I did a very unwise thing yesterday. As a result, I’m $500 lighter and in possesion of a shit stereo and a reasonable story. It goes something like this.

My home stereo, a second hand Kenwood thing from the 80s has been playing up lately. One of the speakers crackles in and out, and I figured that it would be cheaper to buy another second hand stereo over eBay than to get it repaired. So I managed to find an old Pioneer system for $40. A good deal, I suppose.

Yestday I had planned to go pick it up after work. Everything was planned. Then came the suggestion from one of my bosses that we pack up a little bit early from work and go to the pub. A fine suggestion, indeed. Unfortunately, it conflicted with my other plan – ie: pick up the stereo. But that was easily rectified with a simple email to the eBay seller: “Can’t make it down tonight. Can we make another time? Sorry for the late notice.” Or words to that effect. So, as you can imagine, the idea of having a new stereo was floating around my head.

So as we left our building and piled into our cars en route to the glorious Great Britain Hotel, we were interrupted by the screeching tires of a white van pulling up in front of us. A rat faced man in his late 30s leaned out the window.

“You guys wanna cheap stereo?” he screamed at us, pustules of spit furiously erupting from his mouth.

“Er, maybe,” I said. For some reason I didn’t tell him no immediately. My interest was genuinely piqued. This was definately a dogdy setup. But I definately was in the market for a new stereo.

“Yeah, we work for a delivery company and they gave us an extra model and we just need to get rid of it. It’s the end of the day and we just need to get rid of it. Come over here and check it out.”

He was out of the van by now and leading me over to the side door. He opened the van door to reveal not one, but many boxes (Stupid moment when I should have clocked what was happening #1) of what looked to be high end audio products. He pointed to the price sticker: $5999. There was a myriad of impressive looking logos below, including a Made in America stamp. The rat faced man was jabbering at me this whole time, while his sidekick, a young guy with a slick hairdo and a sports jacket, sat in the front seat jabbering at my workmate and co-bottom-half-nuder Ben in some kind of wierd England ex-pat meeting of the minds.

In the end, there was something about the Rat faced man’s slovenly demeanour and the WHOLE FREAKING DODGY-AS-FUCK setup that made me say, “No thanks” and I walked back to my car.

At a point in this walk, which would only have been 30 steps or so, something overtook me. It was a mix of excitement and opportunism, but more predominantly it was a giddy, feverish greed. I took the man and his box of equipment at face value. Moreover, I WANTED to take him at face value. A $6000 stereo system could fetch $3000 easy on eBay, even if I didn’t want to keep it. The Rat Faced Man’s reason for not selling it himself – “I can’t sell it myself, mate, cos we’re the only ones who deliver it and they’ll realise who has been nicking stuff” – was plausable (flag #2). So I figured that if they were stealing from anyone, it was their employer, and that was something I didn’t really have a problem with. Added to that the fact that I WAS looking for a new stereo – surely this had to be better than a $40 second hand system from eBay?

I turned to my companion, Benjamin, and said, “I’m thinking about it.”

“It looks like a pretty good deal.”

“Yeah, I’d do it for $400.”

“If you’ve got the money…”

“I’ve got the money,” I said. I did have the money. In the bank, at least.

“Why not?”

“Yeah, why not?” I said, as I practically ran out of the car back to the van. I didn’t want to miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity!

I sauntered up to the Rat Faced man. He was in the midst of hawking the wares to Mark, the mechanic from next door, who was looking distinctly unimpressed. I wouldn’t let this put me off. I almost pitied Mark’s lack of enthusiasm – he was gonna miss out on a pretty sweet deal.

“I’ll give you $400,” I said to the Rat Faced Man.

His mulleted head swung around.

“No way.”

His beady eyes stared at me. “Gimme two hundred more and it’s yours.”

“$600?! You just offered it too me for $500.”

“OK, OK, $500 then.”

“Err.” What the fuck, I thought. “OK.”

The beady eyes of the Rat Faced man glinted. He had me.

To be continued…

I only caught the end half of Eurovision last night, but I did manage to catch this beauty. It’s called Divine and it’s by a lanky, hairy-faced Frenchman called Sebastien Tellier. Tellier is reasonably well known in his home country apparently, having toured with Air and having had one of his previous songs selected to be on the cooler-than-thou Lost In Translation soundtrack.The guy is pretty awesome – another song has the title: Sexual Sportswear.

But it’s his Eurovision song, Divine, that has been bouncing around in my head all day. I think its the first Eurovision song that I’ve actually genuinely liked – beyond the initial paroxysms of irony-imbued hilarity. Like a lot of French music (I’m thinking Air and M83 mainly), its charm lies principally in the fact that amongst the dreamy moog atmospherics and doo-wop charm, it isn’t afraid to be foppish and ever-so-slightly effete. Do the French really need to prove their masculinity to anyone, what with all that cigarette smoking and scarf wearing and Gainsbourg-esque sexcapades?

There is statistic (from some silly online survey) that says women’s desks are 100 times more germ filled than men’s in the work place, because they keep snacks at their desk. I tend to disagree on the weighting of this fact in the instance of roughage. Roughage has become the staple in here in this male dominated work place, for it is the perfect healthy snack. And for those who do not know roughage, which is otherwise know as trail mix or scroggen, roughage, as it is know here, is a delicious blend of nuts (almonds and hazelnuts) raisins, cranberries and pumpkin seeds. Roughage is kept in arm’s reach, in a small bowl in the top draw of the desk. As such, roughage is very accessible and eaten when mild hunger can be felt, to keep the wolf from the door in other words. Usually one 400g net packet of roughage is needed to get the working man through the working week, and nibbled on when necessary. Roughage can also be added to yoghurt for a different texture and extra taste. Roughage is also good because it keeps you regular.

But be careful. If roughage is inhaled incorrectly, it can sometimes cause slight discomfort if logged in the tract between the nasal passage and the throat. This will lead to loud unruly coughing and potential choking. If this occurs, approach your choking colleague from behind and wrap you arms around his stomach. With one great force, pull tight and bend the colleague over, forcing him to involuntarily gag, dislodging the small seed, nut or troublesome cranberry from his air passage.

Then, continue eating roughage, regardless of whose desk is comes from from, be it woman or man.

Several weeks ago I posted a clip of the trains in China (see below for train packers). This morning I was concerned that in fact it was Flinders Street Station platform 13 that was in need of train packers. That’s right, Melbourne. After Connex apologised for any inconvenience caused and the 8:47am train rolled up at the platform, seven minutes late, I saw faces on the inside pressed hard up against the windows, a misty smog appearing then disappearing with every breath they made, inhaling the musty warm recycled train air that 120 other passengers from the same carriage had also been breathing since the doors closed at the previous stop at Richmond Station. When the alarm sounded to open the doors and a human tunnel-like thoroughfare was made on the outside by passengers wanting board, the door became stuck on bodies inside the carriage as the bulging wave of passengers tried to erupt from the carriage. When the alighting passengers had exited the train, the new passengers scrambled in the doors like bargain hunters on Boxing Day at Myer. A horrible state of affairs really.

I know everyone beats Connex down about their transport shortcomings, but for most part I am relatively happy with the public transportation system in this city. Even though it takes me an hour to get to work each morning, just to travel from one inner city suburb to another, I don’t mind it, really, I quite enjoy it. But if I have a piece of advice for Connex it’s this – if trains are that few and far between and you can’t cater for a comfy spacious ride for passengers during peak hour and you must shove unruly numbers of humans into tight confined spaces to transport them, then take a leaf out of China’s book, get some train packers, quick!

We stumbled across this amazingness the other day and suddenly blublu has a fist full of new fans immediately. You just got to check out his stuff. This is a snippet of the wonders of painted animation on public walls in Buenos Aires and Baden. It’s called Muto. Wow.

A guy playing some kind of instrument called the Hang Drum. I don’t really know what this instrument is or how it works, but it has a beautiful, richly harmonic sound to it. And the guy playing it is pretty damn good at it too.

Well, technically its not New York at all. I’m in Detroit now, waiting for the plane that will take me on the second leg of my four part, 40 hour, journey from New York to my cold, wintery Melbourne home.

My ten day exploratory mission to New York is over, and I’d like to share some thoughts on the big apple and its constituants.

• Americans are physically very large people on average. Not particularly fat (at least not in New York), but scaled up versions of normal people. I’d say by a factor of 1 to 1.2.
• In the supermarket, cream cheese is to be found in the cream section, rather than the cheese section.
• Speaking of cream cheese, I have adopted it to become one of my major food groups (along with bagels, pizza and a newly found love of Dr Pepper). When applied to a toasted bagel, it is to be spread AT LEAST a centimeter thick. Delicious.
• New York is a bit like Melbourne. If your took just the CBD and multiplied it by about a thousand.
• Travelling between neighborhoods is a bit like traveling between different countries. Every place has its own particular and very distinct vibe. The Upper East side is serious moneytown. And by that I mean SERIOUS moneytown – mink-coat-to-the-supermarket kind of money. Chelsea is littered with galleries and populated by rich, pretentious, skivvy wearing art-world types. The Lower East Side feels a little bit like Smith St in it’s filth encrusted layer of dodginess, but it has some real gems buried amongst the multitudes of cheap tailor shops and greasy spoons. SoHo, with its wide streets and preponderance of two and three story brownstones, felt a little like some kind of weird Disney-style outcrop, except all the shops were really, really cool – and really expensive. Fort Green in Brooklyn reminded me of Sesame St with its quieter pace and tree lined streets, while up the road Williamsburg was mildly hilarious in its Xerox-like hipster homogeneity (think Brunswick street, but then take away ALL the shops that aren’t cool cafes or boutique vintage shops. Times Square and its surrounds are like the pictures you see of Vegas with neon lights and advertising hoardings everywhere (or, more accurately, like those pictures you see of Times Square with neon lights and advertising hoardings everywhere).
• New Yorkers in general don’t give a shit that you’re from Australia.
• New Yorkers in general don’t give a shit.
• There is so much going on in New York that you could never, ever get bored there. Unless you had no money. Which, given how much there is to do and that it all costs money, is a distinct possibility.
• Hostels are ok. They’re cheap and they provide you a bed and a place to keep your stuff. But sometimes you don’t want to be sleeping in a room with 6 people.
• Following up on the previous point, earplugs are a great invention.
• New York food is, on the whole, fucking amazing.
• Whoever the guy was who had the idea to put a huge, huge park in the middle of the city is a genius. It’s is such a glorious contrast to the incessant pressures of 24 hour noise, traffic, grime and crowds. If New York didn’t have Central Park, I think everyone would have gone crazy by now.
• Speaking of going crazy, I have never been to a city where so many people talk loudly to themselves for no particular reason. In ten days I reckon I’ve seen at least 20 people muttering, shouting, babbling, swearing, singing to themselves. And that’s not even counting all the business types having frightening arguments and deeply personal conversations on their bluetooth headsets.
• New York is awesome.
• Donald Trump makes sense in New York.
• Listening to New Yorkers argue is like watching Michael Jordan play basketball or hearing Hendrix play guitar.
• The subway is an exceptionally efficient way of getting around. It’s noisy and dirty and there’s some pretty creepy people about, but it works.
• Apart from when I ate a dodgy chicken sandwich in Brooklyn, I never really felt in danger or threatened at all.
• There are a lot of Hispanic and Black people in New York. More than I expected. There doesn’t seem to be much integration between the races. Blacks hang out with other blacks, Hispanics hang out with other Hispanics and the whites just hang out with other white people. Still, everyone seems to get along, more or less.
• There are TV screens cabs over here. They just show commercials. Sadly, it’s almost impossible not to watch them instead of looking out the window.
• Tipping does my head in.
• If you go to the Apple store, you can make free phone calls to anywhere from the display iPhones.

I could go on. But I won’t.

I have a plane to catch.

I hear you, feel you and can smell you at my door. You crept up the garden path over the weekend and knocked. I opened the door with the chain-lock on, just to check to see who was there, and it was you lurgi. Lurgi, I don’t like you or want you here. You make my head feel swollen and my nose run. You make me feel over-heated when by golly I should be cold in this weather. You make my throat soar and make me sound like a husky old hooker on the other end of a phone sex line.

I woke up this morning in bed with you, when you are at your worst lurgi, but am glad that I didn’t let you convince me to stay there all day with you. I know it is the time of year that you like to visit, but I don’t want your company to be quite frank, and basically I think you are a creep. I know I am not the only one, so if I can speak on behalf of any other lurgi-loathers, then please stop your seducing wicked ways and leave us alone. If you don’t, I will blow you out my nose and hock you up and spit you into a tissue and flush you down the toilet. Eeerrhhum!

goodbye please,
Pearls

Ok, so here I am, blindingly awake at 5.30am, sitting at a computer in a darkened room while some backpacker couple make out on the couch behind me. Oh, and I’m in New York, New York. (Cue the dancing frog and Broadway lights).

So some final thoughts on Japan.

On Variety and the Japanese Weirdness

I’ve been to a few countries in Asia, and Japan stands out to me enormously from them all. Whereas most Asian countries I’ve been to consist of two basic strata – the rich, who seem to shift inexorably towards Western values and Western ideals, and the poor, who out of necessity live traditionally as they have for decades. This homogenisation of culture exists in most European countries I’ve visited too. Each country will have it’s regional flavour, but it’s kinda like different toppings onto the same pizza base.

Japan has something else entirely. Japan is an alternate universe. Japan doesn’t have facsimiled American culture, it has something altogether more unique. Wealth has not just brought in McDonald’s (though McDonalds does exist), it has brought a great blossoming of what is Japanese, and to a large extent, Japanese only.

The sheer variety of everything is staggering – department stores with literally thousands of unknown and unrecognisable sweets (just sweets!), manga stores with tens of thousands of individual titles, vending machines with dozens and dozens of kinds of drinks, entire districts in Tokyo of second hand clothes stores, at least 15 (possibly more) major chains of department stores, the list goes on.

What is so staggeringly weird to me initially as a visitor is just the sheer number of the strange permutations of Japanese culture. Everywhere you look is something that has some kind of Western equivalent, yet is executed completely differently, from a completely different vantage point.

From where I stand, this mystifying culture seems to stretch on beyond the hoziron forever.

Some other stuff:

Japanese people like to take things as far as they can possibly go. Especially in places like Tokyo – the cos play dress up kids are a perfect example. Another great example is the efficiency of the subway and rail systems. Once, when we arrived at our destination after a 3 hour train journey, there was an announcement over the public address system that Mariko translated to me as “Dear Valued Customer, we are greatly sorry for the 2 minute delay in reaching our destination. Our humblest apologies and we regret any inconvenience this may have caused.” 2 minutes!! Connex take note. And though the train system is super-efficient, it mystifyingly shuts down at midnight every night. The assumption would be that it would be a measure to get salarymen out of bars and home to their wives and families. Apparently, however, it is to ensure that people actually LEAVE WORK.

There are so many other things that have me scratching my head about Japan – their incessant politeness, the whole schoolgirl obsession, the neverending consumerism, the proponderance of soft, mushy foods, the sub cultures of Tokyo kids, etc etc etc. etc. But I’m in New York now and there is a whole other world of strangeness to confront. Last night I had some pizza and a bagel and cream cheese from a deli around the corner. It was so amazingly delicious. And it was 2am on a Tuesday.