The Urban Wilds

I might have finally hit upon something useful to do with myself - Come up with PhD thesis subjects for perpetual students who can’t think of one themselves. I know, right? How much more useful to society could I be?

This brilliant idea came to me today as I was driving to work and I noticed a new phenomenon.

Recently a giant, multinational, Swedish, flat-pack-furniture retailer opened up on my route between home and work. I don’t want to give too much away, but it rhymes with Ikea.

Anyway, what I have noticed is the gradual but uneven migration of trolleys into the surrounding suburbs. I take many different routes to and from work dependant on influences such as:  Traffic. School Days. Angle of the sun. The soreness of my back versus the number of speed-humps. Boredom. Visions. Hallucinations. Revelation. Whether I want to turn left more than right or vice-versa. Number of gear changes. Radio reception to small, independent radio stations. Shopping needs. Parking direction coming into main shopping strips. Needing to keep a check on the hoarders up the road from my place. Whim. And some others that I can’t think of right now. Point being though that I can take an almost limitless number of ways home and I get to observe the suburbs that neighbour the furniture store in some detail.

These trolleys are spreading, but clumping. I observed four in a heap in a street some distance away from the main car park. Someone needs to track them somehow and observe what is going on. Not only would it be an interesting exercise to compare it to other networks and natural migrations, I bet there would be some advice there for future town planners and urban environment designers. At the very least, the impoverished student-about-town would stand to make a couple of extra bucks as “This month’s champion Trolley Tracker”. I understand you can win nearly a hundred dollars for finding a few trolleys.

Fatting The Gap

One of the highlights of my television year was on last night. While there have been better episodes, i.e. more unethical, this one still bore the hallmarks of entertainment designed by Donald Rumsfeld. It was the “Challenge” edition of The Biggest Loser.

Or, Get A Fatty To Shit Themselves To A Better Life.

This year they were taken to Switzerland to be challenged by going from high places to low places. The reward for getting enormously heavy was to let gravity do its job.

(If I didn’t know a little something about Galileo and falling bodies, I’d suspect that the tubbies would be better at that than the rest of us. The real challenge would be getting them to go up… but I digress.)

Last night, Switzerland played host to, by weight, about 18 Australians. By headcount, about five. Even though it's ANZAC time of year, I've got to say that the Swiss were incredibly brave.

They got those fatsos up in helicopters, on thin suspension bridges, hanging off ropes and all sorts of other adventurous stuff. I mean, who wants to pilot a helicopter with a hysterical shifting load in the back that could roll you into a mountainside at any moment?

For that matter, who wants to stand on a wire-and-sky-hook construction, ninety metres above the earth, with a panicking fatty? They drag you down just like the fabled drowning man. They don’t have much to live for. If you’re lucky, they just take a bite out of you as they shamble past to throw themselves off the platform. More likely though, they make a lunge and hug you all the way down - like the last lamington at the gates of a health farm.

Who’s the guy who does a tandem sky-dive with a panicking lardo strapped to the front of him? The physical limits of what a harness and parachute can take beggar the imagination, let alone the opportunity for the fatty-in-free-fall-feeding-frenzy-fiasco where the instructor arrives back on earth as nothing more than a pair of hands gripping the chute controls, while the ‘contestant’ dabs at the corners of their mouth. Croix de Guerre for that guy.

Last night had some high points, but mostly low. The Swiss will be convinced of a few things after dealing with this lot of winners:

• The only response to anything outside the set of experience even narrower than the set of their own eyes, is “Or Mar Gawd”
• The only response to having just achieved something momentous, such as relaxing and letting the equipment and tour personnel do all of the fucking work as per usual is “Or Mar Gawd! I didn’t think I could do it. I am so brave.”
• Despite the wheezing and asthma, those lard-balls can really scream. There’d be wildlife in those cliffs that are going to grow up slightly deaf and fearing a legendary wild-thing they once saw swing by

Yup, the rolly-pollies really did us proud last night and I was relieved to see that the angry lesbian who pulled the full Gabor before her jump, was able to pull it together enough after her jump to make another pass at her instructor - before waddling off to the all-you-can-eat buffet. It was a win for equal rights all around. I’m pro-Gay Marriage. I’m anti-Gay Cannibalism.

Next year, I’m looking forward to a naked chubster fighting their own weight in angry lemurs and another, using nothing but Sellotape on their eyelids and a giant adult nappy, to fake their way into the Sumo grand finals.

Life Does Get Around To Imitating, Eventually

The boring old farts often say, “We take too many things for granted”, but I think we take even some of the for granted things for granted. Take the below:

The other day, I saw a bird fight its way out of a wet paper bag. It was unreal. It was funny. It ended in triumph and it also gave me an indelible mental image for that often used saying.

In the recent filthy weather we’ve been having in Sydney, I was afforded another terrific image. A for real-deal drowned rat. Never seen one before, now I know what people are talking about.

I mentioned this to Smurfy and he suddenly got all excited and said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I slipped on a banana peel the other day. It was outside the post office and I went ‘wooowah’ and looked down and thought, so that actually happens, does it?”

And I bet you’re thinking the same thing. I’ve never, ever slipped on a banana peel. Thought it was just one of those ‘things’.

In Hind Sight

For those of you who don't know, my partner Emergency Contact, has a unique relationship with the world. Don't get me wrong, she's a smart cookie - in fact, she's Dr Emergency Contact, but there is the element of the distracted academic about her. Take the following exchange for example. 


EC: You know you've got things on your mind when you put your contacts in... leave it for a couple of hours and then accidentally put them in again. I spent the morning wondering what the hell's gone wrong with my eyes. 


Me: That is both hilarious and tragic. 


EC: And, when I took one pair out, and then put on my glasses, I went, 'Hey wait a minute. I don't need to be wearing these. Cool. No. Wait. What the HELL is going on?' 


Me: Are you going anywhere without adult supervision today?

An Ode to Skyrim

Dorothea Mackellar (OBE) will be remembered for “My Country”, as most Australian school kids have trudged their way through those lines that start with, “I love a sunburnt country”. 

But, she was also interested in art, politics and in later life, she really got into computer gaming.

She was particularly fond of The Elder Scrolls trilogy. So much so, that with a very small amount of imagination, she wrote an ode to Skyrim; the third of the games.

I love Bethesda’s construct

A land of stabbing pains

Of see-through mountain ranges

Of shouts and levels gained

I love her many dungeons

Her empty, shallow sea,

Her mutants and programming errors

This RPG for me

Scale

Emergency Contact and I live opposite a sports oval. It is very well used.

We were coming home from weekly shopping when a ball rolled onto the road in front of us. I drew the car up sharp. EC's head jerked forward and I felt bad, but what normally follows a soccer ball onto the road... ?

When the inevitable chaser in team-uniform appeared on the road behind the ball, EC said, 

“Jesus! That's a bloody big child!”

I added, “Yup. But normally we just call them men.”

Seoul Survivor

For those of you who haven’t been to South Korea, you will find this blob a penetrating insight into a culture and its people. For those of you who have, you will find it hopelessly half-arsed.

But, you don’t come here for the latest update to Ban Ki-moon from his cultural attaché so let’s do this.

On the map, South Korea looks approximately halfway between Japan and China. When you get there… it feels exactly halfway between Japan and China.

Don’t tell the Koreans. I think I mentioned it once but got away with it.

Japanish

• Bowing
• Seniority
• Politeness
• Yelling as entertainment
• Masochistic challenges on TV
• Tech-fetish
• Efficiency
• The sound of the language
• The look of the people
• Public transport
• White gloves on service personnel
• Twisted sexuality
• Latent gayism
• Order

Chinesish

• Air-quality
• Size of the city
• Rubbish
• That odour that washes over you frequently
• Brand-names
• Murder of English on signs
• Reckless approach to fun
• Reckless approach to crossing roads
• Reckless approach to public health
• Reckless approach to my dinner
• Battery housing for humans
• Money

Halfway betweenish

• Smoking
• Traffic
• Personal safety
• Regard for the government
• Treatment of women
• Pricing of electronic goods
• Food

Seoul is vast. It beggars the mind in exactly the same way the Shanghai does. It’s got half the population, but when you are talking about things of that size you just stop comprehending and sit slack-jawed at how many identical, white, residential tower-blocks there can be in the world.

Anyone a bit sceptical about human impact on the planet should see it. In Australia, we simply do not get to witness what the weight of humanity can really do to a place. We sit on top of Australia like a gnat on a donkey. Koreans sit on South Korea like Nigella Lawson on a race horse. (It’ll probably make it across the line. It'll also probably have to be turned into stew afterward.)

Everyone under the age of 40 has a phone that is halfway in size between an iPhone and an iPad. Also, everyone looks under 40 and there are no iPhones or iPads here. The Samsung rules supreme. Oooooh, Garaxy.

The time of year you choose to visit a place will influence how you feel about it, so keep that in mind. But, it is brain damagingly cold in Seoul at the moment. I can’t imagine living with it. My delicate tropical glands don't know how to cope and I’ve had a persistent nose-bleed for three days. 

Koreans have a deeply civilised streak (and don’t give two hoots for fuel costs it seems) every building is heated to “desiccate”.  I’m either sweating like a sumo in a sauna or crying like a codger in the cold or bleeding from a frozen orifice.

And, do you know, I quite like it here.

Smash That Together, Cupid

There’s a huge circular underground metro type thing here in Seoul. It’s huge. It’s underground. It’s circular. When I mentioned this to Smurfy, he said, “Like a Large Hadron Collider for people”.

We laughed.

But now I’m here, I’ve realised - it is. Where two metro trains collide is where babies come from.