the child loving Greeks, and everything had gone wrong.

It had been on their first night on the island, in a giant hotel curving around the small harbor. It being the off season they were the only residents. And the freezing wind whipped off the Mediterranean and through what should have been picturesque white washed street. They found an open restaurant; but once you’ve travelled with someone for a while breakfast, lunch and dinner can prove to be a conversational strain. When they got back to the hotel their son, who had barely turned one and just begun walking, threw mussaka and milk all over the double bed. At exactly the same time as a particularly strong gust of wind blew in the entire curved window of the room, shattering glass all over them.

The next morning he had been up at the Greek Orthodox Church going, Dear God, I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. Help me. Help my partner. Help our unborn child. Help our son.

And as things turned out so God, or fate, did exactly that.

What fate held now he had no idea.

Driven to distraction and driven out of a country that had once fascinated him; yes he could admit his own faults in the whole scenario, not that it mattered now, he was unsure which way to step. All he knew was that plenty of work lay ahead. And fortunately for him, he enjoyed work, if not a lot else some days.

THE BIGGER STORY:

UP to one million Australians are expected to leave behind the rat race of city life to live and work by the sea or in the country in the next three years.

Research by Online lifestyle adviser Sea Change Success shows more than 200,000 city dwellers will radically change their lifestyle with a seachange, while more than 700,000 will move to a regional area.

It reveals 350,000 people contemplate making a seachange each year, but only 20 per cent of those who consider moving make it happen.

However, 80 per cent of those are glad they did it and wish they had made the change sooner.

National Seachange Taskforce executive director Alan Stokes said most people contemplating a move out of the city did so while holidaying in a coastal area.

"It would start out with people imagining what it would be like living in the community rather than just going there for holidays," he said. "The big attraction is the environment, the beach, the idea of bringing up your kids in a more natural, attractive environment.

"People acquaint living in the city with high levels of daily stress."

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/a-million-aussies-to-leave-city-behind/story-fneszs56-1226547833537#ixzz2H3wk3muv

Boy Show Boy Show Massage Massage

He hadn't meant to settle here, or anywhere in particular, at this peculiarly dislocated period of his life, chased from one location to another. I don't understand the program, an official looking man sitting next to him said; and it was true enough, after almost three years of pursuit and harassment it had become pointless, sick, and tasteless. Not that they still didnt manage to get their laughs. But he was tired, and tired of it, and tired of the mentalities behind it, to the point where he had become wordless in his estrangement. And just to help things along; he had lost his phone in a taxi, thereby severing every good and bad connection he had managed to build, leaving only whoever it was he ran into on the day.

The guest house he was staying in was at least for the present far more cheerful and pleasant than almost anywhere he had stayed in Thailand. Music belted out; but then he had had teenage children who wanted move the dial ff 96.9, in fact had programmed every dial on the car radio to the one station, so he could put up with anything. Nostalgia was for other moments.

Boy show, Boy show, the sound of the touts would drift up through the aging tenaments, an atmosphere he would normally enjoy, although he had never bothered to see the show for reasons he didn't have to reveal to the world. There were just too many echoes here, that the was his main reason for his recent longing to be somewhere else. And to sit and get some work done. Money follows work follows money, always had, and he was lucky he enjoyed working. But the grander schemes of things needed more thinking out, more professional input, as the technology changed. It wasn't enough just to be a whizz with words anymore, and he watched some pretty desperate attempts to make money out of the new "communication" technologies. But if everyone is doing the communicating, who is doing the listening?

It was High Season, just after Christmas, and the young men once hungry weren't hungry any more, sporting money in their pockets and partying wildly into the New Year. How cruel these days were, when he made the mistake of visiting people who thought could be his friends, might have been his friends in different circumstances, but were nothing but treacherous cheap double crossing little bitches, dogs they called him in his country. And where he came from, most dogs got put down, if not on the first occasion, sooner or later, because you couldn't survive in a rough and tumble world on the dark side and be a treacherous little prick. But here they did it because you were a falang, a foreigner, and they could get away with it with the howling of the masses to support them.

So let them. No bitterness. Let it go.

He was happy for the first time in a long time; for no particular reason.

And the sounds of Boy Show Boy Show Massage Massage just added to the atmosphere that was a million miles from the quiet tree lined suburb where he came from.

The dread of the silence wasn't here.

The only fear was man made.

And to be avoided.

Let them be.

Let Him Go. Let Him Go. The boy translated into his Google phone in a restaurant while he waited for his new computer at a restaurant near busy Pantip Plaza in Bangkok.

It seemed an appropriate enough epitaph.

Let Him Go. Let Him Go.

He had a go at the translator.

Thailand is a very interesting country, he said into the machine. But I wish peple would leave me alone. Leave me alone.

Let Him Go. Leave Him Alone. Massage Boy Massage Boy. Boy Show Boy Show. The echoes rose into the warm heart of the Bangkok Night.  

The Dreaming Spires

Oxford

It was easy to think of the dreaming spires, of places that were somewhere else, any excuse to escape the dread that regularly overtook every waking step. And yet there was nothing that had changed. When he was growing up the world was going to end in 1972. According to the Mayan calendar it was going to end in December 2012. But as pundits around the world observed; it did no such things. But there were many who observed how quickly the zeitgeist, the eternal angst, had drifted into a kind of eternal now; that what had once seemed so important was no longer. That the problems, the desires, the troubles were rapidly shifting into something else. And so it seemed. The world had not ended; but something had.

He had been on the island of Phuket and day followed day in a lazy swirl which was new to him. He wasn't dealing with people used to a life of professional heat. Instead they sat in cafes and open air squares and dawdled away coffees a damn sight more expensive than almost any you could find on the mainland. Every glimpse of melancholy was an opportunity to confide in someone else. If there was any personal agony involved he couldn't see it. So some things were hard; but they didn't see it. Strive to survive. 

And then Ko Samui.

As one of the people in a restaurant explained; they weren't from Thailand either and none of the customers were from Thailand and so there wasn't much point in trying to speak Thai. Just speak English like everywhere else.

If they felt like their country had been stolen from under them; it was an easy sentiment to understand.

Mai Sabai, not relaxed, Chalaht, clever, Mai Chalaht, not relaxed, Mai Pen Rai, never mind, Arai G'dai, whatever, even in the middle distance the voices kept up their wavering mockery. He wasn't going to do anything to change the script. Mai Kow Jai Mon Thai, Not understand Thailand. He was neither blind, stupid or deaf, not yet. And while ever the derision lasted, nor would he be at peace. 

Leave him be, leave him be, let him get on with getting his life back together.

The topsy turvy year of 2012 was coming to a close; and he would never have cared, never have known, if they hadn't laid it out so clearly for him. There amidst the false trails lay all the answers. He could haunt the place but in the end didn't care. There was going to be a reckoning, but it wasn't for him. If they had ever been destined, it was not for him. If they had ever been in love, it was not with him. And so, when the fish came jumping out of the sea, when a myriad of stories came home  to roost, when every thread and every path laid down came finally back to where they belonged; he would be standing there laughing. Because he was still alive against all the odds. And he smiled magnanimously. Thanks for the ride, he waved, with all the grandiosity of the defective. 

Show no fear, he advised. They don't understand it; and are frightened of what they don't understand.

"Thai people not your friend," the pharmacist on Surawong warned him, eyeing the young man standing outside waiting for him.

"I know," he replied, laughing disingenuously. "I learn the hard way."

The pharmacist looked at him curiously, as if the depth of stupidity of this particular foreigner remained beyond any depths of stupidity he had previously witnessed.

Never mind, he thought, as he paid for his purchase and made his way outside. Thailand is an ever fascinating, intriguing, often beautiful, always challenging place. He hadn't intended to stay so long. But one way or another; he was still there. The acrid smell of the dense traffic swept through tired lungs; and he cheerfully greeted the young man he knew perfectly well was deceiving him.   

  

The Stories They Want To Believe

They believed what they wanted to believe. It was always thus. You'll be bashed if you ask the wrong person where a gay bar is, the waiter warned, offering himself up at the same time.

The next day a moto cie driver pointed to a nearby soi when he asked the same question in a neighbouring town, then offered himself up for 500 baht. 

Five hundred baht and my wallet, he thought, declining the offer.

The UK and Australian embassies had joined with the Thai government in warning against tourist scams scarring the reputation of the holiday resorts.

Although there was little visual correlation, the scenes on Phuket and Ko Samui, where he had gone after becoming tired of Bangkok and the endless grimy pursuit of his pursuers, the howling of the mob, the derision of the common man, demonstrating, if nothing else, how utterly corrupt, vindictive, dishonest and unprincipled were those who sought to ridicule him.

Without conscience, without taste, without scruple, sometimes he could think of no way out but retreat.

But retreat to where?

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, went the old saying, and thus it had proved to be. 

They had proved they could manipulate public opinion, as if that was a difficult achievement. They had proved that truth mattered not one jot to them. They had proved they were prepared to ridicule and malign anyone who got in their way. Anyone who objected to being robbed, cheated, maligned. Their lies were endless, these scumbags. Let them lie, he had always thought, they only expose themselves. But there were times when he wondered how far they would take it.

Will they kill him? one of the voices asked.

If they can, another answered.

The exposure for all to see of the corrupt liaisons between the bar owners and the police had been exposed for all to see; or those who cared to look.

But that didn't mean he had won any fans, or protection. All that did was leave him well out on a limb; with only the occasional friend to provide a bridge to safety.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, water flowing underground, he repeated to his friend Ross, quoting the words from Talking Heads. Remember that song? he asked.

Yes, Ross replied. It's the same all over the world. People don't like gays. You're in a minority. There just aren't many services for people like you. Why can't you just get off with a girl, like everybody else?

I don't know, he shrugged.

It was Christmas Day, 2012. He had lived more than 40 years longer than he had ever expected to do. And if the longevity gene in his family had been passed to him, would live a damn sight longer yet.

He watched the girls dancing on the bar come stage; scene after scene. They outnumbered customers a dozen to one.

The tourists hadn't come this year; despite all the industry's optimistic forecasts. 

While the Red Shirts had bashed a hole in the tourist industry in 2010 there were other factors at play, poor economies in Europe and America, Thailand's increasingly tatty reputation for tourist scams and an AIDS infested sex industry. Six hundred thousand Thais had already died. Another 400,000 were infected, according to the latest official statistics. If they had died of anything else, if it was anybody other than sex workers, largely derived from the urban and rural poor, who were dying, there would have been a national outcry and massive government programs in place. As it was, the latest statistics were just another news story in the blizzard of information that had become everybody's life.

One brief moment, one brief glance in a crowded bar, had changed not just his life but a number of others.

And here amidst the lost, bruised for sure, it was obvious they had done more damage to themselves than they could ever do to him. A single individual, an agent of change, had only so much power. But tendrils reached everywhere. They had no idea who or what they were dealing with. False trails lay everywhere. Yes, he had been damaged, but so had they. 

Leave him alone, the official pleaded, leave him alone to get his life back together. 

Chalaht mak, very clever, no good for Thailand, Mon Thai, the voices said, the derision wavering into puzzlement.

You do it to everyone, rob, cheat, steal, lie, this is what you call, in your conscience free zone, tahm nahm, work. 

Open yourself up to the world; and the world judges you according to its own values. Not yours. A double cross is a double cross. The honor amongst thieves that operates in the West does not operate in Thailand for one simple reason. You are a falang, or farang, the pronunciation varying across the country. You will never be Thai. You will never fit in. They don't want you to fit in. They laugh at their own treachery, don't believe a word they say. And laugh at the suckers who fall their lies. 

It was what it was, he shrugged, and kept on walking. 

Pleasure Everywhere

"Where have you been," his recent friend asked of another Italian asked who climbing off his motor bike.
We were outside a Family Mart on the island of Phuket.
"Ko Samui," the man, short, bald headed, very Italian, replied.
"Enjoy?"
"OK. There is pleasure every. My God."
He had escaped the echoing corridors, the surveillance, the derision of Bangkok, the halls surrounded with a laughter he did not feel.
He had lingered in Bangkok, Khron Tep, for days, perhaps it was months, working or recovering, his prolonged sobriety punctured by increasingly rare increasingly wild benders.
Why so keen on the setup?
"He's going down," one of the voices said in yet another crowded discotheque. "That book."
"Leave him be. Let him get his life back together. It's what he says himself. He would like to sue you for stress. Leave him alone."
He had repeatedly pointed out: "They make their own story."
"For him, it's five minutes to midnight," one of the voices stated.
But it wasn't that many days before another asked: "Who is this guy?"
He had merely questioned someone about seed banks in response to a long ago story about Glasgow. What, they thought he didn't know about these things?
All was well in an infinitely strange way; as if he had escaped the pressures of the past; as if nothing could equal what he had already gone through.
There was no mercy.
There would never be any mercy.
Among those he met.  For the people with whom he lingered.
He didn't know whether to stay or go.
He said it repeatedly to confuse the people who trailed him, laying yet another false path on their highway to hell.
But in fact it was genuine enough.
There were "pathways", that phrase the public servants he had become acquainted with during his decades as a journalist were so fond of using in their documentation.
Their relentless seas of paperwork.
Of confusion.
In his case there was no clear pathway opening up ahead, as it usually did.
He didn't know how to enjoy; had never thought or sought such an outcome.
Here on the island there was something of the same feel of his own city, as if it could all be washed away in an instant; as the tsunami had proved.
The Impossible, the story of a British family who survived the tsunami, so white washed you would have thought no a single Thai person had died, is running in the cinemas. He wasn't about to see it twice, although he liked to see movies twice. You saw different things the second time round.
"It's not that sort of movie," one of the 12 steppers commented, idling away their idle days on the island, as if they had never worked, never kept up a professional pace, never crammed too many things into one day.
They were a little like the welfare dependent but with their own means and abandoned to luxury: to do one hing a day was more than enough.
He reached out across time and space, fell in the ditch, laughed at the sky. It was the same everywhere. We are all standing on the earth. But only some of us are looking at the stars.
Or as the Daily Literary Quote from Roman Payne declared, those who "revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them."

THE BIGGER STORY:

AUSTRALIA'S most senior Catholic, George Pell, has used his traditional Christmas message to apologise for the crimes of Christian officials, priests and teachers, declaring he feels the community's "shock and shame" at revelations of wrongdoing.

Cardinal Pell spoke of Christ's message of peace but acknowledged there was less peace - and sometimes no peace - where there was evil.

DOCUMENT: Pell's Christmas message

"My heart, the hearts of all believers, of all people of goodwill, go out to all those who cannot find peace at this time, especially those who have suffered at the hands of fellow Christians; Christian officials, priests, religious, teachers," he said.

"I am deeply sorry this has happened. It is deeply contrary to Christ's teachings and I too feel the shock and shame across the community at these revelations of wrong doing and crimes."

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Believe it or not

Cardinal Pell's message comes as the federal government prepares its terms of reference for a national royal commission into abuse within institutions, due next year. He said faith in goodness and love was needed to cope with disasters and hurt.

The message of Jesus Christ, he said, was a simple "great truth" open to all and rooted in history.

Ahead of the most celebrated day on the Christian calendar, commemorating the birth of Jesus more than 2000 years ago, spiritual leaders reminded followers Christmas was a time for reflection and hope.

Anglican Church of Australia Primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, said it was a time of celebration, new imagination and potential renewal for both society and individuals.

The leader of Australia's Anglican community said the story of Christmas reminded people of God's hope and life.

"It is easy to lose heart when we look upon our world," Archbishop Aspinall said.

"It seems society has become habitually cynical and mistrustful, our public discourse thin and impoverished.

"We are thirsting for a new spirit - new ideas, new generosity and a new gratitude for all we have and are. Christmas is the time for new imagination."

Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen - in his last Christmas address before his retirement next year - said it was a time for reconciliation with God and each other.

"Reconciliation is a big theme for us Aussies," he said.

"Notably, we need to be reconciled with each other; not least, we more recent immigrant settlers with our indigenous First People.

"Reconciliation has to flow out of love."

Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, offered a prayer for the coming year while reflecting on Jesus's birth.

"My prayer is that 2013 will be characterised by peace in our society, tolerance and respect for young and old, and an ability to look beyond the immediate moment to the hope which God provides each of us by his coming," he said.

"Then we know that we are valued and we can make our city, our home, a better place.

"It is significant that God came to people in material poverty to show the great worth of each human person."

World Vision chief executive and Baptist reverend Tim Costello, said 2012 was a "grab bag of blessings and curses" for many Australians.

But Christmas was an opportunity to step away from the pressures and expectations of normal routines and find new possibilities.

" escaped the worst of the financial woes affecting other countries and our economy is still strong," Reverend Costello said.

"But on the other hand, many of us are struggling to keep up with our household expenses."

Churches of Christ federal coordinator Craig Brown made special mention of the young people abused by churches but said the institution may be able to partially restore lives.

Canberra Catholic Monsignor John Woods urged people to engage with the nativity scene of Christmas to get a perspective on the true significance of the period.

"Reclaim your lost innocence in the eyes of a baby, so powerless and yet so engaging," he said.

"This baby will confound, comfort and challenge and be rejected as too good to be true as he reconciles that which still divides us - life and death, light and dark, heaven and earth, victim and perpetrator, the refugee and the citizen, partisan politicians and the common good, the sick and the healthy, the rich and the unemployed, the loved and the lonely, all of us."




Aussies warned about Phuket scamsters

BANGKOK: -- Australian tourists in Phuket should be wary of extortion gangs, some of which are in cahoots with local police.

Australian Ambassador James Wise and his British counterpart, Mark Kent, have joined a Thai Ministry of Tourism campaign to tackle tourist scams on Phuket.

Up to 25,000 Australians visit Phuket each month, with Christmas and New Year the peak of the tourism season.

The main scams involve taxi and jet-ski operators in Phuket and the seaside resort town of Pattaya.

Mr Wise said travellers needed to be on their guard when they hired jet-skis or motorcycles.

"Consider the implications if it is stolen or damaged. Foreigners are commonly detained by police until compensation, often thousands of dollars, is negotiated between the parties."

Mr Kent said travellers should be cautious in "crowded markets, tourist sites, bus or train stations and festivals".

"It is best to avoid isolated neighbourhoods, shortcuts, narrow alleys and poorly lit streets, especially late at night," he said.

Larry Cunningham, Australia's honorary consul in Phuket, said scams and criminality had increased to such an extent that expatriates wanted to leave the island.

Mr Cunningham said young travellers were specially targeted by gangs and on occasion by local police.

In one incident, a young Australian man was involved in a minor traffic accident when riding a rental bike. He was told by police an injured man's condition was serious and was forced to pay thousands of dollars in compensation. [more...]

Full story: http://www.smh.com.a...1223-2btzi.html


-- The Sydney Morning Herald 2012-12-24

Stolid, Solid: Interviewing the Famous: Anthony Burgess

Picture courtesy Burning Man

He had a blinding hangover the morning he met Anthony Burgess.

He was yet to work out that only the lowest of the low in terms of the pecking order of journalists got slotted in at 9am, so the interview with Anthony Burgess was slotted in for that un-Godly hour.

And thus it was that the famous author, in the midst of blinding pain, appeared before him in the foyer of one of London's many upmarket hotels.

Before Dubai, the Arabs were already transformed London into one of the world's money centrals. In the spiraling eighties it was generally assumed that anybody who was anybody ended up spending time in London. New York, with all its crassness, might claim to be the centre of the world, but that historic city by the Thames had class, class, class.

Burgess had just penned his book Ninety-nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939; along with another in his Shakespearean series, the latest being Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End of Enderby.

Indeed, after he had waded through the Enderby series, there did indeed seem to be no end of Enderby.

At the time he shared the disdain towards Burgess held by some of the slower, less prolific writers in the English canon such as Al Alvarez, with whom he had taken to having long walks with on Hampstead Heath. He had gone out of his way to befriend the author of The Savage God, a contemplation on suicide and Sylvia Plath, ever since he had interviewed and got a very good run in the Australian Financial Review with Alvarez's 1983 book on the lure of gambling, The Biggest Game In Town.

It was just up "the Fin's" alley; and they ran it if memory served him correctly across a rare double page spread in their Friday review section.

The Savage God had been one of the bible's of his youth.

Back in the 1970s in the crowd with which he used to run, Sylvia Plath one of their genuine demi-gods.

Her early death at the hands of an oven simply made her all that more appealing.

We could quote lines from Plath's Daddy by wrote; and we weren't even at school:

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.....

I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

"You do not do, you do not do, black shoe...you bastard I'm through" was some of our favourite lines.

"Slyvia Platitude" we had scrawled across the lounge room wall of that terrace in Sydney's inner-city suburb of Paddington which had seemed for a while to be the centre of everything.

Burgess's publication of Ninety-nine novels had predictably created a furore in literary circles, even promoting the publication of counter lists.


As quickly became evident when he asked Burgess about the sometimes excoriating commentary accompanying its publication, Burgess was hugely enjoying the controversy over which books should and shouldn't belong in a list of the 20th century's best fiction.

The criticism was water off a ducks back. He was already a multi-millionaire. Nothing could touch him but time itself. Critics were just mosquitoes as far as he was concerned; and he held what some would call a very healthy disdain for them.

Who would want to be a critic? he asked. Do these people sit in school and dream about their futures and think, yes, that's what I want to be, a critic. Is that all their dreams are made of?

As for the controversy, you have to start somewhere, Burgess shrugged. The book's promoted debate and that is what it was intended to do. And hopefully it's got people reading more books.

Although he hadn't enjoyed the Enderby books, wading through them dutifully in his preparation for the interview, he asked Burgess about hopefully what was to be the last of them, as No End of Enderby and the list were the two books then being promoted.

Burgess had already had breakfast in his room so unfortunately for him the famous author had no desire for any more repast.

While he could have done with a free coffee and some breakfast, the alcohol sweat making his clothes cling to his thin body even in the air conditioning of the hotel, the interview ended up being conducted on a couch in the foyer.

The PR bird sat perkily next to him throughout, occasionally trying to facilitate the conversation.

When the interview wound up after an hour which had seemed like an eternity he made his way across the football field of a foyer and out into the London streets.

He hadn't bothered to dress up for the interview, and didn't possess the clothes anyway, but the dank sweat coating him and his sick pallor from the city's nightclubs, made him look even worse than usual.

The sight of himself in the foyer's many mirrors did nothing to reassure him.

As he stepped down from the mezzanine level and headed towards the hotel's revolving doors, he saw Anthony Burgess and the public relations woman staring after him quizzically, and then burying their heads together.

Not that Burgess could talk. In the late 1950s he was dismissed from a position as a teacher in Brunei, and as an excuse claimed to have had a brain tumor; a tumor that was never found.

Burgess's story telling abilities were well known to extend to himself and as Wikipedia observers:

"Burgess' biographers attribute the incident to the author's notorious mythomania."

And as biographer Geoffrey Grigson wrote, Anthony Burgess was suffering from the effects of prolonged heavy drinking and associated poor nutrition...of overwork and professional disappointment.

There was no air of disappointment about Burgess at the time he met him.

Indeed, Burgess could hardly have appeared wealthier, more solid, more stolid, more assured of himself.

And as he entered the over white light of the street, he had a stab not just of disorienting pain, but of envy for the workers in the street, the shop keepers behind their counters, the bus driver passing by, the legal secretaries with bundles of documents rushing to their offices, for everyone else but himself. He envied their solidity, stolidity, normality singleness of purpose. For their certainty in who they were and why they were. While Burgess prepared for another interview before heading back home to Monaco, he headed back to his life in the London squats, with his increasingly frustrated lover, to another night of pointless carousing and implausible excuses.