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Asia, Australia and the sex of potatoes
READERS often write to ask me whether I think Asia exists. And I reply: Yes, it does. It's a big place full of non-pink people on the right of the world map.
At which point, the reader respectfully adds: "No, you drooling idiot, I mean the CONCEPT of Asia. Do countries of the region have anything in common other than being neighbours?"
You'd think the answer would be no - until you visit Australia. Then you realise that being a member of the Asia-Pacific family doesn't make you Asian. Australia is a fantastic place, but SO different. Take the weather for example. Scheduled to do some book talks Down Under, I checked the weather reports. They all said: "Australia is in the grip of a massive drought."
Unbelievably, there was nothing on the Internet about what the fashionable gentlemen should wear when touring droughts. The only advice I could find was to take water.
But my water bottle was confiscated at the boarding gate. "Sorry, sir, you can't take that on the plane," said the flight attendant. "Safety reasons."
Has anyone else noticed the irony that airline staff classify water as a highly dangerous substance, but then will hand you a tray of airline "food " without batting an eyelid?
So I arrived waterless on the arid plains of northeast Australia only to find that the town had been deluged for weeks and my first speech had been cancelled, because the venue was flooded.
During an event I did with another author in a waterlogged field, we slipped around so much that we had to change the title from "A Discussion of the Creative Process" to "A Discussion of the Creative Process and a Demonstration of Mudwrestling."
It rained solidly the whole time, so take note. Australian droughts are not like Asian droughts. Theirs are wetter. If that's the dry season, what's Australia like in the wet season? Underwater kingdom?
Next on my tour was a flight south to Canberra, a city famous for bushfires several kilometers long. I envisioned a sweltering settlement in a landscape of burned trees.
It was snowing. Large drifts of
cold, white stuff were clearly visible on the hills around. In an Australian newspaper, pundits explained that the unusually cold weather had been caused by global warming.
I was reminded of an ancient joke. "Did you hear about the time vandals flooded Dublin? Irish Police said they were searching for arsonists." Clearly, the Irish have been maligned. The incident must have taken place in Australia, where droughts are wet, fires are cold and global warming gives you a chill.
Australia is a great place to visit, but be warned, they don't speak English. A coffee is a "flat white," underpants are "Reg Grundys’ and "sex" refers to large cloth bags containing potatoes. The phrase "Let's have
sex" means "Chuck them bags of potatoes over here, will ya?’ (Remember this to avoid disappointment.)
1 was astonished to see that the local newspaper carried an advertisement for The Australian Cannabis Cookbook. Now you definitely wouldn't see that in Asia.
On the flight back to Asia, I was consumed in thought. Isn't it strange that in some places, highly dangerous substances are openly accepted and consumed, while in others, the same lethal substances are shunned and feared?
I am talking, of course, about airline food.