Abu Dhabi (3) 2009 Madinat Zayed (2)

Part 3


So, the next day I did exactly the opposite of what I resolved and waded through the files.

What a load of crap!

This was the business model gone stark, staring, crazy in an educational setting.

It was full of corporate Orwellian new millenium f**kspeak” (C.O.N.M. F.K.) for short). Riddled with words and phrases such as ‘benchmarks’, 'performance indicators’ and, ‘measurable targets’

( ‘Marks?” maybe, but I thought benches had been thrown out of schools in the early twentieth century.)

‘Outcomes’ and ‘Skills”. All this CONMF is designed to persuade the unsuspecting reader that the author knows what he is talking about when quite clearly he does not. We simply cannot know the unknowable by measuring the unmeasurable and designing the undesignable : “Instruments”, “Tools” and “Levers.” with which to “impact” outcomes. No matter how hard we try we cannot practically quantify or measure these things. I am prepared to concede that CONMF may be relevant in in an engineering context, or in sex therapy sessions. Both are indeed concerned with short term concrete, tangible products such as making spanners or orgasms-but not in an educational setting PLEASE!

In the educational world we are concerned with noble, abstract, long–term, undefinable and unmeasurable entities such as ‘critical thinking’, ‘problem solving’ and ‘values’. I say these are ‘entities’-not skills. A ‘skill’, like welding or masturbation is something that can be taught by demonstration and repetition. A beetle could learn to weld if it had the correct genitalia. I am mixing my metaphors but critical thinking and problem solving are clearly not ‘skills’;. If so, I would have solved all the world’s problems by the time I was fifteen.

By the end of the first day I was ready to throw up. The sheer arrogance of the claims of “the provider’ ( CFBT-the company I worked for) was staggering. They claimed that within eighteen months of starting the “New Curriculum” Arab Egyptian, Syrian , Palestinnian teachers in High schools who knew virtually little or no English would be teaching fifty percent of their classes through English!!

It was brilliant! In the U.S. this would be like asking an English–speaking American teacher to TEACH English speaking kids (with no Spanish) math and science THROUGH SPANISH after the teacher had taken eighteen months of learning Spanish say two times a week.

One good thing seemed to happen on that day. Ali , a quite charming accomodation officer from Sudan phoned me to say that there had been no progress on the accommodation front.

“Oh!” I said, hiding my disappointment, “Thanks for telling me that anyway. Where are you?”

“I’m in MZ,” he said

“In MZ!” I said , astonished.

“Yes, I am getting ID cards for CfBT company drivers”

I thought to myself “No wonder there has been ‘no progress’ on the accomodation front”

Seizing the opportunity I said “I come meet you now?”

I insisted. I was going to brook no resistance.

An hour later Ali had told me he had a ‘Villa” available and that I could have it if I liked it.

I didn’t realise it at the time but it was actually a pigeon loft. Close inspection of the windowsills, balconies and doorsteps would reveal vast quantities of eggs and pigeon dung.

Otherwise, it was very nice. It was a huge, recently renovated, empty villa with nothing in it except the pigeons –not so much as a stove..

I looked at it and made yet another brilliant decision: I decided . “Yes, this is better than upsetting Mr Ed by overstaying in his home as an unwanted guest.”

“This good one, I taking” I mouthed enthusiastically to Ali.

The deal was done.

Why Ali had never mentioned this villa to me in the phone call earlier in the morning is a mystery which may remain unsolved forever.

Anyway, I was later to be told directly by many in MZ, that I had been allocated the pigeon loft ‘out of turn’ –as it had been promised to a kiwi teacher (Jo), who was in fact in New Zealand for the holiday. (which is of course precisely the reason she was not allocated it). In a third world context if you are out of sight –you are often out of mind. I was also told that Stevie ‘wonderboy’ from ‘ull’ or some such place north of the Watford Gap , Ali’s boss, was furious when he came back form his holiday and heard that I had been allocated it!

Later on I would apologise to Jo and offered her the house. She declined and blamed wonderboy-not me.
I was also told that on my arrival, nobody had volunteered to share with me when Mr. Ed suggested it in an e-mail. He was thus obliged to put me up himself.

What a burden that must have been for Mr. Ed. I was beginning to get the vibes.

Anyway, this was all in the future. For the moment I was happy. I had an enormous, partially renovated, entirely empty, villa. I didn’t realise at the time but it was actually a pigeon loft.

I do remember Ali briefly pointing out the five centimeter layer of Pigeon guana on the windowsills with a dismissive wave of the hand.

‘This problem everywhere MZ’ he said nonchalantly.

As Ali was undeniably a knowledgeable person in this area (Pigeon droppings) and I was a newbie, who was I to challenge him?

It turned out that the other teachers in the street had ordered netting from the US to cover the entire house to stop the bloody pigeons from laying their eggs and Guarana on the windowsills.

They were like something out of a Hitchcock movie.

I netted the house with a green netting until it looked like a British Army outpost in Northern Ireland –or a fortress on the Gaza frontier.

They kept coming back to the sills. Teachers killed the pigeons with sticks and compared ‘kill counts’ at work in the mornings.

Anyway, first things first, I had other things on my mind. I determined to delay my battle with the pigeons , rather than exterminate them.

A couple of days later I went up to Abu Dhabi, bought a bicycle, and did the IKEA thing. Something I had never before done in my life. I purchased everything from knives and forks to beds and fridges. The whole deal.

I felt sweaty and nervous afterwards. I had never spent as much money in one day in my life.

But I was determined to make the pigeon loft comfortable and get out of Mr.Ed’s way –and his house - and then get on with my job.

Back in MZ , pigeons aside, life was quiet –to put it mildly. Everyone had in fact vanished!

I pedalled up and down the mainstreet of MZ on my orange bicycle looking for people or something to do.

There was one supermarket and three tiny street restaurants. The rest appeared to be mobile phone shops, hairdressers, grocery shops, or mosques.

There were Mosques everywhere-wired up with loudspeakers to make sure you got up and prayed five times a day-even at 5.30 in the morning.

No women on the streets until dusk-then they appeared like wraiths black and masked from head to toe, following their ‘Masters’ apparently docile. But their gait was not without menace.

I walked the one main street, with my bicycle, and entered each little hardware shop or Barbers shop and introduced myself personally.

‘Nice to meet you .I coming live MZ long time” I would say shaking their hands.

In the next two months no-one subsequently ever showed any sign of remembering me.

Eamon and I saw each other from time to time but he felt guilty (as indeed he should have) about having manoeuvered me out of the apartment into Mr Ed’s place–and ultimately the pigeon loft. This was all so he could pocket his housing allowance. So I think he was avoiding me a bit. But this was hard to do as we were the only two westerners in MZ for those two weeks.

In Adelaide, Maria says of some friends....

‘Its ok for them they have roots here –they have a life’.

Meaning of course that she doesn’t have a life.

And she’s right.

She sounds resentful. Wouldn’t you be? Was it not having a home or was it the unhappy teenagers-or was it just me? Probably all three.

She certainly blames me. In a way she is right, I am to blame. I’ve lead her a merry dance all these years and she has followed me loyally and what has she got in return?

The teenagers are depressed and take advantage of her: they won’t even wash their own dishes, let alone clean the house, cook or buy food. They just seem to sleep, eat, and get sick.

Whose fault is it? Well …I don’t really like to say –but it is at least partially hers aswell. Why?

She runs around cleaning up after them and feeding them until they’re ready either to sleep, crap or vomit.

When they ask for a lift she stops what she’s doing and takes them in the car to a place they could easily go to by bus –or bicycle.

So, she has created a rod for her own back and become exhausted.

But when I try to intervene to help her she takes their side!

That’s why I’m better off over here with my Taiwanese landlady, two Chinese girls, two Aussie lesbian cricket fanatics, and the two desexed dogs. There’s not much sex in our house but it’s still more fun than being in my own family house.

My Taiwanese landlady has a rota of domestic duties for us-and I’ve showed it to my wife so that she can see what can be done with a bit of Anglo-Celtic organization.

By the way , have you heard?

The following are the new rules for job interviews in the educational sector in South Australia:

The following words or phrases must no longer be used by an interviewer:

Should any of these words or phrases be used by an interviewer for a Government job, a buzzer sounds and the interviewee has three choices: He or she can decide to exit the interview and claim the job without any further questions, activate an electrical prod which he or she can place on any part the anatomy of the interviewer. Or, he or she can decide to tell the interviewer to go and stuff their job up their…a**es

An xxxx indicates there is no appropriate term in CONMFK, has become redundant in CONMFK or that there is no alternative acceptable form

I have put many CONMFK words and phrases with their acceptable forms in a table below for clarity.

Corporate Orwellian New Millenium F**kspeak (CONMFK) Alternative acceptable form
Goal aim
Target aim
Objective aim
Benchmark level
Performance indicator Test result /observation
evaluate measure
assess measure
lever change
impact change
driver cause
accountability responsibility
empower help
enhance improve
specifications details
Build capacity strengthen
Will have…… xxxxx
Will be able to… xxxxx
flexibile reasonable
What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are you good at?
xxxx What do you like doing?
What can you offer that others can’t Any special talents?
Why should we offer you this job Can I thank you for taking the time to make an application and coming to speak with us?


The Commissioner has deemed that the following phraseology or something similar is appropriate for terminating the interview.

“ If we are fortunate enough to receive an offer of your services, we hope we will be able to offer you here a stimulating and supportive professional environment where you will be given the autonomy to enjoy your work”

Signed,

Dr Don Nixon

CEO Educational Warcrimes and Truth Commissioner

Adelaide.

Fourth of April 2009

Employers and interviewers who continue to use CONMFK or do not admit to having done so in the past can not be granted amnesty by the Educational Truth Commissioner.

They will run the risk of being used as target practice by the Special Air Forces-or secretly rendered to the U.S. and placed in school yards so they can be randomly murdered by sad and lonely gunmen.

CONMFK started in the Thatcher years in the corporate business world of the UK. Reagan copied it in the U.S. . Howard finally brought it to Australia,

The cancerous CONMFK has spread like a melanoma form the business world into the educational world and even now the world of medical health. (Sorry, the ‘Health Industry”) Even politicians are infected now.

“I’d lack to see Barack Obama have some benchmarks for our strategy in Afghanistan” drawls the Republican Rotweiler on CNN.




Back in MZ, for my IKEA trip, I decided to take a punt and call the CEO in Abu Dhabi.

The CEO was a personable chap who had in fact been my boss in Brunei.

I liked him. In my nine years in Brunei we had had one or two brief encounters and overall I had come away with the impression that he was unusual in that he tried to be fair, gave considered responses to queries, and remained personable in a difficult environment where a lot of his employees were under stress.

CfBT Brunei had a very difficult job keeping the Ministry of Education happy as a client. I got the impression that CfBT were often asked to do the dirty work for the Ministry. Some expatriates positively enjoyed that role-in fact that is why some of them became expatriates. They loved the power and would have been nobody in Australia or UK.

But my CEO was not one of these people.

I admired the way he remained calm and considered in difficult circumstances and didn’t allow his code of personal and professional ethics to desert him as so many CEO’s do in such circumstances.

Not that I agreed with all his strategies at all. I didn’t . But the core of the man himself was sound.

His wife was a charming lady who had met my wife in Brunei on a transatlantic flight quite by chance and I think they both came away with a favourable impression of each other, although we never socialized with them in Brunei.

Let’s face it. I was bored and lonely in MZ. I was getting worried about my family: I was receiving alarming messages on my mobile from my wife in Adelaide.

Moreover, I was concerned about my own physical health. My bloody legs kept hurting with attacks of phlebitis every few days which although not debilitating were, nevertheless a cause for concern.

I needed to see a familiar face badly.

For the IKEA trip, I had no wheels and nowhere to stay in Abu Dhabi, so I called my CEO.

Maybe he would rather now that I hadn’t. I haven’t dared ask him.

‘Sure come and stay with us’ he said. Typical of him.

And I did, and they were most helpful and hospitable and understanding about my situation. I think if it hadn’t been for my CEO and his wife I would have gone back to Australia within a couple of weeks of my arrival.

Over the next few weeks I was to stay with them several times. They were very kind to me without having the slightest ulterior motive for doing so. That impressed me.

Back in MZ school started again and I started to get stuck in to the job.

M, my American predecessor began to open up a bit. I began to like him in spite of his abrasiveness.

Rid was still a pain in the ass and he had to be put in his place quite rightly by Mr.Ed after writing a couple of blunt letters to the accommodation office. But he was going to be manageable. I was confident I could reel him in slowly

The others on the team were all a pleasure to work with. N and Y from England, and R from South Africa. All had their beefs and moans about their employer but it never prevented them being professional and hardworking in my opinion.

I saw my job as building a relationship with the Principal (J) and slowly gaining his confidence. I also had to get to know my team. And, I had to get to know my local teachers.

Then there were the ringbinders full of files.

Unfortunately –none of this really got off the ground.

In the holidays, I was told of a new arrival for my team from Holland called Roe___. He had no experience overseas and I was worried he would be lonely on his arrival in MZ during the holidays. In fact Roe____ adapted easily, I needn’t have worried. He was happy to be in the Liwa hotel which was thirty minutes away form MZ. I had never been given this option as it was ‘full’.

It would greatly have assisted me if Mr. Ed (Do you keep thinking of a horse when you read his name? I do, and I don’t know why. Maybe it was the oblong face?) He had not taken the time to sit down with me and explain the basic structure of the progam and what the f**k we were doing. Instead of that he chose to throw me in at the deep end with a bunch of papers and sit back and watch me struggle so he could take my measure. It is the oldest trick in the book used by anyone who has power over someone else. I continued to tip-toe around his house walking on eggshells. My intuition told me not to upset him..

After the second week of the new school year facing another weekend in MZ on my bicycle eating at the same restaurants and hobbling around on my gammy legs I realised that I didn’t even know if I was covered by medical insurance –or if there was a reputable doctor in town!


Because I was Co- Principal of the school I had to maintain a certain distance from my own team. This was hard to do as they had their own pigeon lofts in the very same street. The other twenty expats all knew each other and didn’t visit me. I spent a lot of time looking for an excuse to visit them and establish relationships-but I inevitably felt I was imposing by ending up asking for a ride somewhere as I had no car. I even had to get to and from school with the help of colleagues. I could not stay on late after school because I had no ride home.

On Thursdsay afternoon at the end of week two I had a panic attack.

I looked at the four walls.

Roe____, the affable Dutchman, had just left in his hired car for the Liwa hotel.

I faced another weekend on my own.

The pigeons circled the house attempting to breach the netting . They flapped and wretched in the background. It sounded like they were trying to throw up but couldn’t.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore” Maria had messaged me.

What did that mean? What was she doing now?

I felt the panic rise and reached for the phone to my friend D C in Ireland.

“DC, This is MZ. I think we have a problem”

“O.K, Go ahead M.Z.”

“I don’t think I can do this anymore”

Oh…No?

“No” I said.

A long pause…..

I explained.

‘Well, you can’t continue to do what you are doing if you are so unhappy.”

Later he called back to suggest I go to Ireland for a while until I decided what to do.

I picked up my phone to my CEO and Mr. Ed to explain that my mother in Ireland was ill and I was requesting leave to go back to Ireland to visit her.


The next day, I went to Abu Dhabi and stayed with the CEO.

That night I flew from Abu Dhabi to London.

It was the probably the end of the beginning, and definitely the beginning of the end.

Doctoral degrees and Australia

It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an Australian to give anyone credit for doing a PHD.

This must say something either about Australians or PHDs.

Possibly both.

Why do they hate them so much?

We must not speak about them.

Most people have no idea what is involved in doing one of these things

Even when you like doing it as I did when I did mine.

Is the latest renovation to our bloody house more important?

or the footy results?

The Abu Dhabi experience (2): Madinat Zayed (1)

Madinat Zayed

Continued.....

I am still in Abu Dhabi-but not for long.

The next day, I waited at the reception of my hotel for the promised taxi to arrive at noon.

My intuition told me that the taxi wouldn’t arrive at all –let alone on time.

I was right.

At 12.30 I called S.

Is the driver on the way S?

‘Uhhh.’. ...silence …

“Get back to yuh in two minutes, D___”

Ten minutes later…

‘Ullo D___ –driver will be with you in alf an hower!’

“No worries S___" I said with a lame attempt at an Aussie accent.

I was trying to sound obliging and laid back like an Aussie. It really is an effort for me to do this. More to the point- why was I doing this? Maybe it was something subconscious -to do with the fact that S was so obviously a bloody useless Pom? And I just didn’t want him to think I was Irish.

The driver arrived. He was a pleasant Philipino but a useless conversationalist. He knew nothing about cricket.

All the cars in the UAE have a continuous bleeping sound which can not be turned off when you exceed the speed limit. The result is stressful to someone unaccustomed to it. It sounds like your mobile phone continually bleeping. Doesn’t seem to bother anybody else- but it bothered me.

We travelled out of Abu Dhabi through an Orwellian landscape of desolation.. It was like a construction site that had been hit with a nuclear bomb and then recolonised by cockroaches and metal giants, humans and electric pylons respectively). It wasn’t clear who the slaves were and who were the masters in this surreal scenario from a novel of H.G. Wells.

It was grotesque.

I was taking all this in when I got a text message form my line manager “Mr. E” in Madinat Zayed, who had been pretty quiet up until now.

I could tell he was a plummy pommy from north London or Essex, or some such place south of the Watford Gap, anyway.

‘ETA Don?’

‘Bout four pm, E’ quickly switching to my international accent. I didn’t want to sound like an Aussie or an Irishman to Mr. E.

And then, in jest.

“I hope R___ and Ea. (my two colleagues in MZ) know I’m coming.....-heh!..heh!" I said nervously!”

Reply on SMS from Mr. E.

‘They do now’

I wasn’t quite  sure what to make of this. Was this Mr. E’s sense of humor? Could Ea and R___, mature gentlemen and professional educational consultants like myself, really not be aware of my impending arrival?

I had one or two pretty uncharitable thoughts about S-but banished them. I determined to be positive- think like an Aussie even if I spoke like an international nerd.

I reassured myself with ‘It must be Mr. E’s sense of humor’.

I began to relax and enjoy the passing pylons, concrete mixers and cement lorries. It seemed to somewhow match the beeping in the car.

My Philipino driver seemed oblivious.

I was wrong about one thing right from the start. Mr. E turned out not to have a sense of humor at all.

As we approached MZ the desolate landscape began to change for the better. Slowly, but surely, dunes began to appear. By the time we reached MZ it was the true Arabian desert with dunes all round. I was relieved and my spirits lifted.

We drew up beside a three storey block of flats –quite conspicuous looking-because there was absolutely nothing else around it –just sand.

As I got out of the car I was approached by an elderly white male with a brown cowboy hat, a sauntering gait and a limp-wristed handshake. He seemed to have a permanent superficial grin with a supercilious look. He didn’t have to open his mouth. It was obviously an Aussie.

It was R___.

‘You must be D’ he grinned.

‘Yeah G'day mate! I said enthusiastically taking his hand, pleased to meet you.’ In words and body language, I was using both Aussie and Pommy persona for R__ –to keep him guessing until I had got his measure.

Now R___ I didn’t know - but I knew of him. He had been in Brunei and we had had a mutual friend in Brunei who had told me a fair bit about him. Not all of it was positive so I was determined to be cautious and get on his right side as I knew I was going to be the bugger’s boss.

Later events proved me absolutely right to be cautious.

R___ was an asshole.

I don’t really understand why Johnson doesn’t get more wickets against the South Africans. There is something about his action that isn’t right. It’s too round arm.

Why do I keep looking up to Johnson? He’s half my age. A few years ago he would have been abusing me in the classroom. And I look up to him? He’s the same age as my son. Who said human behavior was rational?

My second son, (only four years younger than Johnson) told me yesterday that I shouldn’t be seeking reality all the time. He accused me of being like my eldest son (who is the same age as Johnson).

‘No–its not reality –its sincerity I look for” –I protested happily as we happened to be sharing a glass of Coopers Sparkling Ale.

‘And, since you know it all (I thought to myself) why are Aussies so reserved and closed. Why don’t they talk? Why are they so bloody suspicious’ I say to him.

My son says “You just have to accept that they are closed and then they will become friends”


What had he been reading then? He is such a talented young man –and wasted on some of the mirthless morons around him at the University. 

Talk? Aussies?....No

but bullshit? For sure!.

Australia is grite mite –yeah.! You’ll get a job in any school - any Government school!

“Sure mate, and why is that then? Because nobody else will to teach the cheeky bastards of course


The outskirts of Abu Dhabi were a mirthless, Orwellian wasteland inhabited by drones who have no time to interact because they are ‘busy’- just like Adelaide.

Not much difference really. Just more sand in the former.

I only feel good when I am cycling, writing, or watching cricket.

Nobody wants to read what I write and I have nowhere to cycle either-but I do both because they give me pleasure and I’m not trying to please anybody else. Writing, in particular, has become a compulsion –an addiction –like everything else in my life.

Actually I do have an audience of about six people. I’m not very demanding  but I wouldn’t mind an Oscar or standing ovation from time to time,

If no-one else will talk to me then I’ll talk to myself - by writing.

Why is everybody so damn busy?

What are they doing? Nobody has time to talk to each other – what’s wrong with them? Is anything more important than talking?

It’s a western disease-this ‘busyness’ inability to make time to speak and communicate.

It is a monstrous cancer which metastasized in the sixties in the “West” and has spread into the other continents now. It is now out of control.


Our culture is dying: look at our addictions. We have created a soulless, alienated world which, naturally, we are obsessed with distracting ourselves from. With TV, internet, alcohol, sex, drugs or most commonly - work. I don’t mean just work –I mean ‘busyness’anything will do-as long as it distracts us from ourselves and the nightmare around us..

Nobody reads anything, talks to each other …no time.

Everything is drudgery and meaningless. Bits of paper here for this and that.

‘I need you to fill in this form please’

“Excuse me are you asking me? Or you are commanding me to do it?

There is a big difference. One is polite and the other is rude,

Do you mind showing me your bag please?

Can I ask to you for some ID please?

Have you got your mobile number please?

“I need you to provide evidence that you intend to live permanently in Australia”

She said “I need you to convince me that you are going to stay in Australia”

When did you migrate to Australia, bitch?

“I give up! I can’t remember. “Up yours! Who cares? When did you fucking migrate to Australia?”

Flashing lights…

“Pull over sir!” Can you tell me why you’re not wearing your helmet sir? Says the blue eyed Adonis.

Oh sorry, you see, I’ve just come back form Abu Dhabi and I’m not very familiar with…  I’m fifty-six you fuckwit!

Got any identification?

Fumble, fumble, a passport and a couple of hundred tumbles out of my breast pocket.

Can you tell me sir says the blueheeler, femnazi, sidekick why you have so much cash on you?

“Yes, I brought it with me from Abu Dhabi so that Centrelink can’t trace it to my account and won’t know about it and then deny me my claim for unemployment benefit you fuckwit!

I thought. Hasn’t this femnazi or her assanine colleague ever lived in the desert? They are surrounded by one.”

I had an instant vision of her eating a burger with tomato sauce drooling down her chin-Yuck!

What sort of mentality names a desert after a member of the British Royal family? The ‘Simpson’ desert-Jesus Christ!

To be fair, maybe ‘Simpson’ was the former captain of the Aussie cricket team. It would make more sense.

It must have been obvious that I was a little merry because I’d had some Coopers.

“Sir, I’m just gawiin to geev ya a wawnin sir!”

Oh! Good onya matey! Says I, a little too merrily

‘Yew mobile number? Sir, ‘oil ave to ask you to woke yaw baicycle home cause you’ve nao ‘elmet”

“Oh no worries matey! Good onya! No worries…”

So I pedal off feeling bad about initially thinking such uncharitable thoughts about the Adonis and his sidekick. Just blueheelers doing their job.

Can I join the DVD club?

Drivers license mate?

‘Sorry just got a bicycle’ will a bankcard do?

‘Sorry mite need photo ID.’

Out on to the road again –it’s like the Grand prix-whizz! Wang! Rubber on tarmac. The cars swish past with murderous disregard for anyone near them. One false move and I’m history.


Queues here, there and everywhere- for everything. Why don’t they pay people in the service industry so we don’t have to queue for everything? From one shop to the next its one queue to the next.

For a cyclist, the speed of the traffic and the shouts of abuse are alarming.

‘OK buddy whasup? Roars one irate driver at another stepping out of his car ’

What’s wrong with these people? They have freedom, wealth? Why do they shout at each other?

Why do they shout at me out of the windows of their cars?

‘Bloody idiot!’

What are they shouting about? There must be something wrong with them.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me.

Why do they play poker on a Sunday night in the Glynde hotel? They must be bored out of their tiny minds. Their lives are empty.

Why do they look so serious when they play poker? Is this how they get their rush – is Poker their cricket and their coopers sparking ale?

But Africans have nothing and they don’t shout at each other on the street because of some minor irritation. They don’t do road rage.

And yet all the young Aussies in the Adelaide service industry are so polite and positive.

‘G’day, how are you goin’ today? Says the shop assistant-or the receptionist. What can I do for you today?

Will that be all today sir?

I feel obliged to be polite back to them

Eh, can I have a bag?

‘Yep? Too easy!’

‘Anything else I can do for you today?’

How can these young people be so positive in such an Orwellian nightmare?

What are they on?

What am I on?

Should I be on what they’re on?

Should I be on something else?

I want to be on what they’re on.

They must have been to some politeness training school. The young people don’t grunt at the customer like they used to when I was young.





Yes, in Madinat zayed  R___ is the classic Aussie bullshitter:

“Oh, he says in a mocking, disrespectful voice”

“So you are my new boss –poor you....poor, poor you.”

‘Oh fuck–what an asshole’ I think to myself.

I have to write or I will die. I have to keep writing. Even if no-one reads it I don’t care. I have to keep writing or I will die. Only the six matter.(the audience)

Why are people surprised at schoolyard killings? I’m surprised there aren’t more of them.

People are lonely. That’s why they kill.

Simple as that. No need for doctoral theses.





People don’t send me E-mails or messages. What is wrong with me?

Don’t they think about me like I think about them?

My friends are scattered around the world?

One in Ireland, one in Turkey, two in Brunei, one in the UAE, one in England, one in the next suburb. That’s about it really.

Non-communication is the default position for all human beings-teenagers especially.

Ned Kelly was right..

‘Such is life’



R___ leads me into his/our apartment.

The apartment is large and spacious. Three bedrooms.

The lounge appears empty-no curtains, coffee tables, side tables, lamps, lampshades, carpets, mats.

Nothing.

There was nothing except two lounge beds which could be flattened out and used as beds but could not be used to sit on –because the flat area was too wide.

Both of them were parallel to each other and to the walls. When I entered E was sitting on one of them facing me, his back unsupported...

R sat down on the other beside me and looked stupidly at me waiting for me to say something.

‘Well...is this it? I said

Silence…yeah, said Ea with a slightly sheepish look.

They took me into the kitchen–a stove with no gas. There was a fridge. Basic crockery.

We had an amiable chat in which I recounted the amusing story of how I’d been nearly knocked out at HQ in Abu Dhabi twice within ten minutes of my arrival.

I searched their faces for a response -humour, something positive, hope-anything to reassure me that this was not ‘it’.

‘Would yuh loike a cup o’ tea? Said Ea-deciding I was worth persevering with for the moment. (Ea was pure Irish-not a half-breed like myself)

‘Sure thanks!’


Mat and W arrived.

“Goin fur a wawk then –oop the town?” Said M_________

“R u cumin D___?” He was from Liverpool.

W was more refined-obviously from the south of England.

“Yeah great!” I said.

Things were looking up. People were talking to me and inviting me to do things with them.

Off we went walking up the town.

I was on a high. We walked for two miles and then sat down and they smoked one of those ridiculous Arab pipes through which the smoke bubbles...

I felt old. Like I was about fifty-six.

I am fifty six.

But people were talking to me. This was good.

Back to meet Mr. E in his villa.

Ea and M___ came with me.

Ea wanted something. After a while he said –is it ok if you stay with Mr. E (my boss) for a few days?

‘Sure’, I said

After a few days it will be school holidays and you will have Mr. E’s house to yourself.

Mr. E agreed smoothly

“As long as you don’t mind moving in with E when I come back from the holiday.” Mr. E said.

No, of course not, I said, relieved not to have to sleep in a tent for the foreseeable future.

What else could I say?



Later I was to realize that Ea wanted the apartment for himself. It was a semi furnished apartment and he could pocket the 15 grand housing allowance. R___, the stroppy bastard, was poised to move out of the apartment in a few days.

I’d been outmaneuvered as usual –but sure what the f**k? What else is new?

Next couple of days –brilliant. People were hospitable, happy, invited me to eat etc.

It was like being a VSO again. Everyone was so young –except  R and myself_____.

I was Co-Principal of the school.

Work was good. My expat team were all there in a room. Exams were on and no work was being done by us or the teachers we were training.

I hadn’t a clue what was going on and just tried to get to know the Principal. And the teachers. They were all lovely people. The Principal himself (“Jihad”) was from Gaza-and the teachers were Egyptians, Syrians and Palestinians.


The students were a revelation –much better than expected. In the UAE in the eighties I had taught disgustingly spoiled students at an elite school. They were mostly royals and revolting.

These students were rough and undisciplined but they were desert bedouins and really quite approachable in the main. Mind you I was glad and I didn’t have to teach the buggers.

On the first day the American guy, M, my predecessor who had been passed over-and his job given to me did two noteworthy things. First, a student approached me and mumbled something. It turned out he had been beaten by the Arabic teacher with a stick. Beating with a stick was one of the things we were trying to discourage. It was tricky because the beaten boy was the son of another teacher.

Anyway, M saw what was happening and said to me.

“This is your first problem and yours to deal with-and walked away”.

Hmmm...

The second thing was to  fling about six ring binders on my desk and say

“Now that’s your second problem”

Hmmmm...

The rest of the day went well. I was living with my boss Mr. E__ in a room with no curtains, carpets bedside tables.

Downstairs Mr. E tapped away in silence on his P.C.

I had a brief but abortive attempt to induce him to converse on several occasions but like most Englishmen he quickly let me know that he found ‘chat’ boring.

Mr. E was a clean-cut, smooth talker. His head was shaped like a horse... so I'll refer to him as 'Eddie the Horse' from now on. He seemed very nice. I will try to be positive and objective about him but it is very difficult  for me. I suppose  what got me most about him was that all the girls seemed to love him even though he was plainly a boring fuckwit. I  can never understand this. I mean I may be lots of other things but I am not boring!

Perhaps it was the suits he wore. I never saw him wear anything else. Perhaps it was the plummy accent, or maybe the boyish good looks. He looked younger than his age. I think he was about 35. (He looked like a Boy Scout leader) I dunno. But it was something. The girls loved him and even some of the least sus and consequently more testosterone driven guys like the compulsive marathon runner, Mat, also liked him. So, he must have had something that made them like him. Maybe it was the fact that he smoked a cigarette only in the mornings before breakfast like he needed oxygen to save his life.

But the strange thing was it was the only one I  ever saw him smoke.

It was freezing –but it didn’t really bother me too much at first.

Two days later suddenly everything changed…

School holidays!


Suddenly, everybody vanished.

With no driving license I panicked and quickly texted L –who was my ‘Official Buddy” She  was also the 'Co-Principal' of another school.

“L, can you buy me a carton of Amstel beer when next in Abu Dhabi?”

“Well, yes D___ but it will have to be when we come back in February. We’re in Cape Town!”

February? That was fucking two weeks away. How was I going to survive two weeks in MZ without Amstel?

Leslie was a worldly bird with a history who had shacked up with a pleasant, South African who was out of work called G. She was devoted to him. I couldn’t understand it. What do women want?

I couldn’t understand G either-he let her treat him like a dog

She was the English equivalent of the Aussie femnazi.

I could understand why people hated her.

Everyone had disappeared without saying goodbye to me. I was wheeless.

I made a decision: I was going to get my myself and my accommodation sorted before I tried to get on top of the job.

In any case there was no-one- in MZ form whom I might get any info about the job from for the next two weeks...

During the holidays, I would try and get myself sorted with somewhere to live until Eddie the horse  came back from his skiing trip in Italy……

The Abu Dhabi Experience Arrival January 2009

This next section of my memoirs deals with an attempt to earn petrodollars as a consultant for the Centre for British Teachers (CFBT) in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in 2009....

Arrival in the Desert.

Yes it was… It was bloody freezing in the desert in the mornings in Madinat Zayed. (referred to as ‘MZ’ for brevity thenceforth) - with ‘peasoup’ fogs most days!

Can you believe it? In the middle of the desert.

Most mornings I was woken woke up at 5.30 am by the Imam in the mosque ‘calling’ everyone to prayer.

‘Calling’? More like ‘bellowing’ like a cow demanding to be milked.

“Allahu Akbar” he wailed. Although the mosque was a hundred metres away-his voice was actually relayed through a loudspeaker to within about ten metres of every house in the block –including the one where I was staying. There was no escaping it.

This was the signal to pull myself out of bed, put my feet on the freezing bare stone floor and skip to the emersion heater like a wallaby in the pitch dark. This heated up the water in the shower by about six. The bedroom of the home of 'Eddie the horse' (my boss)  was matless, rugless, carpetless, lightless and tabless. In fact it was curtainless and almost entirely furnitureless apart from the bed itself.

As it turned out the room had all been rather hastily arranged – but more of that later. I mustn’t get ahead of myself, but yes, there was a thick dense fog on those freezing early mornings in the dark.


It was the fourth of January 2009 and the journey from Adelaide was marked by the first panic attack about fifteen minutes into the air.

Because of family commitments in Adelaide I had not yet really started to think about where I was going.

On reflection, I think it was probably more than just the family commitments in Adelaide. I was really apprehensive about the whole project. That was another reason I hadn’t thought about my destination –Madinat Zayed.

‘Madinat Zayed’ I mused to myself - was it a little town or a village? Perhaps two hours into the desert into the empty quarter of Arabia. Close to the Saudi border. One supermarket. Google Earth didn’t show much else.

Hmmm…I thought to myself perhaps naturally following my train of thought ‘What will my apartment be like?” At interview they had said it would be a two or three - bedroomed apartment-and furnished of course I assumed. Sounded nice….

Thinking about it a bit more I thought “How and when will I be able to get out of this place?‘ Will I buy a car or rent one?’

Then it struck me - where is my international driving license?’

HQ Abu Dhabi had told me to bring one-and I had gone to some trouble to get one in Brunei as I knew the UAE would not accept a Bruneian license.

‘Ah yes, I reassured myself, it must be in my hand luggage with all my other important papers. It must be there.’ I tried to remember when I had last seen it. I was pretty sure I had seen it in Adelaide.

So I spent the next seven hours to Kuala Lumpur worrying about it. But when I came to think of it, I really couldn’t remember when I had last seen the damn thing. Was it in Brunei or in Adelaide?

Disembarking in transit at KL I frantically emptied out the contents of my hand luggage on to a table in the airport lounge-to a bemused audience of other passengers. I searched in vain- the license was nowhere to be found..

That was going to be a problem….

I arrived into Dubai in the middle of the night feeling slightly nostalgic about it all –I could remember vividly my arrival twenty years ago. The Dubai of the late eighties was a fine place to live –a mixture of the old and the new. Dubai was expanding-but still manageable in size.

I joined the queue for a visitors visa –as instructed in my ‘mobilisation pack’ sent electronically from HQ Abu Dhabi months ago to me when I was still  in Brunei. I hadn’t heard much from HQ since I’d received the mobilization pack. Come to think of it I hadn’t heard anything from HQ in months.

I thought to myself ‘Am I really in the right queue here?’

I soon found out.

‘You come UAE worok or jus vist?’

drawled the dashing, but unsmiling Arab slavemaster who seemed little older than a schoolboy to me This immigration official seemed weary after processing fifty or sixty Africans in front of me in the queue. I felt sorry for him having to process all these slaves.

The scene was like a set from the Pirates of the Caribbean with the sound on mute. There were queues everywhere with people of every shape, colour and size imaginable-but-and this was remarkable under the circumstances- they were quiet and orderly.

No-on reflection-maybe it was more like the train platform at Auschwitz with Mengele making the selections.

I didn’t like the atmosphere at all.

‘ Emm? I said. ‘I come here work but company tell me first enter visit visa’

He scrutinized me more closely.

‘You come worok or visit?’

‘I doing both.. I…...’

‘You go that one’ he interrupted and waved me away with his hand to the ‘worok’ visa counter.

Amazingly, this was the only part of the airport where there was no queue. And even more amazingly there was indeed a 'worok' visa waiting for me!

Well done HQ! Credit where credit is due. But they might have told me to pick up the visa at the airport so I didn’t have to face the Mengele selections.

First stuff-up from HQ.


Outside, I was met by an Indian taxi driver with a placard with my name mispelt on it as usual ‘Mr Dixon’.

“Hello’ he said shaking his head as if he was unhappy..

“Mr Dixon.You go Abu Dhabi?”

“Yes” , I said, ‘I going Abu Dhabi’ and hoping to please him ‘You play cricket?’

“No’ he said

“Oh! India good cricket’ I insisted.

I was deflated. He was not interested in cricket. I foresaw a boring drive ahead to Abu Dhabi.

Why arrive in Dubai and not Abu Dhabi? Good question!

MZ was on the other side of Abu Dhabi and nowhere near Dubai-in fact you had to go through Abu Dhabi –a three hour journey from Dubai airport to get to MZ.

This was probably because it suited HQ for some reason, or more likely, for no reason at all.

Second stuff-up by HQ.

It certainly didn’t suit me. Because my taxi driver wasn’t interested in cricket we didn’t have much to say. He did point out various landmarks dimly visible on the night drive to Abu Dhabi.

‘Dis one bigges’ in dee world!’ –he pointed enthusiastically at a slim black pinnacle above us as if he had designed it personally and been the guest of honour cutting the tape at the opening ceremony.

The night time urban landscape of Dubai passed by and somehow reminded me of that place where the orks lived in Mordor in ‘Lord of the Rings’

But my taxi driver liked it.

‘Oh yes, Thank you, very big one.’ We smiled happily together–pretending to be happy.

We were easily pleased in the dark night.

I thought to myself ‘Size really does matter! He was so excited he could have been talking about his penis.Why are human beings always so impressed by size?'

We continued on in silence mostly because he wasn’t interested in cricket. The journey became duller as we left Mordor and headed in to open desert.

I returned to my thoughts about my driving license-where the hell could it be?

At one point we turned into a petrol station and stopped –but not at the petrol pump for some reason. It was surprising for a taxi to go to a petrol station in the first place.

I was puzzled. The driver leaned over and said

‘Only five minute–private thing’

‘Oh no problem’ I lied. I was puzzled-even alarmed..

What could he mean? He didn’t go into the petrol station –he went around it and disappeared behind it into the desert. Was he taking a pee? –Why didn’t he go inside like everyone else then? Was he meeting someone? A girlfriend? If so, for him or for me?

Maybe he had picked up the wrong person? Maybe there was a ‘Mr Dixon’

A drug deal perhaps? A robbery? kidnapping? A people smuggling racket?.

I got out of the car and peered round the corner of the petrol station. Everything else seemed normal-people were coming in and out of the petrol station. I felt reassured.

Fifteen minutes passed- but where the hell was he? My taxi driver. It was bloody cold and I got back into the car. I didn’t want to spend the first week of my new experience sniffling and snorting with a cold.

Eventually, he appeared beside me shaking his head waving from side to side in apology..

‘Sully, sully sir, said the smiling driver I eat bad restaurant last night. Vely sully!’

For the remainder of the journey we didn’t say much.

Jet-lagged, I was in somber mood. And he didn’t like cricket.

I checked in to the hotel in the middle of the night and immediately broke my new years resolution not to fight with petty officials and bureaucrats.

A brief altercation with a stroppy East European receptionist ensued who tried to make me pay four hundred dollars for the night.

She deserved it.

‘Now, you pay now one thousand dirham’ She said with the inappropriate falling intonation which made her sound like an SS guard.

Jet-lagged as I was , and licenseless, I was not going to be intimidated.


‘No way’, I retorted “company already pay-la’ with my Malay colloquial use of ‘la’. (I was confused –and was still mentally in Borneo, but not confused enough to give in to this rude little hussy half my age. She should have shown me some respect. I was a consultant now-not a bloody teacher.)

There then followed a discussion behind the reception area and the boss came out and booked me in. They claimed they hadn’t been expecting me.

Third stuff up by HQ.

The room was lovely and I immediately searched through all my things for my international driving license. The more I looked the more I realised there were other things missing too–mostly papers of no use to anyone but me-such as the original of my medical examination and my police clearance certificate. Where the hell were they?

It was a mystery that I was never to solve.

Next morning I had breakfast –really good – obseqious slave workers from India, Sri Lanka and the Philipines attended to my every whim and they were all scared shitless of me. I began to feel comfortable again. Yes.. after all, this was the life –and I deserved it .

I was an educational consultant.

After breakfast I tried to catch a taxi to HQ for my nine o’clock ‘induction’ meeting. Surprisingly, this turned out to be a problem - it was damn nigh impossible to get a taxi in Abu Dhabi even from this lovely hotel! There were limousines available –but they were very expensive.

Anyway, I eventually made it to HQ in a regular taxi after managing to get all the security and ancillary staff at the hotel on to the case.

I was a few minutes late and introduced myself in a rush at reception to a very pleasant, but as it turned out totally inefficient Egyptian girl called R.

HQ were not quite ready for me, so I had to wait for ten minutes during which time I somehow managed to crack my head on a slanting wall in the seating area. Unfortunate maybe-and definitely unusual to do it twice within two minutes! .

After the first knock R didn’t know whether to laugh or send me to hospital. She was both amused and concerned and asked me to sit down again whereupon I proceeded to do exactly the same thing –the second time breaking the skin on my skull and causing quite a bruise to rise on my head. Blood was flowing!

I was spotted by people entering and leaving the building.I was clutching my head.

By now I seemed to be well known at HQ- the rumour had spread quickly that there was a semi- concussed Irishman holding his head in the reception area.

Things were not going to plan.

I made light of it all. What else could I do? But my head hurt like hell. Most of the Anglo Saxon mandarins ignored me. But one Indian driver noticed I was in pain and soon all the Indian drivers poured out of the kitchen in sympathy , and urged me, after careful inspection of my head to go to the hospital.

But I wasn’t going to do that –at least not before I had met the head of HR for my orientation. By the time she arrived the whole office seemed to be talking about the dramatic circumstances surrounding my arrival in the building.

J W from HR (just over half my age) woffled on about policies and procedures. I wasn’t paying too much attention. I was fingering my bruise. After a polite pause I proceeded to announce to her that I had lost my international license and my original medical certificate and my police clearance certificate etc on the journey.

To my surprise, I was a little non-plused – she seemed completely unconcerned about any of these things. I asked myself if they weren’t so important then why had I busted my ass trying to get them all in Brunei in the first place? Anyway, I suppose she had her own driving license so what did she care?.

J droned on reading out what was obviously a powerpoint presentation without the projector. She seemed interested in talking to me about the various ways the company could sack me in the next few months or ‘performance management’ as she euphemistically referred to it.

Curiously, ‘Performance management’ seemed to involve traffic lights.

It took me sometime to work out the connection between traffic lights and performance management – but in the end I got it. ‘Probation’ lasted six months and you could be sacked without any reason during this period. After ‘probation’, you were assessed every six months : ‘Green’ was ok , ‘Amber’ was a warning and ‘Red’ was danger.

I was fascinated by it all because J was, like everyone else, half my age, and like most of them at HQ straight out of UK with little or no experience of living overseas.

She was a bloody Homelander!

I was also fascinated because I knew there was no need for the traffic lights. Everyone knows that overseas the contract means nothing. Are you going to sue your employer? Well, if the Sheik or one of his down- line lackeys –including J –wanted to get rid of me all they had to do was say the word. She knew it and so did I.

Or maybe J didn’t know it yet. So who was inducting who?

Anyway as she finished her speal on traffic lights I scratched my head again wondering if I had some mild concussion from the second knock on the head. I continued to make self deprecating jokes to J and anyone else who would listen to my misfortunes. I tried to be funny so people would forget me at HQ-or at least remember me for the right reasons.

I learned this at school when I was a teenager in the sixth form, and unable to compete with the Rugby players or Oxbridge candidates for kudos. I could avoid criticism-and get kudos - by making people laugh.

I’ve been doing it ever since. But it is so exhausting sometimes.

Seeing my eyes glaze over with jetlag and concussion, I think Jackie eventually lost interest and told me to go and have a coffee before I met the next person in the orientation team –S!



S

S was one of those straight up English blokes who was the salt of the earth. He talked straight to you in a heavy northern accent that reassured those who needed reassuring. He was the sort of bloke who you would like to read a bedtime story to your grandchild or who would have done well convincing people to take off their clothes to have a shower before they went into the gas chamber.

S was personable, appallingly incompetent , but above all else, plausible.

‘Ullo’; he said.

‘Am S the assets and fucilities manejuh. O course, you do knaw that we ‘ave a problem with comodation in MZ? daunt yuh?

‘Eh…well, no actually, I don’t’ , said I ‘but I suppose it is not the worst thing that could happen” I lied desperately... (Why did I lie –why did I say that?).

What’s the problem? I enquired politely feigning disinterest and concealing sheer panic.

Steve paused and bowed his head. In retrospect , I often wondered whether it was in shame , or just to gather himself for what was to come. Probably both.

“Who interviewed you, Donald?” I felt a pang of dislike rise in me. I didn’t like being called ‘Donald’. I much preferred the less formal ‘Don’

“Eh, R and yourself, actually I think, S.” ( to be fair it was six months ago on the phone form Brunei)

Silence….

‘Ok, Donald, ere’s what were goin’ to ask you to do’.

‘Were goin to ask you to share an apartment in MZ with a compatriot of yours called Ea’

The fact that Ea was also Irish was apparently supposed to reassure me. S, being English probably didn’t realize that E probably kicked with the other foot.

I gulped and smiled and said

Yes?

‘And uh yes’ , said S, shuffling some papers in a rudimentary displacement activity,

‘R is in there at the moment as well.’

I thought I was beginning to get the picture now..-a three–bedroomed apartment for three grown men over fifty years of age who had never met each other. Hmmm...

‘Dawnt’t wurry’ , said S –It’s all kitted out with what you need-beds etc..

For some reason, I wasn’t entirely reassured. But before I could ask anything S went on..

“ Now Donald , S said, ‘I ‘af to tell yuh that if summit goes wrong with the apartment don’t put an ‘ole in the bloody wall or you’ll have to pay for it-you af to get approval to do things like that.”

‘Oh! yes of course’ I said.

S seemed satisfied. The induction was over.

‘Now, all you need to do now is get your AIDS blood test in central hospital so you can get your residency visa. And then you can go to MZ tomorrow.

‘Oh good’ I said without much conviction.

Then J came in and said – there’s a list of hospitals to go to have the AIDS test.

Grabbing the moment I said, “Eh Jackie, I’m a bit concerned about my driving license?

‘Oh’ she said, ‘The international license is no good anyway after you get your residency visa’

I was stunned.

This was surely not true. My mobilsation instructions had said nothing about this.

I started to feel apprehensive-but before I could reply she was talking about the AIDS test again..

‘They’re changing the rules I think. Now only government hospitals can do the Aids test –not private hospitals”

‘OK Don , said S – best you go off to the central hospital then immediately.

I knew the central hospital was a government hospital but I didn’t say anything.

When I arrived there it was like the MCG on the final day of an Ashes test. One o’clock and they had stopped serving tickets. Because of the new regulations all new arrivals to the UAE had to go to the government hospitals as the private hospitals were deemed to be too corrupt to issue certificates.

I came back to HQ and told S.

S hung his head and thought for a moment…

“Well” , he said, ‘what you can do is get up early to marraw-about 5 am, and then go to the hospital and wait till it opens at 8 am. That way you will only have to queue for three hours’

At that moment I think I gawped at S like one of those deep sea fish.

Someone interrupted the conversation.

I had managed to pick up from someone else in the three hours I’d been at HQ that there was indeed a government hospital in MZ.

I decided S was a bullshitter.

“Maybe I could do the AIDS test in MZ Steve?

‘Naw-there’s no guvernment hospital in MZ.

‘Oh!’ I said.

Ten minutes later S had been persuaded by someone other than myself that there was indeed a Government hospital in MZ.

‘ OK, Saw, noon tomorraw Don sumone’ll pick you up at ‘otel and take you to MZ. You can do blud test here!’

‘Ok , fine!’ , I said I was desperate to get away from S and HQ to the hotel in order to watch the cricket.

I needed something familiar to reassure me.

But I’d forgotten about orientation by the Admin. dept…

I needn’t have worried. When I got back from the hospital there was a pamphlet entitled ‘Handbook of policies and procedures for new arrivals to CFBT employees’.

It had been left sitting on top of my laptop. The trip to the hospital had meant I’d missed this particular part of my orientation.

It was one o’clock and time for my IT Induction session.

I was starving and hadn’t eaten since eight in the morning.

Setting aside my hunger pangs, I entered the IT room to see L rise and cut me off with..

‘Very pleased to meet you. Mr. Don, please don’t worry about your laptop, I will send it to you tomorrow in MZ.’

Something about him made me think that I wouldn’t see my laptop for two weeks.

I didn’t see my work laptop for two weeks.

‘No worries, Thanks’ I said, as he sauntered off for his lunch. I wore my Aussie hat and was determined to be like an Aussie- unruffled by anything.

I understood my orientation by CfBT now to be complete, and went back to watch the cricket.

The Aussies were losing, but it didn’t matter matter-I was happy.

The next day my adventures really began.

Christmas in Adelaide in 2008 The Return of the Native (3)

December 2008 Christmas in Adelaide.

Prior to my imminent departure for Abu Dhabi in order to earn the petrodollars to remit to Adelaide I spend my first Christmas there with the family.....

Dec 12, 2008

Yeah, well we Nixons are always ‘up for it!’ as they say in Australia.

Up for what ? A fight of course!

Been here for 12 days now and things were all going very well as far as the “home” or “Unit” was concerned –or so I thought.

The Magill Unit or headquarters (HQ) for short is the little two bedroomed dwelling –a creation of the commercial world-the place in Magill Road we are currently living in. At the moment there are four of us here: M, yours truly, J, and S. All in one small living area with a tiny kitchen at the end and two match-box size bedrooms.

The sleeping arrangements have been complicated by the fact that as usual half the family is sick for Christmas. For as long as I can remember sickness has seemed to stalk us at Christmas –within the last decade I can’t remember a single holiday in Brunei where we were not stricken-except perhaps the Bali holiday when R had to leave Cornell for the first time on Medical leave.

J started feeling sick the day I arrived and has basically been going to bed at 2am and up at three pm. This is her routine when she’s sick. This isn’t much different from her normal routine except that at night she coughs every twenty seconds making sure that anyone else near her (S at present ) can’t sleep! So S moved out into the dining room on a mattress.

Meanwhile, in the other bedroom M had the nice new “Foley” bed and I had mattresses. But this was no good as my snoring kept M awake. I moved over on and slept on my side but I seemed to keep rolling back on to my back after a while and on to my back. Eventually, I started to snore again.

After a couple of nights J had had no sleep , and neither had M or S because the mattress hurt S’s back.

I slept soundly for the first few nights.

After a few nights J had to go to hospital only to be told her cold was viral and they could do nothing for her. J decided she could no longer sleep when she was not coughing- because S had been infected by her cold and he was now coughing , snorting and grunting in the lounge all night! She said it kept her awake even through the bedroom wall.

At this point I decided to enlist the help of S in an effort to get M some sleep. We agreed M would sleep with J the next night because of my snoring.

But that night M had also spent a sleepless night because of J’s coughing-which was apparently worse than my snoring!

Earplugs were tried by all except S who appeared to be able to sleep through most things including his own snoring. But they were of little use to us.


The new arrangements did not solve the problem as the teenagers insisted on going to bed in the middle of the night and waking M up and then lounging about the house all day coughing and spluttering at the television. After the next night M had still had not got much sleep and ended up back in my room but still complaining about my snoring. I thought she had left my room because of that. Back to Square one.

Through all of this of course we also had to deal with the snoring of the neighbour through the walls.

By this time I was thoroughly fed up with everybody nobody seemed to be appreciating my efforts to solve the problem


The next morning M complained about the teenagers going to bed late and we had a huge row which with ended up with me going for a three hour bicycle ride.

Next day M changed tack completely (but not perhaps surprisingly) by saying that the everyone, including herself were fed up with 'Yours Truly!'

Apparently, I was getting annoyed unnecessarily.

It is true I try to organise people and things and lack patience when people can't see what appears to me to be perfectly obvious!

But good intentions are not nearly enough

As we all know the the pathway to hell is paved with them

It was déjà vu.

It seemed to me that the problem was caused partially by a lack of mutual consideration for each other, exacerbated by the unfortunate circumstance of the small dwelling and universal sickness.

But I was wrong. Apparently it was really me all the time.

Silly old me!

It is a crisis...


From then on I start walking on eggshells….



Visit to the F’s on 30 December 2008.

So yeah, we are invited by A and P to a coffee in between their lunch and other commitments..

We are delighted.


I value their friendship more than oxygen. But they don’t know it.

I want them to be there for my lot when I go the desert.

Am I using them?

Mightily probably. .

But yes, it would be nice to be higher up in the pecking order….

What right have we outsiders to expect anything other than this?

None of course–it is the classic ‘Anglo culture’. Adelaide may be pretty–but it is definitely Anglo….


It is such a relief to meet people like the F's who want to talk as a group together!

They all sit at a table and EVERYONE is allowed to contribute! How about that? How long is it since we’ve done that?

Twenty years? Probably more….

Not just bilateral or trilateral gossip discussions……It reminds me of Mexico or Colombia or even my youth in Ireland . It reminds me of heaven…

And I sit there –like an awkward teenager –saying nothing.

I think to myself. What have we done wrong? Why is everyone so unhappy?


And then I think …Well, I’m off to live with the Bedouins…I won’t see them all for six months… I won’t even be part of their life?

Will I survive for six months?

‘Fifty fifty’ I’d say.

2008 Arriving in Adelaide

I’ve just read a book called ‘wild swans’ - the story of three generations of a Chinese family spanning the communist revolution in China. Now reading that I am humbled by the gritty heroism of the characters involved –the daily struggles-the grinding poverty and excrutiating hardships the like of which I have never, and likely never will have to experience. It makes me feel so inadequate-that I have nothing to complain about in comparison-and yet my feelings of frustration with Australia are so real to me.

I feel homicidal towards them sometimes! I reflect: you really cannot compare suffering can you? Suffering is indivisible. Your suffering is as traumatic for you as mine is for me. You can’t compare apples and oranges. Your suffering is an apple and mine is an orange-there is no point of comparison. I have no time for people who tell me to be thankful for what I have-“Things could be worse: you might be like X or Y over there etc !”

To say that is to discount and invalidate my suffering –to compare suffering is to devalue it – and to devalue me.

Australians make me feel so incompetent and inadequate....

Take getting on a bus for instance:

The Aussie homelander will say ‘vr’bady knaows heow to git ‘n’ a bas mite?’

Yes mate, except if you’ve been living in Borneo and forgotten how to ride a bus.

Firstly, in the eyes of the the homelander bus driver, passengers always should know their destination, which means the driver should be confronted by a person who is at the correct bus stop. Second, the said passenger must know the exact fare and preferably have the exact fare ready to satisfy the driver. Third, the passenger must be in excellent physical condition-because when the bus starts as he wobbles off towards his seat he is likely to be thrown off balance and crack a rib as the driver changes gear.

So any pilgrim from Borneo who rocks up at a bus stop without knowing where they are going for instance is immediately subject to the bus driver snarl routine which goes something like this…

Borneo pilgrim (affecting Aussie accent)

‘Ehhh helao .. I need to go to the ‘cah yads’ on ‘Mine North road’

To which the driver snarls, curls his lip and looks at the pilgrim as if to say

‘No Dunny here mite, want the shirt off my back aswell do ya?’

Not having the correct change or knowing the correct fare, or which machine to put the bloody ticket in, or which way up the ticket goes in the bloody machine, or, on the train, if you have to put the f***ing. ticket in a machine or not to validate it?

To the reader these may all seem, as they did to me, to be minor misdemeanours in their own right , but not so to the homelander bus-driver. Cumulatively, they seem to constitute a felony in his eyes and a sentence of life imprisonment without the prospect of parole. However, since he is not able to dispense such justice he is content with cracking your rib by accelerating erratically through the gears as you waddle down the aisle.

Everything is so difficult for a rookie to do: take going to buy a car for example: I ask the local convenience shop for the location of the nearest second hand car yard and he tells me. We take the bus there and get off. I spend ten minutes crossing the road! I’m hot and sweaty and can’t find the car yard.

No people around. After a couple of minutes we find a loquaceous and cooperative car salesman who seems to be appalled that I want to buy a car for less then 2000. I resist the temptation to explain that I had to give away my last Falcon in Brisbane to my neighbour because no-one wanted to buy it. It was a real good car with years of driving left in it.

He tells us he has nothing available in that range and that we should go to ‘Port Road’ and ask. He says ‘theyah’. After spending ten minutes trying to cross the road to get a bus and then another ten minutes trying to catch taxis which never came, I finally decided to give up and cross the road in the direction I had come in order to go home! Yet another change of mind sees me back in the garage again trying to call a taxi. No response, so, boiling in the sun, eventually I decide to get the bus back to where we started from. Only had to wait fifteen minutes in the boiling sun.

An hour and a half wasted. But crossing that road, even in the wrong direction, did give me a sense of achievement.

The search for Real Estate

Next morning I tried to look for some Real estate agents to see if there were any cheaper apartments for M and J. No estate agents within the vicinity. The man in the convenience store sends me to Melbourne street. I find an estate agent and almost before I can speak she says with an unmistakable look of ‘Don’t bother me’ on her face:

“Go to realestate.com.au”

And I feel like saying:

“ I could have done that at home –what’s the bloody point in having an office here if you’re just going to tell people to go to a website?

And while we’re at it, what’s the point in having a mouth if you don’t want to use it?”

But I say nothing. I don’t want to get into trouble with M for complaining.

Where’s the personal touch? There isn’t any –and that’s still a problem I have with Australia (and perhaps with the rest of the world to be fair to Australia.)

When you are interested in renting a property they hand you an application form with requests for references?

It’s like applying for a bloody job. If I don’t know anyone –I don’t get a place to live, I just go to the Salvos or just pitch my tent?

Ever done that homelander?

Do you get it, yet?

Regulations and contradictions

Australia is over-regulated . Is this really the land of the free –the individual-the independent? Here’s the real deal as I see it:

You can’ t smoke here – you can’t eat there; you can drink inside, but not outside-or at least until nine o’clock, then you have to go inside. If you’re not eighteen you can’t drink at all–but you can go to war and get yourself maimed or killed for a bunch of neighbours who won’t speak to you or who don’t even know you’re there!

The bus doesn’t stop here, only there. You can buy only tea here, not juice. Do I pay now or later –do I sit here and wait or do I carry my own food?

So many decisions…


Intimidation

It’s all so intimidating if you don’t know the system and you are an outsider. I have no car or home or job and feel disadvantaged and a member of the underclass –intimidated by car owners, homeowners and job owners and ‘know owners’

Those who are ‘In the know’ are know-owners. But I can’t complain or I’ll be called a ‘Whinger’ by the homelanders.

You even check-in at the airport with a touch screen Somehow you end up queuing just the same to drop off your bags.

So many contradictions?

Is Australia a warm and friendly culture or are the people stand-offish? Is it just dementia? I don’t know.

Bluey’s revenge

We had a great time finding a successor to ‘Bluey’. Bluey was our ford Falcon when we were in Victoria and Queensland and he served us very well for nine years. So much so that we all developed so much affection for him that we were more sorry leaving him behind than Queensland itself.

Finding a successor to Bluey in Adelaide would turn out to be a difficult task:

We got on the train at Adelaide station at a most unsalubrious place close to Salisbury. We were going to look at a little ford Fiesta. Noel Byrne greeted us. He looked like an Irishman –and he originally was of course-like many Aussies. So he showed us the fiesta and to be frank we weren’t that impressed. It looked tatty and it was quite hard to handle for a small car. We also noticed a ford Falcon of roughly the same ilk as bluey –but a little more modern. He was selling it for 2000 dollars and it looked quite good. Of course it looked just like Bluey and, like Bluey, it ran on gas. The clincher for Maria was the power-steering. Less wrenching of the steering wheel.

So, we went home leaving a deposit of 150 with him and proceeded to get the rest of the money for Noel from the bank next day. We registered the car and travelled back to Salisbury the next day and completed the deal. Noel turned out to be a retired teacher and he was very pleased with himself that he had retired intact and was doing this little sideline selling cars in his retirement.

We drove away and filled up with gas. As we left the station I noticed that the mile-ometer wasn’t working. This was a problem because the gas gauge wasn’t working either–and Maria needed to know the mileage in order to work out how much gas she was using in the tank. So we turned round and went back to Noel-who was embarrassed . We agreed to bring it back the next day so he could replace the mileometer. Off we went again. Ten minutes later –the engine cut out. We restarted and two minutes later the same thing –and then again, and again, and again. Five times on the way home! We get home and park and as we leave the car a neighbour says

“Hey mite th’z wata unda your car!” Water was pouring out everywhere.

More than a little dejected now I phoned Noel and gave him the bad news. He came up to town and took Bluey’s successor away and left us with the little runabout we were originally interested in for a couple of days while he fixed Bluey.

It was fun driving around in the Fiesta and I think Maria felt more relaxed having a car.

Having a car to the urban dweller is almost now an essential part of being human. Without a car you feel disadvantaged and rapidly develop the ‘victim’ mentality. You can even develop mild paranoia as everything seems to be so difficult to do without a car. You can come to believe everyone , including the traffic, is out to get you.

It’s the same identity thing that teenagers have. Teenagers need their ‘kit’ today too in order to feel they belong: mobile phone, ipod, laptop etc. Some teenagers claim even that a car is part of the kit too.

My son said he needed the car to get a job at Macdonalds! As public transport services decline in quality a car has indeed become essential to get to work in many locations. When I was a teenager you worked to get the money to get the car.

Now, in Australia, you need the car to get to the job to get the money. It sounds Irish to me. But it works very well for the world economy. But it drives parents mad as they are constantly having to work hard to earn the money to keep up with the demands made upon them to provide ‘Kits’ for their offspring.

The disappearing agents.

We decided to try and look for a bigger place for M and J. The first problem was finding the estate agents. When I was in Brisbane ten years previously all the main roads were full of estate agents. So we were perplexed to find not a single one as we drove around!

We couldn’t believe it. We ended up going to the post office and looking them up in yellow pages. We found one or two and set off to find them. The general attitude in the agents was to give us a print-out of their properties from a website.

The web had made these offices redundant. Where has the personal touch gone? As an Irishman I find it reprehensible. We did find one very helpful lady in LJ Hookers who sat us down and gazed at us with curiosity like we were ‘retro’ beach bums from the seventies. It was clear by the way she handled us that she was not used to seeing human beings in this context (her office). But she came up with some very useful advice indeed.

She suggested we rent an unfurnished apartment and then rent the furniture. That way we could maintain our flexibility to move at short notice without paying the high price of a furnished apartment. A very helpful lady.

It was with much sadness, and just a little apprehension, that I abandoned M and J  to survive on their own in this brave new world.

I had to return to Brunei.

On the way home my flight from Brisbane was delayed by twelve hours. At first the Royal Brunei Airline representative , in that overassertive and commanding post 9/11 tone of voice which the customer has come to expect in airports suggested I hang around the airport for twelve hours.

I thought I was going to have the first ugly incident of my trip but when I expressed dismay she had a change of mind and I was eventuallly sent with the other passengers starting their journey in Brisbane to a hotel with food vouchers.

When I got into the lift in my swanky hotel I found that the lift didn’t work! I was left there standing with my mouth falling open. How could this be? This is Australia, not Brunei? Two burly men entered the lift and casually looked at me as if to say “Don’t you know how a lift works, dork?” They then waved something at the door and the lift started. It turned out to be a plastic lift activator. I was unaware I had been given one with my room key - a security device which had to be swiped near an infra-red switch to start the lift. Much to the delight of the burly individuals I looked humiliated and dumb.

Another new piece of technological software I have to learn to master to survive in the new millennium.

The war against technology goes on.

2008 Adelaide via Brisbane

This next section of my memoirs concerns our return to Australia , Adelaide in 2008.

Brisbane and Adelaide September 2008


This is the continuing story of an ageing Irish pedagogue.
It deals with the rehabilitation of the nomad, beginning with his return to Australia after a nine year absence in Borneo.

No-one knows it until now, but I’m hoping that this diary will be my secret weapon. Perhaps ‘weapon’ is too strong a word: maybe ‘vehicle’ or ‘instrument’ would be more appropriate.

There has to be some way of doing this: President Bush got it wrong –it’s not the ‘war against terrorism’ that is so dangerous for us all–it’s the war against complacency in our human naure. For too long I’ve kept this knowledge to myself-this frustration I feel with complacency. But now is the time to share it with the world.

Why is it that every time I meet an Irishman, American,Canadian, Aussie or a Brit, that I bristle with such antagonism? I’m not joking –just ask my wife –she’ll tell you. She’s always telling me off for making snide remarks about these ‘Homelanders’.

Some would say complacency is the hallmark of all human nature. Maybe I agree.. But I believe that complacency is much more marked in some cultures than others. For me, complacency is most marked in the ‘Homelander’ cultures of the developed world.

What is a ‘Homelander’ you may ask?. A homelander is a native of a developed country who is still living there and who has chosen never to live outside of his/her own country for a significant period of time.

‘Nomads’ like myself have originated in developed countries cultures but I am not a homelander because I have chosen not to live there for most of the time.

Sometimes nomads are expelled from a country, but in my case I have been in self- imposed exile for most of my life.

‘Homelanders’ for me are the millions of Irishmen and women, Englishmen and women, Australians and New Zealanders, Europeans, North Americans and Canadians who have chosen never to live and experience life in another country, even though they have had the means to do so.

They have never felt the need to propel themselves out of their homeland in search of something more meaningful. Obviously, many citizens from ‘developing’ cultures do not have the means to leave their country – these citizens are not, by my definition homelanders.


Why do I rail against them? Well, for a start most of them are Republicans in the United States, Tories in the United Kingdom, or paradoxically ‘Liberals’ in Australia.

This should be good enough reason in itself. But more specifically, homelanders usually share a raft of characteristics which irritate me: they are all homeowners, jobowners and carowners. They are almost all landowners and have some shares in the stockmarket. In short they are consumers and materalists. I am envious of them all.

They almost all are nauseatingly patriotic and talk about how great their country is. Often, they are humourless and incapable of accepting even the slightest criticism of their ‘Homeland’. some of them are rude, selfish and conceited. Many show not the slightest appreciation of how blessed they really are not to have been born in a developing country. Many of them either curl their lips in contempt or snarl at foreigners for taking their jobs.

The lack of curiosity.

Yes , there are plenty of reasons to despise them? But personally, for me the worst thing of all about homelanders is they have the gall to ignore me.

They will not let me be useful to them – they won’t let me be part of their life. When I return to UK or Australia or Ireland it is always the same: the homelander is always saying to me .

“You? You are useless. What can I learn from you? What do I need you for? . I don’t need you!”

I am invisible.

They look at my diffidence and secretly hope for my demise. They want to be able to say “I told you so”-so justifying their own lack of adventure.

Well, beware homelanders!

You’d better gird your loins for the hour of revenge is at hand.

The pen truly is mightier than the sword!

After nearly eight years in Borneo in September 2008 I arrived in Brisbane to be greeted by a friendly and talkative taxi driver who gently relieved me of eighty-six dollars for the pleasure of a twenty-five minute ride while we chatted on our way to Petrie where I used to live. As an Irishman I value chat and the chat was good –but not worth eighty-six dollars.

I was on my way to visit my son R______ who is at University-and thence to Adelaide where M and J had recently arrived to resettle in Australia.

I spent a delightful time with D_____, L_____ and their daughter who was once my own daughter J_____’s chum.

They seemed so positive and engaging. I son warmed to the atmosphere and began to enjoy myself. We had a great time reminiscing and bringing each other up to date on the past eight years. I really felt like they were pleased to see me! That has to be almost a first for me in Australia.

The second night I spent with ‘Billy’ and his wife who are running the Kallangur Motel, situated in the suburb we used to live in eight years ago.

They were also helpful and friendly. I can’t get over it. What’s happened? Why is everyone so friendly?. What has happened to the miserable old Queenslanders I once knew in the nineties? Billy arrives at my door in the morning with a plate of breakfast big enough to feed the British army –so big I don’t need to eat again until the evening.

He is waving in his hand a piece of paper which turns out to be my return plane ticket to Brunei. He said he had found it blowing around in the yard outside my door. I thank him profusely with the exaggerated gratitude you have when you have just experienced a close encounter with disaster.

But too soon! I look for my other ticket to Adelaide –and it’s missing! Yes, I must have dropped it on my way to the motel with L_____ the previous night. My elation suddenly turns to dejection –but wait a minute.. Ah! –it’s an ‘E-ticket’ –and I can print it out on the computer! It is just one little victory for me in the ‘War against technology’. Billie is happy for me too.

Next day, I meet R____ in Gilhooleys. He wasn’t able to pick me up at the airport the previous night because his car had been broken into and his license stolen. Nevertheless he’s calm and relaxed. Of all the Nixons R____ is the most relaxed. He calmly proceeds to explain that his Chemistry department at University has been ‘closed down’ just before his final semester began but that that everything is ok and he will still graduate more or less on time in December or January 2008/9. I think to myself: closing departments and flexible graduation dates -what is that all about? What does it all mean? In my day it was all organized: finals in June –all together now lets have a nervous breakdown and then , for most of us,…lets graduate together!

The next night we spend a perfectly charming evening in an Irish Pub in Kallangur called ‘Finnegans’. I remember this pub was just opening up when we left Kallangur. What a night of live entertainment! The group were as good as I’ve ever seen , and that includes thirty years ago in the Dublin Pubs. It was unbelievable! When we lived in Kallangur for seven years in the nineties we had never witnessed such live entertainment. In fact, the only time we ever left the house in Kallangur was to eat was to go out to McDonalds once every three weeks! (and ‘Sizzlers’ on Christmas Eve once a year –not on Christmas day itself because it was twice the price on Xmas day).

R______ mentioned to me that the centre of Brisbane was so cosmopolitan. I told him that for me it had always been like this –even in the nineties. I had worked in the centre then and he had been living in the suburbs as a young boy. It was just that he had been brought up in Kallangur where there weren’t any people from overseas.

Anyway, the second day we went to the Kallangur storage facility to inspect our belongings. They had been there for eight years. They were in a tin shack covered in dust an inch thick. It was like Tuttenkamen’s tomb: there was very little of value visible. No doubt there were photos in there somewhere which were of sentimental value.

I worked out that we had paid about fifteen thousand Australian dollars for the privilege of maintaining this collection of ‘memorabilia’ during the past eight years. R___was going to end this painful saga by retrieving some stuff and sending the rest to the dump in the near future.

And so to Adelaide. Boarding the plane the wind managed to pluck my electronically produced boarding pass from my passport. I arrived at the door with no ticket and was whisked aside for scrutiny while my credentials were checked out . Encarceration was avoided and a new ticket appeared from nowhere almost instantaneously!. Another small victory for me in the war against technology.

At about the same time R_______ told me later that he was resting on a bench somewhere in Brisbane and managed somehow to spill his car keys on to a public bench!

I am not the only ‘loser’ in the Nixon family.

The urban environment of Adelaide is pristine - almost clinical in its beauty. The light is bright –the roads are wide– some vast and almost wider than they are long. There are footpaths everywhere – often with nobody on them -except curiously, the odd cyclist. Why they choose to cycle on the footpaths I don’t know-maybe they are agaraphobic and are afraid of the space on the roads? Maybe it is too dangerous to cycle on the roads?

Maybe the cyclists are Irish.

Like all Australian cities Adelaide is essentially empty space. Everywhere in Australia there is hardly a soul anywhere to be seen. The wind, on the other hand, is everywhere – harassing you with it’s freshness and sometimes its ferocity. The air reeks of cigarette smoke, barbecued sausages (snags) and onions. It is dry–my lips are cracked. The churches are everywhere- beautiful churches with bells that surprise and charm on a Sunday morning. The parks are everywhere – beautiful grassy open spaces with nothing or nobody in them except trees and parrots. Graceful buildings are everywhere – stadia and museums – mostly with nobody in them. The heterogeneity and contrast is everywhere: old ,young , white hair , black hair – tall, short, black , white yellow. Everything is …well heterogeneous-even the contrasting clothes and colours.

Society seems atomized.

The unit is not the individual as in the UK. For the most part –it seems to be the couple –as in young couples–or just friends. There are very few ‘groups’ of people.

People don’t move in groups like they do in Asia, Africa, or South America.

Just when I’m beginning to relax and think “This is a pleasant place” my tranquility is interrupted by a monumental roar. The roar is human and comes either from a passing car –in which there is a drunk or overexuberant youth. Perhaps it is the despairing roar of some desperate pilgrim embroiled in a domestic dispute who has lost patience with his partner or found himself otherwise trapped in the web life has spun around him.

No, this is not Borneo. Here in Australia, there is always the hint of danger-the random threat and menace of the unknown - the hallmark of the developed country. But on the whole, the atmosphere on the street is really quite benign- certainly not as threatening as other parts of Australia.-not as safe as Asia by a long chalk –but non–threatening nevertheless.

The people behave strangely: there are ‘wackos’ in Australia. I am standing looking at a beautiful church and a weirdo sidles up to me and says

“G’day sir!’

He’s spotted me a mile away and sized me up as an interesting outsider worth a touch for a couple of dollars. And I say

‘See ya lighter mite’ brushing him aside immediately feeling mean, low and guilty.

There is always the unpredictable note of discord –you can never quite relax.

It’s not like Asia. It’s not like anywhere else in the rest of the world.

Maybe this will surprise you… The typical Aussie is so compliant and law-abiding.

As he arrives on the kerb to cross the road, instead of wandering across the road and challenging oncoming vehicles to stop like any self-respecting Irishman in Borneo, he stops dead so abruptly that if you were behind him you would crash into him.

He waits like a robot for instructions from the little green man! Like a well trained poodle. He or she then waits for what seems like ten minutes for the green man to permit him to cross. When the light flashes the pedestrian has to set off like an Olympic sprinter in order to make it across the vast road before a motorist cuts him down.




Expensive and busy

Twenty minutes from the airport to Kallangur in Brisbane –eighty six dollars in a taxi-Allah! Five hundred thousand dollars for a three-bedroomed house; three dollars fifty for a coffee; seven dollars for a beer, a hundred and fifty three dollars for a one course meal for three. What ever happened to the cheap Australia I used to live in the nineties?

Everybody is busy and bursting with energy! The shop assistants and the waiters can’t do enough. With everyone I talk to I feel like I am imposing and a nuisance. I feel the constant need to apologise for my presence to complete strangers before I even open my mouth- to the shop assistants, the waiters, the bank tellers, the receptionists in the estate agent, and even the motorists for getting in their way at a pedestrian crossing ‘their’ road. Even with friends I feel the same:

“Sorry for taking up your time listening to this phone message. I’m sure you are busy doing other really important things.. Sorry for getting in your way. Sorry, sorry, sorry- sorry for existing! I’ll just swipe my self-destruct button so that I can get the hell out of your way once and for all. Then I won’t be bothering you any more. Sorry…”