The Land of the Waratah and Dahlia

I’ve been going all Waltzing Matilda since Kevin 07 went official. I’m still thrilled about the election outcome and the delay in the results – due to a blackout in Bagamoyo – has only served to prolong the glee. I knew the full moon would come to good. It’s an odd jubilation, the excitement being more that the Libs lost than that Labor won. Except for Maxine. ‘Oh, Maxine,’ I keep finding myself murmuring.

I got such pleasure out of watching Howard’s concession speech. Schadenfreude is cheap, but gee, it can be fun.

There’s much that’s cheering here. Howard’s whole ‘My Fellow Australians’ spiel is one that I’ll be happy not to hear for a while. Shades of reality TV too, with the statement, delivered fists clenched, that prime ministership is an unbelievable experience. Like, totally. The joyously shickered hecklers interrupting in this clip are great, pure Aussie faux pas-dom. I ‘m not sure about Howard’s claim that he has bequeathed the ALP a stronger and prouder nation, Tampa and WorkChoices and the GST and Iraq and Reconciliation Rollback and regional political fiascos all being conveniently edited out of the picture. Still, Howard used the adjective ‘special’ like a genuine evasive battler when he referred to his ‘very special debt of gratitude to Costello.’

The fact that it seems to have been a landslide victory makes me feel slightly less despondent about apparently getting bumped off the electoral roll and so not being able to vote. When I checked the AEC rolls in that bastion of democracy, the Ukraine, I discovered that my name wasn’t on the list and that I didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to re-enrol. Irate emails to the AEC lead me to deduce that the people living at my old address, where I was registered, had sweetly sent my mail back. Probably bloody Liberals who got wind of my pinko tendencies when a mail-out from the Radical Separatist Treehugging Femo-Front (ah, the RadSTFFront, those were the days) arrived and decided to sabotage my vote. Elizabeth Bay is full of them.

Things to eat before you die

After a not immoderate amount of stuffing around, I have finally installed myself in a hotel in Saigon, my last port in South East Asia. Fortuitously, the hotel has wireless access and I have been taking refuge from the heat and humidity in the cool breezeway that is the internet.

And so it was that I came across this post which called on foodies and bloggers to nominate five things to eat before you die. Being vacillatory by inclination, I generally loathe top-fives but this call, I could not ignore.

And so, this is what I added to the list. By way of qualification, I note that the below shouldn't be understood as favorites or anything so foolish. I would think of them as a non-binding, highly partisan list of good things. Obviously, as soon as I wake up tomorrow morning, I will want to revise the lot. If I were to get into the realm of particular dishes as cooked by particular people or as eaten in particular restaurant at particular times, then I would be entering the world of sentiment and that, my friends, is a dark abyss into which I refuse to plunge.

1. Freshly shucked Sydney Rock Oysters with lemon and salt.
2. Freshly picked raspberries, still warm from the sun.
3. Hot-smoked salmon.
4. Mangosteens au naturel.
5. Brie de Meaux spread on very fresh bread.

(But wait! there's no room for pickled anchovies, chanterelles, any other kinds of cheese, chorizo, freshly picked tomatoes, spring garlic in France, mangos, homemade gingerbread, clam chowder, creme brulee, hollandaise sauce, lime sorbet, an excellent steak bearnaise, any kind of crab, pho, marquise au chocolat, freshly made rice noodles, coq au vin, peking duck, cornichons, scallops seared on the shell, dumplings of any variety, croque monsieur, Byron Bay organic doughnuts, sauerkraut, gazpacho, salade au chevre chaud, olives, home-cooked quinces, avocado on toast, wasabi mayonnaise, eggplant anyway, gratin dauphinoise, tabouleh, homemade pate, poached eggs with truffle butter, jamon serrano, strudel, harira, borscht, rhubarb crumble, arancini, dulce de leche and all the rest... And there's no alcohol involved. See, lists are a pain in the neck.)

Anyway, the Traveler's Lunchbox post links to an Observer article which lists 50 things every foodie should do before they die. I have done 21 of these things. 29 to go. Sigh.

Of course, if I were to make my own list of 50 foodie type things that I have done that I think other people should do, it would again be entirely different. Not only would I include the international jet-setter, big money, eating for status entries, I think there would have to be some character building exercises high on my list. Challenge someone to a vodka enhanced chilli eating competition. See how long you can function for on a diet of bread, cheese, coffee and red wine. Chop up a clove or two of garlic, mix with flaky salt and sprinkle on hot buttered toast. Add pepper. Eat it and enjoy the pleasant sensation of immediately improved health and the disappearance of residual inhibitions about garlic. And so on.

just two links

It is pouring with rain outside. I don't have an umbrella and wound up knee-deep in mud trying to cross a road under reconstruction. I had to fish my trusty Birkenstocks out of the mud before they were sucked to oblivion. Fortunately, the internet cafes of Vientiane are mud-free dryzones. Two links.

a) Self explanatory. Deeply narcissistic.

b) Someone asked me to define postmodernism. If I could have, I would have sent them here.

Pop culture and Irish Modernism collide! Again!

I was wondering why there was such a plenitude of second-hand copies of Flann O’Brien’s novels in the second-hand bookshops of Chiang Mai and said as much to a young Irishman with whom I was enjoying a conversation about his national literature. Demonstrating immediately his knack for rapid character appraisal, he looked at me like I was way out of touch with the times. ‘You do know Lost, the TV show, don’t you?,’ he asked, quite politely I think. I confessed that whilst I was aware that there was a TV show called Lost on air from time to time, I had not ever had the pleasure of watching it. Had I known then what I know now! Lost, apparently, takes its narrative structure from The Third Policeman! All that mangling with the timescheme, the notion of a reality beneath (this is how it was described to me), all of that is poached, and acknowledged to be poached from the wondersome Flann O’Brien. That one episode of Seinfeld owed its plot to Krapp’s Last Tape was big news. (Of course, it was still news to me several years after the Seinfeld episode was first broadcast.) That Flann O’Brien should inveigle himself on the scene thus was delightful news. With Bloomsday approaching, I’m now sorely tempted to make grandiose claims for the impact of Joyce on popular culture but will endeavour to restrain myself for just a few days more.

showdown of social networking sites

As some of you know, i have been a lurker on myspace with various amounts of enthusiasm for some time now. i wanted to become one with the tech-savvy youth in my postmodernism classes. i wanted to truly experience tech-utopia. I wanted in on all the free gigs. I wanted to broadcast a superfunky avatar of myself in the hope that the profile surfers would be fooled. It was an intoxicating ride, for a while. And then somehow, I found myself joining Facebook. And now I have a Facebook profile. It's here. Otherwise you can find it via my hotmail. The possibilities for timewasting on Facebook seem far greater than those on myspace. I think it is good that my internet access is restricted, being in a small and remote town in Northern Thailand, and all. It's also very lucky, I think, that I didn't discover Twitter until after I left the land of constant internet access...