Category Archives: Emmjay

Trumpwits

30 Monday Jan 2017

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f8854aa88602dc52d34c604e7a4206ed-trump-votersStory by Emmjay.

With every announcement of Trump’s latest malfeasance, I ask myself how does it come to be that the world’s richest and most powerful nation can contemplate – much less actually elect a complete and utter moronic rapacious self-interested boof-headed lying maniac toupee with attached clown..

I imagine that the main reason is that Trump’s simple message of “Making America Great Again” speaks to the massive underclass of Americans who enjoy no economic power, have sporadic employment in impossibly low-paying jobs – or no jobs at all – as do those inhabiting the rust belt states where manufacturing is a distant memory.  We have seen them on TV – toothless denizens living in ramshackle squalor with no prospect of ever having a decent life; generations of poverty, poor health with no access to social services, no access to quality education and NO WAY OUT.

Hillary called them the “deplorables” – and what a vote winner that quip proved not to be !

I guess that if everything is basically shit, what’s there to lose in electing somebody who promises to shift the disenfranchisement across international borders ?“  He’s gonna smash those fat cats in Washington.  He’s gonna whack Muslims and anybody else we have been trained to hate.  Great !  Damn the collateral damage – full steam ahead.  Nobody seems to demand an answer about for whom the new America WILL be great – or just how that greatness will pan out in hillbilly heaven.

How can anyone be so bone-headedly stupid to believe Trump – or even for that matter the local Hansonite loonies ?  Hispanics for Trump – is that an oxymoron or what !!

I’m betting that here we have a perfect storm of cause and effect.  America’s notoriously unsuccessful education mess (who would call it a system ?) leaves many people unequipped to understand simple facts and concepts,  or to be able and wanting to question lies – far less understanding complex issues like their own welfare.  The people who unquestioningly do what they’re told to do by the loudest redneck media for the reward of a fleetingly short illusion of being included – in anything – for the first time in their lives.

Does anyone with a scintilla of an education ever vote for arsehats like Trump ?  Certainly a large number of gummy hillbillies do !  And women who don’t think rampant misogyny is any big deal.  Not when pussy-grabbing has been, for them, a family sport for generations.

“I’s toothless because I cain’t afford no dentist”.  Same or worse for medical care.

This is something I just don’t get.  Why is it that the impoverished are so against Obamacare ?  Why is it that so much disease and ill health is caused by incredibly poor lifestyle choices like diets composed exclusively of fast food, hi carb fructose-laden  shit ?  Well, it’s because BIG FOOD is monstrously powerful politically and flogs junk food with impunity.  And probably also because a black man conceived their first shot at affordable health care.

And guns.  How difficult is it to join the dots between a lack of gun control and mass shootings ?   The USA – dumb and dumber.

I also struggle understanding why it is that such an allegedly God-fearing nation is so ignorant about ethics.  “I have built a fortune selling shit to masses of stupid people.  God has helped me do it.  So it must be OK.  God is not aginst anyone getting rich   … and since I don’t have a camel, I’ll be right getting into Heaven.”

I would like to believe that a decent education is a fair preventative – for stopping or reducing the compulsion for anyone to vote for a complete arsehat.  That may or may not be right however – I give you Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, George Brandis, Adolph Abetz, Tony Abbott, Arthur Sinodinis and Barnaby Joyce.  Perhaps a fairly good education is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for preventing fuckwit voting.  I’ll grant you that in the US, it was a diabolically hard choice – between a very questionable Democrat and the ultra-right of the Republicans.

To explain the Trump win, perhaps we need to throw in plebeian susceptibility to swallowing a good media bashing.  Maybe a dash of herd mentality, a soupcon of casual indifference, a scattering of snickering malice and a penchant to resort to abuse in lieu of debate.

A Guardian article told a story about some of the heavy hitters from Silicon Valley already fuelling up their Lear jets in anticipation of the coming apocalypse.  The piece said that the dude who created PayPal – a Facebook board member has led the charge to a place as far away as you can get from Trump’s shitstorm – New Zealand.  When a NZ parliamentarian asked how was it that this chap could buy $4 million worth of lakeside land in the South Island without foreign investment review, the reply was that this chap had already taken the precaution of becoming a New Zealand / US dual citizen …. So, no problem….  Nice.  Nothing quite so fine as being in the upwardly mobile.

The education line of argument is a compelling one in my book.  How is it that fat cat western nations are ever going to secure peace in the world ?  Not by thinking “us and them”.

But by educating our populations to understand that no matter how hard the west bombs the crap out of belligerents, or raises walls against the poorest refugee, peace will be elusive until the west understands the source of belligerence, respects the fact that those folks have a genetically-held belief in their position, a right to fair humane treatment and that force and violence against them will work no better than their use of it against the west.  Otherwise we will remain stubbornly in the dark ages of Trump and his ilk. Complex problems are never going to yield to simplistic solutions.  We need the hoi-polloi as well as the elite to know stuff – and be able to apply logic to sort out the mess and to be able to fend off Trumpwits.  Locking the front and back door is no long-term solution when the hordes come over the barricades.

I read a quote in the Guardian a few days ago that said Trump is a good thing because he will take the US and possibly the rest of the western world to such a low place that the only future direction is up.  The way to a strong democracy is via a pernicious fascist dictatorship.

Wow.  Great !

 

Crispin Will Stand His Ground

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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Merv takes a breather...

Story by Emmjay

Just up the road from the Pig’s Arms is the local office of the sub continental usury association A.K.A. – a nameless fast food and petrol franchise famous for dudding its staff and ripping off its customers by charging exorbitant prices in the name of convenience.

You know the one – the bastards that Alan Fels allegedly would not piss on if they caught fire – as they sometimes do.

Anyway, the one just up the road from the Pig’s Arms was on the TV tonight – apparently one of the local wildlife (as FM refers to them) allegedly ran amok with an axe and a knife – allegedly slashing some poor punter’s face in this suddenly less convenient store and allegedly whacking another (remarkably articulate woman in a stunning neck brace) in the back of her alleged head with the aforementioned alleged axe.

Somehow the alleged woman was restrained – the one with the axe, not the one who later appeared on TV in a stunning RPAH neck brace. And true to form, NSW’s finest arrived in their dozens just in time to take charge of the by then almost fully citizen-resolved situation.

This is not the first time our local retail swamp and petrol store has been plunged into the nation’s spotlight. Sometimes the inner west makes half-arsed attempts at emulating the southwest with the occasional heist or drive by shooting. The after effects of routine heroin usage on the forecourt is part of the local environment – but lest you traverse the site, dear reader, you would be well advised to take care not to run over any of the poor human detritus eking out their existence on the bitumen thereabouts.

The last time some allegedly criminal types tried to knock off the bastion of commerciality resulted in kilometres of that checked police line tape and a shitstorm of fingerprint dust that ended up with Manne being asked quite a lot of probing questions at the local nick.   To be fair to Manne, about two thirds of the front bar patrons were also in attendance at the constabulary because they used to use the convenience store on a regular basis to buy alka seltzer (allegedly) and their dabs were all over the place.

So, in the interests of rebuilding the complete lack of confidence with which the local community regards this convenience, The Pig’s Arms has offered the alleged petrol and convenient items store the services of our ace security guard and generally impressive “don’t fuck with me” personality – Mr Crispin Bacon .

I would like to add that there is absolutely no truth in the scurrilous assertion that Merv wants to see whether the alleged convenience store has the balls to dud Crispin with some kind of pay dodge.   Prediction is that if they DO, a knife and an axe would not constitute adequate defence weaponry.

Stay tuna.

Riding Instructions for 2017: Time to Abandon the Least Worst.

01 Sunday Jan 2017

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Story by Emmjay

I watched an American Ted Talk yesterday where the chap was arguing something along the lines of “OK we’ve seen what the protest vote gets the world (Trump that is), fair enough, people have a right to be pissed off – and a right to send a message to conventional politicians that business as usual is no longer an option.”

He then went on to propose something particularly non-novel – namely direct action at a local level.

Well, OK to that, but so far direct action has had a pretty spotty track record. How long did it take for the Moratorium movement to reverse the politics of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War ? No discernible progress on renewable energy or climate change or preventative health care.

I think that democracy is the right way to go, but not many allegedly democratic nations seem to be much good at ensuring that every person has a say and then deciding what parts of that “say” are worthy of enactment.

More importantly, a constituency where the uninformed or even plain stupid “will of the citizens” gets turned into policy that drives legislation or regulations simply (and only) because fuckwits have the numbers, is not good enough in my book.

When we see and hear politicians say that their views are accurately reflecting the will of their constituency, I say that they are not doing the whole job.

They should be able to reflect a considered view of their constituencies and then, in cases where that view is retrograde, they have a responsibility to propose better policies and then convince their electorates to support that.

But it’s a loaded deck, isn’t it ?

Simple-minded preferences by the proletariat have been demonstrably influenced by super powerful narrow sectional interests – not mentioning:

  • media moguls,
  • carbon energy tycoons,
  • food industry power groups,
  • big pharma,
  • the military industrial complex
  • the national and international banking industry
  • real estate moguls
  • big retailers
  • mining industries
  • water resources owners
  • major political parties
  • tax avoiders anonymous
  • And probably many more self interest cabals.

The fact that a clearly evil and unworthy emperor can become elected as the next head of the western world – with the approval of Russia – if not China and the rest of the west – proves the point.

Decent Republicans (if that’s not an oxymoron) reportedly voted for Hillary Clinton – their mortal political foe – as a least-worst option to no avail. And we have seen the pattern repeated here in Australia.   Despite being completely unknown outside of Queensland, Rudd massacred Howard – because the electorate disapproved so strongly of Howard that (as Bill Hayden was famously quoted) “A drover’s dog could have defeated Howard. But when the ALP – if not the rest of the country tired of Rudd’s control-freak ways and random policy walk, Australia was presented with a new PM and we had the privilege of watching internecine warfare destabilising what now appears to have been a relatively good Gillard government by contemporary standards. So our least worst option was to elect Tony Abbott despite his pig ignorant character, his 1950s misogyny, his climate change denialism and his cringe-worthy representation of Australia on the world stage.

Being not complete fools, the Libnats decided to punt Tony before the election and gave us the opportunity to support the popular Malcolm Turnbull. He was popular because he stood for the kind of conservatism that Australia traditionally likes – to cast fear and doubt about the ALP’s ability to manage an economy financially (despite Rudd’s undeniable success during the worst of the Global Financial Meltdown (GFM), and carry on with the “be nice and do nothing” kind of conservative approach to government.

Australians by and large aspire to some kind of fairness ethic and when the matter came to same sex marriage, Malcolm showed his true colours – colour me shit scared of the loony right wing faction – and the simplest, least earth-shattering change to marriage law was dropped unceremoniously into the “too hard” basket after an eternity of round the houses debates about plebiscites and free votes.

This is an interesting contradiction to my earlier point that democratically elected representatives ought do more than merely reflect the imagined will of their constituency – they should lead our society. In the case of same sex marriage issue, the Libnats actually led us back to the 1950s . It’s surprising that they didn’t recriminalise homosexuality.   And the ever-worthy ALP sat there, amused by the Libnats’ self-torture added a big fat zero to the table.

So when Malcolm decided to call an early election, Australia responded in accord with the times. We were clearly unable to pick the least worst candidates and by extension the least worst government. It was for all intents and purposes a dead heat. Labor and the Libnats were judged to be about equal in terms of uselessness.

Australia played it safe again – by electing a government not on predisposed to do sweet fuck all, but a government barely qualified to act on it’s disposition.

When I reflect on how Howard wasted more than a decade of Australian history, it’s astonishing that his complete lack of effort has been so overwhelmingly eclipsed by Rudd-Gillard-Rudd, Abbot, Turnbull, Turnbull, that total fuckwits now control the senate and the passing of legislation and regulation – even ideologically based and ethically wrong and criminal work like the cruel maltreatment of refugees, the repeated disenfranchisement of the poor, infirm and disabled from welfare – slips through parliament like a turd through a sewer pipe.

So how do we abandon the habit of picking the least worst governments ?

I think this is at least a two-step process.

First, we cannot accept a rotating front door to the leadership of Australian and state (and local) government bureaucracies. After all, the government – only makes the laws. It’s the various levels of public service that implement them. When Fraser sacked virtually all the heads of federal departments along imagined as well as real ideological grounds – and then let middle order management atrophy, he did Australia no service by setting a precedent for every government following – of both political persuasions. Australia has ended up with government by a public service characterised by top enders who must at least appear to be sympathetic with the government politicians of the day (no matter how loony and incompetent these politicians may be) supported by junior staffers who lack the experience of knowing when a bad policy will inevitably lead to disaster for the departments and possibly for the government as a whole. So I am advocating senior bureaucrats be selected on demonstrable merit by independent judges and that they enjoy the Westminster privilege of secure employment based on providing their ministers with frank and fearless advice.

The second plank in my platform is to advocate that we as Australians stop voting for parties that reflect a broad support for our individual ideological bents, particularly when the preselected (now there’s a topic to launch on !) representatives are clearly party toadies and / or unworthy of our support. Remember how Cheryl Kernot was far more effective as a Democrat than when she was later massacred by the electorate as a Labor stooge. Maxine McHugh ? Peter Garrett ?

I for one would prefer to vote for a person who showed commitment to the special needs not just of my electorate, but the current and future needs of our country. It’s our job to seek these people out. And to flush out the pond scum that so frequently graces our houses of parliament.

Off you go, then. Them’s your riding intructions for 2017.

Squiggle

23 Monday May 2016

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Ah, G’day patrons de la salle de porc.  A mate of a mate is starting up an atelier on the main drag of Paddington – 432 Oxford St in Sydney.

Artists and fashion designers are forming a creative collective that you can wander into and watch as they work – and see (and hopefully buy) a thing or two.

They are launching the space on Wednesday 8th of June from 6-8pm and our dear patrons who we oft find wandering flaneur-like in the environs – are welcome to attend with FM and Emmjay.

See you round – like a rissole.

The Terrible Twos.

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

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 Story by Emmjay

When many of us hear the phrase “the terrible twos” – especially the parents amongst us, we think of when our darling offspring reached the age of two and turned from adorable infant chips off the old blocks to abominable tiny fascists.

They know everything. They cannot for the life of them figure out why we don’t get what they are saying or intuit what they want immediately and deliver same – also immediately. They are snappy, intolerant little bastards who are lucky to make it to the pre-school years.

And they get shitty and overwhelmed by little things like a late feed, the absence of the toy de jour or more often than not a delayed sleepy bines.

But dear patron of the salle de porc, I want to introduce you to my personal terrible twos.

They are   …. (drum roll) ….. two AM and two PM.

These times of the day have become mes enfents terrible. Because why ? Because I am invariably awake at two AM, when deep REM sleep would be a huge plus, and conversely, when my ageing corpus goes into heavy sleep-craving mode at two PM this becomes not a great look at work.

After some recent years of sleep deprivation – again, not unlike those post-partum months (did he say months ? He must have meant years) the night becomes a collection of snatched moments of shuteye interspersed with periods of attempting to resolve the world’s irresolvable malaises.

There are some who say, with due justification that this is an expression of depression from the age when one realizes that the mortgage will never be paid off in one’s lifetime, global warming will see us toasted in a barren planet bereft of the ecosystems redolent in our childhoods, and self-seeking power hungry malcontents masquerading as the bastions of democracy will present themselves as the saviors of our solar system ….. giving us only a choice of one kind of evil over another.

Then there are those espousing the alternative view that sleeplessness, or perhaps more correctly sleep disorders are the manifestations of the above depressive states.

Either way, dear reader, cause, or effect, there is nothing good about the terrible twos.

I have learnt these things – none of which cause me to drop off – but in the reading, may you achieve some similar benefit.

I have learnt that:

  1. Caffeine after noon is just not on.
  2. Alcohol after fivesies is a bad idea – although it does help one to drop off, the metabolites of alcohol are excellent at waking one up some few hours later (unless you get totally smashed, in which case, sleeplessness will not be your next big problem).
  3. It’s better to have the major meal of the day at lunchtime and go for a light snack in the evening.
  4. Internet at bedtime is bad because apparently the predominant blue tinged screen images stimulate the brain – I gather that there are applications out there that purport to fix this. See for yourself if they do.
  5. Going to bed at the same time each night is good – to set up some kind of biorhythm. I personally find this nearly impossible.
  6. Vigorous exercise sometime before noon is good. My best successes have come from 25 minutes on the exercise bike with 5 or 6 bursts of 20 seconds at maximum effort – pushes my heartbeat up to the max. I like the bike because it is easier on other bits like hips, knees and ankles – than is jogging – and it takes up a lot less time than walking. I checked with my GP first to make sure that the old ticker wasn’t going to explode at 140 beats per minute – resting was 85-90. The advantage of this is that apart from burning up about 250 calories and helping – note helping but not driving weight loss – this burst training is supposed to promote the proliferation of new mitochondria in all cells. Mitochondria are the little factories that turn glucose into work. Having lots more of them – and lots more fresh ones is supposed to enliven the body. This is my illusion and don’t you dare to disabuse me of it.

There are two nice flow-on effects – first, if one exercises early in the day it is alleged that one’s metabolic rate stays up for most of the day – generating more energy for movement and activity and burning more fat, and second, physical tiredness is supposed to help with sleep. I’m not convinced about the latter.

  1. This is a bit personal. So if you find discussions about toileting distasteful, skip to the next point. In my post 55 days, I have noticed that the alleged bio mechanism that is supposed to turn off the kidneys during bye-byes – and hence limit the production of nocturnal urine – has broken down and that broken sleep is driven by the need for a quick bathroom trip, one to four times a night. I hate this. And I have no answer to why it happens or what to do about it except to limit fluid intake after say 8:00pm. And then wake up thirsty at 3:00AM. Bugger.
  2. OK, I’m glad that we’re over that one. Now, my lovely partner has alerted me to the fact that I’m a bit of a snorer – especially when I lie on my back – which of course is my most comfortable sleep position. So I toddled off to a sleep clinic for a sleep study. This is a misnomer. It’s really a sleeplessness study. They wired me up, put me to bed, asked me to relax naturally (yes, of course I always do that with electrodes and wires stuck all over my head). In the morning, the technician looked at my polygraph, sucked air through his teeth and pronounced that I had moderate sleep apnoea. Meaning that I periodically ran out of oxygen and woke myself up to have a bit of breathing.

9.  OK, so we’re onto something here. What can I do, doc ? Well, you can lose some weight. Yes. And you can have a bit of nasal surgery….. and stay off the grog yadda yadda yadda. Or you could get a CPAP (air pump)….. but I don’t think you’re that bad…. and it won’t do a lot of good for cuddle time.

10,  So I went to the nose surgeon and she said – sure I can trim things up a bit – it’s day surgery and it MIGHT help. Note “MIGHT” rather than “WILL”. So I had my trim – and it DID help for a while. More air in through the non-snoring pipes. But she added – that the best thing I could have done for my self … would have been to have a longer neck. We agreed that this was a big ask, given the prevailing genetics.

  • Darkness is good where you sleep. Get some if you can.
  • Fresh air is also good. French air is better.
  • Medium temperature is good. Try and rationalize that with the last point.
  • When I get really, really short of sleep one night, I might be prone to slip in a little sleeping pill on the next night – but be warned….. more than say three nights in a row can lead to trouble – like the bastards stop working and, well, you can guess where that one is going in the long run.
  • Learn how to meditate – to quiet the racing brain and drop a few dozen “OMs” before you try to kip down.

I’ve just about run out of sleep advice, friends of the porc chateau.

Hey. HEY !!! Arr geez, you’ve dropped off. Honestly, why do I bother ?

Foodge 58:  –  Things Get a Bit Sticky

26 Friday Feb 2016

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Story by Emmjay

Merv’s Mum soon acquired the nickname “M&M” – named after her favourite post-Maccas snack.

It startled Big M to see her in the garden tearing up and eating his prized radishes.  For some reason the image of a horse floated around the back of Big M’s eyes and projected a startling image of Big M’s barbied steak sans condiments.  It was clearly the end of his supply of horse radish.

M&M was certainly a sticky proposition and he could well understand the B&B “no-Vacancy” signs hastily put up by the lady bowlers, Hedgie’s missus and even Hedgie’s brother “Clipper” who, at the time was delivering to the la Salle de Porc patrons our favourite herbal remedy.

Mrs M, while vaguely remembering her own gran’s predilection for ironing the sheets, demonstrated in the flesh that sheet-ironing had poor heritability and could reasonably be judged to have no post-dilection.  She (Mrs M) was surprised that M&M did not actually wash the sheets and dry them before ironing.  Which, one supposes was why things became a bit sticky.

But the real point – as Hung would say – was not to start a discussion on the state of Family M linen.  So it’s time to go back to M&M…… ah da~n !  I’ve run out of …… the letter….  just after “L” in the alphabet and to the right of “N” on the keyboard.  You’ll have to apply some i~agination and bring your own ~s to the story.

Big ~ became very distressed when ~&~ nanaged to wedge herself in the hallway.  The very hallway that Big ~ had renovated in Episode 34.  Don’t go and look it up, I just used that as a placeholder and I’~ going to forget to replace it with the proper reference, because I’~ sloppy like that when I get busy {Editor’s note}.

Where was I ?  Oh yes, I left ~&~ stuck in Big ~’s hallway.

Big ~ thought hard.  With no inspiration forthco~ing, he tried thinking soft.  “We need some butter”, he said.

~&~ frowned, re~e~bering the scene from “Last Tango in Paris” where ~arlon Brando used butter to get in the back door of ~aria Schneider’s house.  But ~&~ was blocking access to the kitchen.  “Go around the back !” shouted ~rs ~. “But I haven’t got any butter” replied Big ~.  “There’s a hole in the bucket” sang ~rs ~.  “What bucket ?” said Big ~, who by this time had gotten tired of the “exhausted M supply” joke. “Forget it, Big” she said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to shift the horse” she added, returning to the joke in the second paragraph.  “We’re going to have to pull the whole house down”.

Big frowned – a big frown.  “I’ve got a better idea.  Why don’t we put her on a diet of water and fresh air for a while ?”  Mrs M smiled. “I’ll ring up Foodge and see whether we can borrow one of George’s kitty litter trays.”

M&M frowned a much bigger frown than Big – who was contemplating how he was going to get to the kitchen.  … nothing …..  – who was contemplating whether he would light up some of Hedgie’s herbal remedy …. and remembered that this was a short-term alternative that would inevitably lead him back to the kitchen access problem.

“While you’re on the line, can you ask Foodge to organise a shipment of Granny’s wedges, please.  I’m feeling peckish.  I think I’ll go and have a lie down on those freshly-ironied sheets”.

That was my fourth mistake …

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

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Portrait Of Happy Mature Male Doctor

Portrait Of Confident Mature Male Doctor Standing In Front Of American Flag – borrowed with thanks from some place

Story by Emmjay

… after a week of self-medication with asthma puffers and nasal lavage for a nasty sinus infection and a persistent chunky cough, on the day before Christmas Eve, I decided that enough was enough and I would chance my luck in the hands of the dreaded American (Hawaiian) medical industry.

I am absolutely not saying I got a virus on a 9-hour sardine tin Jetstar flight full of school kids.  No way would I suggest that was the case.

But I was worried that since we were set to fly home on the 27th of December, that I was becoming too unwell to fly – breathing being one of my favourity things.

It was about 8:00 pm and I wandered down to the hotel reception and asked them how to see a doctor.  They gave me a nicely printed card introducing the services of a clan of peripatetic medicos who would deign to attend me  in my room.  Man !  What service.

For some reason I had soaked up the understanding that it was going to cost a couple of hundred dollars to see a GP and being at death’s door, what could go wrong with that ?  After all, if it turned out for the worst there would simply be a little less in my already bare-arsed estate.

The man of medical science – a Korean man, he was –  arrived about an hour later.  He peered down my throat, felt my enraged sub-maxilliary glands and listened to my chest (not with a stethoscope – he just listened) and said that in the interests of nailing my ailments quickly, he wanted to inject twice into my buttocks and once into my arm.

He nominated an industrial grade antibiotic, a steroid and an anti-inflammatory.  Honestly he could have wanted to remove my lungs and have them dry-cleaned and I’d have agreed – I was feeling (searches for most appropriate description)… totally shithouse.

He mixed up the antibiotic cocktail, thoughtfully adding a tad of somethingcaine because injected antibiotics hurt otherwise.

It was at this time, FM (who was somewhat under the hammer herself) inquired as to the likely size of our investment in American voodoo.  He was a bit evasive, indicating, I was led to believe, that the bill would be made up by his employer – somewhere in Florida.  He got us to confirm that we had travel insurance and he was adamant that we would have no trouble being recompensed.

I mean he’s got a medical degree from the University of Seoul – he’s no dummy.  He ought to be able to do a little mental arithmetic and add up the bill roughly.  So FM tried to assist him.

“Will it be in the hundreds ?”  He looked shocked.  “Thousands, then ?” she persisted.

“Low thousands” he said.  “Oh, great”, my smarting arse said.

He completed delivering the other two liquid miracles into my saggy muscles and the bill came in from Florida via an Email.

The break up of the bill was this – in round (very round) US$s:

  1. Dropping by:            $450
  2. Diagnosis                 $200
  3. Giving injections:    $200
  4. The antibiotics:       $675
  5. Sterioid:                   $575
  6. Anti-inflamm          $575
  7. Tablets (6)               $200

Grand total – US$2,875 – or a tad less than A$4,000.

No wonder sick Americans crawl over the border to Mexico or Canada – all hail Medicare and the Australian pharmaceutical benefits scheme !

I have to say I was shitting blue lights at that stage and increased my mortgage to cover the MasterCard hit.

Next morning, in a lather, I read the fine print on our travel insurance.  They said I had to phone their 7 X 24 helpline.  So I did.  The good folks at NRMA sounded very re-assuring.  I had interrupted their Christmas dinner, but nothing for them was too much trouble.

They said the most important thing was to get better and that I would need to get my GP to write them a letter to confirm my trouble wasn’t a pre-existing condition. He did, and they paid up 8 days later less $100 excess.

I was, and remain unhappy with the hotel for pointing me in the home visit direction – which probably added US$1,000 to the cost of simply walking down to a local clinic.  The hotel people probably wanted to minimise the risk of me seeing a witch doctor and suing the hotel.  Had I called the helpline first, the NRMA people could have pointed me to one (an accredited clinic, not a witch doctor) – but then one probably doesn’t make the best decisions when one is coughing up bits of lung.

Just a word of warning – unless you’re leaking claret all over the floor with multiple gunshot wounds and broken bones (an every day event in America, it seems), DO NOT GO TO THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT OF AN AMERICAN HOSPITAL.  That is infinitely more expensive … “Mother’s maiden name ?” – $100.  “I’m sorry, how do you spell that ?  Another $100….. sparkling or still oxygen ?

Just by the by … a month later I’m still recovering – it’s apparently some North American super virus that also attacks the gut as well as the respiratory tract.  That – or the industrial grade antibiotic killed all my gut flora and some other pathogens moved in.  I feel a lot better, and hope to be in top form before this year’s City to Surf.  (No way am I running…. it’s just a November date reference)

But what a joy it was to return to Australia.  To my own GP and be bulk billed.  And then have to fork out for the medicines – TENS of DOLLARS !

May the goddess bless our South Sea paradise.

… I forgot to thank the lovely Australian lady who apologised for overhearing my discussion with the hotel manager the next day “Sir, we never recommend doctors”, “Really ?  What would you suggest your printed card was, if not a recommendation ?”

That kind Australian lady offered to give me some of her stash of Australian amoxicillin – to tide me over, but I was already medicated to the gills.  Bless her for her thoughtfulness, generosity and kindness.

 

 

 

Horses Must Remove their Shoes at the Door

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Emmjay

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Quip by Emmjay

On the mean streets of Honolulu, there’s crime.  Crime and more crime.

Misdemeanours and felonies.  It’s tough to work out who are the worst crims – the crims or the cops.

But the baddest crime of all is playing horseshoes on Waikiki.  You can get fined, do time or both, so resist the urge.  Don’t take your horse to town, Bill.  Leave that horse at home, Jim.  Don’t take your horse to town.

That was my third mistake …

08 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in Emmjay, Travels

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That was my third mistake …….

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Solar Powered Hula Dancer

Story by Emmjay

Yes, mea culpa for imagining that Hawaii was the same as Disney portrayed it in the days of my youth and that it would be all Hawaii 5-0 like the 1970s.

Come on, that’s how you probably see Hawaii in your mind’s eye too.  Wafting palm trees on white sandy beaches fringes by lovely coral reefs, turquoise waters and cloudless blue skies.

On the beach there’s a stand of long boards that rely on the fact that despite the reef, there is somehow surfable waves.  Did I mention the lovely dusky grass-skirted wahines with their floral garlands and surprisingly comfortable half coconut shell bras ?   And the politely seductive hula.  Yes – that too.  There’s the hypnotic sound of ukulele and slack key guitar music, transporting one into dreamland.

Hawaii

Over the way is a benign volcano, waterfalls and lush tropical jungles interspersed with pineapple, banana, sugar cane and coconut plantations – the stuff of many many daiquiris.

The Late Great IZ

…. The Jetstar silver bird touches down gently at Honolulu International.  It is a state-owned and managed airport firmly trapped in the 1960s – a concoction of dark timber and naked concrete.  The customs people are surprisingly friendly and we are whisked to our taxi, chauffeured (by a former veteran from Texas) through an industrial landscape not unlike Mascot.

Down the Nimitz Highway and into downtown Waikiki to the Ilikai Hotel.  The Ilikai was where they filmed the start of the original Hawai’i 5-0.

We arrived exhausted after an all-nighter at about 7:30 am, Hawaii time.  “Sorry sir, the room isn’t available until 3:00 pm.”  …. Thinks  (what – there’s no other room that’ll do for a shower and a quick kip in the mean time ?).

“OK – so can we climb into our swimmers, put our bags in storage and go and snooze on one of the banana chairs by the pool ?”  “Certainly, sir.”  So that’s what we do – grab a quick shower in one of the 1960s change rooms and set up as described.  Towels provided free !

But you see, dear reader that this is Hawaii in the Winter time – which is not on paper so bad since the daily temperature range year round is 27-28 degrees.  But there’s a rider.  In Winter, it rains – hardly worth the name, but 15 or 20 sun showers per day can play havoc with a sooze outside.  We huddle two banana chairs under a large pool-side umbrella.  But apparently the Hotel does not allow the guests to MOVE the chairs.

This turns out to be a bad omen (sniffle sniffle).

We persist and eventually our upgraded room on level 23 becomes available and we score the shower, a snooze on a Hawaii Corrections Department discipline bed (honestly I could have slept on a concrete floor with a bed painted on it – and  that may have been preferable.

We rouse ourselves in time for dinner and fortunately “Claire” and Australian girl from Narrabeen who visited “Cinnamon” – the Ilikai’s casual in-house noshatorium – a few weeks ago recommended it unreservedly on TripAdviser.  I can see now with hindsight that “unreservedly” meant that she didn’t have a reservation.

Red Velvet Pancakes.JPG

colour is accurate but may vary with the proportion of lead oxide, chromium hexafluoride, uranium oxide and cadmium oxide in your recipe.

I would describe the food as nouveau Long Jetty with Pasadena accents.  I ordered the red velvet short pancake stack – not because I expected a fine dining experience, but because, by late afternoon tea time I was famished.  Now those of us unfamiliar with red velvet pancakes may benefit from a description.  Imagine a circular computer bag capable of protecting say a 12” laptop – made of fire engine red velvet, stacked on top of an identical twin.  Both of them topped with a cheeky lattice of white chocolate extrusions.  Note the above picture is a long stack, but lacks the essential half a kilo of white chocolate lattice on top.

I suppose you’d also want to know what it tasted like.  I’m not so confident I can help you here, but do you know that an average Australian adult (not completely sedentary) male needs to consume 8,700 kilojoules per day ?  Two big Macs will blow that out of the water just about.  Considering red velvet pancakes ?  Consider your baggage allowance first.

Sorry, where was I ?  Oh yes, the food thing.

Now I don’t want to get you upset by what I’m going to say.  We all know I’m not ageist or sexist beyond what would be considered approximately politically correct at an RSL prawn night, but the most alarming thing – that was to be repeated over and over during our stay on the formerly-pineappled isle, was that the waitress (goddess bless her cotton socks) – was, as the British like to say “extremely fit”.  I would like to add “ … for a person in her 70s.

She was / is a fantastic waitress, but it made me sad that I was supporting a society so ignorant of appropriately civilised norms that Americans think it’s OK for people the same age as our Nan to work shifts waiting table for slave wages.

This put FM and me in the invidious position of having to tip Nan (one was actually called “Babette” – I kid you not) 20% just so she could pay her electricity bills.  That meant that a couple of short stacks of red velvet pancakes, a couple of “weak as piss” coffees* and a pineapple daiquiri (to steady my nerves) ran out at about A$70.  Goddess help us when we had to set down to proper food.  This fortunately only happened twice in ten days – excluding breakfasts we made ourselves.

…….. next up, the 10% discount, the 20% surcharge, the $15 per day hospitality fee, the $150 discount with strings attached and the $50 Neiman Marcus voucher… subtitled “Come in sucker”

  • Tom Waits in “Night Hawks at the Diner” tells a story where he was sitting in a diner and his pork chop “got up off the plate and beat the shit out of his coffee.  Well, the coffee was too weak to defend itself, heh heh.”