Lost At Sea

Well here I surface in Macau, a good half year after my last posting. It is difficult to make excuses here – so I won’t & hope this will not happen again.
What I have & have not been doing will reveal itself in due course.
Proceeding is the last 6 months in a nutshell ( or a coconut shell or one of those really big clam shells that goddesses emerge from …)

Death In Brunswick Melbourne, December 2007
After packing up our lives in Melbourne & closing the doors to 7 years on Webb Street, I’d gone to Sia’s on the Saturday ( I was due to fly out on the Monday) to drop off my bags – which I did, on her back verandah. Then it was off to the Union for one last hurrah. Many hurrahs later, I found myself leaving Panama on Smith Street in a cab & heading for Sia’s.
Noone answered my increasingly loud knocks on the door. It was very cold ( that freaky cold rainy Staurday before Christmas) & in my state & at that time of night, I had no other option than to use my luggage as a bed on the back verandah. This I endured for about a couple of hours, maybe - the slippery scales of time are at their most illusory in these moments. When the tips of my fingers started to turn unnaturally white & become very painful, I imagined my body could be discovered the next day clinging in vain hope to a suitcase cast adrift in Brunswick.
I had to do something! I had already tried to find my mobile phone but couldn’t. Walk to Lygon Street & find a phone box? No mobile, no numbers. Hail a cab & knock on someone else’s door? And if they weren’t home?
Knock on Sia’s door again? So I did - Sia appeared bleary eyed & let me in. I had awoken her.
She had retired to the pool tables at the Union. I hadn’t seen her & left with others to go to the Panama. In the meantime she had no idea where I was. I returned home before her & while I was hunkered down on the back verandah she had gone to bed.

The next day I saw the contents of my hand bag on the front verandah – this was when I had been rummaging around in the dark trying to find my phone to call Sia – the mobile was still there, hidden behind a pot plant.

Sia prepared a comforting, unctuous & very French stew of eye fillet of veal, baby onions, mushrooms & carrots bound together with an extravagant roux & accompanied with her very special rich mash & asparagus for Sunday dinner.

Jeremy & Tamara joined us for this repast, & Sia & I stayed up late into the night drinking port & nibbling on cheese, not really wanting to say goodbye. Sia’s housemate returned home from work & as the story of the previous night unfolded it was deduced that he had been home in bed through the whole ordeal and hadn’t heard me knock (?!) , but had heard rustling on the back verandah & had assumed it was the cat, Pony.

I was up before 6am for a creative repack & to get my cab to the airport where I met PB who was also flying out to Perth. By then I was completely frazzled from the packing & shipping & cleaning & organising & farewells etc. that had consumed my last 2 months of a 9 year tour of duty in Melbourne. A couple of late & emotional nights added to the mix….well….

The gods were smiling that day & we were both upgraded to Business Class (which was very handy for the 20 or so kilo excess I was carrying). Toasting our good fortune & the fact that it was Christmas Eve, we took full advantage of the consumables that were regularly offered, and ate & drank from lift-off to touchdown whereupon we rolled our separate ways to our waiting Loved Ones.


Indian Romance Perth, December 2008
Michael,whom I had lost to Macau some 2 months prior, was waiting at the airport & off we went to start a 6 week sojourn for me & a 10 day stay for him in Perth. This included an awkward Christmas, a birthday, a birth, a death, completing 2 years of tax returns, finishing off a couple of jobs in Melbourne, some ocean & river sailing and some long nights with old friends.

The highlight was ( & history never lets me down on this one if I am lucky enough to be in the city where it is that particular year) Dean’s birthday [party], a gathering of old friends & a smattering of more recent ones & out-of-towners Lorraine & Gwyn from Sydney.
The evening started on David’s balcony in Cottesloe on Christmas night & ended on Boxing Day in the same place. We sat contemplating the glassy surface of the Indian Ocean while Jonesy kept the Daiquiris coming all night long – mixes that ranged from the sublime ( a cornucopia of summer/Christmas fruits) to the ridiculous ( finely diced herbs that tasted like lawn clippings & get stuck in your teeth.. anyone? ) We ate Christmas lunch leftovers care of Alfonso (my Pa) – turkey soup, crayfish pasta & grilled crayfish and David – roast turkey & ham. We danced to songs that we had all been dancing to together over the many years as friends, talked some profundities & loads of nonsense….

Lorraine: “Dean, mind Michael while I go mix more Daiquiris.”
Dean: “Okay!”
Michael: “I’ve been mound.”

As Boxing Day dawned our motley crew descended on the family packed beach with an esky of champagne (we left Dean & Hugh behind on the balcony, too wary & sensible of the burning West Australian sun on a 40 degree day). We returned & our genial host David whipped up his special chicken curry to accompany some superb cellared big reds. Slowly but surely we peeled off into the late afternoon while the sunset over the West Australian coast that rarely fails to incite awe ( sure to keep many a German Romantic trembling) bid us a lofty farewell.

Alice in Nisekoland Niseko, February 2008
Then M & I went to Nisseko on the island of Hokkaido, Japan for a 10 day ski holiday. Nisseko was a dreamy winter wonderland with powder covered slopes & fantastic food, sake, beer & shiatsu. I hadn’t been anywhere for a long time that truly let my mind from working/straying to things that were irrelevant to the here & now….I was on holiday…I had escaped down that rabbit-hole.
We were joined by Barb, Lucinda & Matt from Melbourne.
Lucinda & Matt’s friend, Dan & his son, Lincoln, came up from Tokyo for a long weekend. We played “Cheat” a lot. Lincoln is 9 years old & as cavalier a boy of that age can be on the slopes, so he was at the use of the word “Cheat”, which stood him in very good stead at first in a take no prisoners sort of way, before his empire crumbled & a victorious Matt flashed his Cheshire grin.
The lovely Lucinda had the misfortune of blowing out her knee on the second day which involved trips to the hospital, a brace & a frustrating stay inside the house before she & Matt had to depart early for Tokyo to get to a hospital.
B, M & I stayed on & spent our final night playing pool & then drinking in a bar behind a fridge door that required shrinking in size to enter. It was small with just a long table for a bar behind which impossibly cool Japanese dudes mixed great drinks & spun some retro vinyl. We met two young medical specialists from Australia who had great pleasure in telling us they were there for a 2 week medical conference, how their skiing had improved immensely, how they had been to other conferences that had allowed them to ski a lot.. We imagined trying to pitch an architecture conference in Japan, not in one of architecture’s wet dreams, Tokyo, but on a mountain… in winter.. in the snow…as far from urbanity as possible….surrounded by trees that have huge blobs of snow that get caught in the crooks of branches making them look like a Myer window dresser’s idea of Christmas……yup, yup-yup-yup. Our glasses seemed to desperately say DRINK ME; though they were slightly sour after that.

Hai, Hai, Hai… Tokyo, February 2008
What can I say? …………...What took me so long?............ Everything……………… I’m in love with this city………………….

Hong Kong Garden February 2008
Suddenly we were in a place that was dirtier, noisier, smoggier, denser; a place where your ideas of spatial privacy are severely challenged, where the chillis have blown such a gaping hole in your eardrums that the wind starts to whistle through them, where extremely high skyscrapers jostle for what footprint they can get in competition with apartment blocks so thin & so tall they look like willows from afar, where neon lights are plastered & suspended mid-air everywhere - from the retro graphics of tawdry back street pawn & porn shops to abstract lines snaking around I.M Pei’s Bank of China; a seething mass of vertical urban environment clinging to a quarter of its densely vegetated landmass of great peaks & valleys……… Welcome to Hong Kong.

M & I bid farewell to Barb a couple of days later as she returned to Melbourne & we boarded a ferry to our new home on Macau which I was yet to see…..

Macau Merivigliao Macau, March 2008
The first thing I saw from the ferry through the night sky & the ever present haze were the flashing lights of the Sands, Macau. There is much to say about this ex-Portugese colonized enclave, but I am struggling with the size of this shell – there will be plenty of time for this later.


Not Much Between Despair & Ecstasy Bangkok, March 2008
Why not? Easter long weekend, cheap fares on AirAsia direct from Macau airport & the inimitable charms of Prof. Mike waiting at the other end.

Flew in Thursday night & met Prof. Mike at an old haunt along Sukhumvit, went to an outdoor suburban restaurant that made great Issan food – lots of chargrilled meats & extremely hot chilli, & stayed the night in a hotel where ‘roaches get their own room……

Friday Michael & I did the tourist stuff - wandered around wats, went on the skytrain, the Chao Praya ferry, a klong ride & even managed to fall prey to one of the oldest tuk-tuk tricks in the book that can befall young players. Mmm, it had been some time..

The last time I visited BKK was in 1999 at the end of Michael’s 2 year work stay there. But I remembered so much of it - it was like returning to an old friend - it was rather comforting. Though it seems to be a lot cleaner now & has been touched with the glamour brush that is international marketing of big brands, multi-level shopping complexes, new 5-star hotels & even apartment complexes going up on the dirty river that make billboard promises with young couples lounging around on big couches with big white smiles all wrapped up in greys & whites & soft blues – how do you say “latte lifestyle” in Thai?

Friday night we went to dinner with Prof Mike & famiglia to one of their local places. Full of tanks of weird crustaceans that look like the results of a genetic mutation experiment. We then stayed at his house in the 'burbs about 40 minutes by car outside the city - a little 2 storey number with lots of tiles, a lovely porch & a mango tree about 5m high groaning with green mangos that were constantly plucked ( with a special long handled mango plucker fashioned by Mike & Michael) & eaten with sugar syrup & chopped fresh chilli.

On Saturday we went to Ayutthaya & visited the Bang Pa-In Palace - a Royal Palace or rather a series of houses built in different styles on manicured & European style grounds, gardens & man-made lakes - used, in turns as full-time residences for different wives, Summer Residences, visiting dignitaries etc. or whatever rotations/liasions/webs Royal families affect.

We then went to look at what remained of the old Kingdom of Ayutthaya ( Capital of Old Siam) before its palaces & temples were sacked, the Buddha statues beheaded & whatever valuables were plundered over 300 years ago. It still holds great beauty & with a clichéd setting of a giant red disc of a sun & peppered with frangipanis it’s one of those places one is incapable of taking a bad photograph.

On Sunday we braved the labrythine & suffocating atmosphere of Chatuchak market & Sunday night we had dinner at Prof. Mike's - squid & prawns over a charcoal fire, lots of raw greens & loads of chilli sauce pounded by Nok in the mortar & pestle. Nok's sister Meow & son Bon were staying as well. Bon is about 6. He & Boat devoured the chilli like it was sugar. Michael & I abetted ourselves with the assistance of beer.

Boat is Nok's son from a previous relationship. He's very easy to get along with, despite no common spoken language - about 8 or 9 years old.
His mission for the market that day was the acquisition of a turtle. There were no “ordinary” turtles available, only exotic ones that were too expensive for a young boy’s pet. Instead he got a pet rabbit - a tiny, tiny thing in a small ventilated box. As we went through the market Boat spotted a water feeder for rabbits. He was told that he couldn't have it. I thought it was a good idea, but Mike said that the rabbit will only last 2 weeks - Nok gave it 3 days!

We got back in the car, with Boat & Nok & the rabbit & myself on the back seat. I thought the rabbit looked a little stunned - he didn't really do anything - frozen by fear, I think. Boat was handling him a lot, & I thought he looked a little small for that. We stopped at a huge food market to collect the ingredients for dinner & Mike told Boat to put the rabbit back in the box & leave it in the car. When we returned to the car ( about half an hour later) Mike said, “ Let's have a look at the rabbit”. O-oh - it was stiff as a door! Poor old Boat wailed & blamed Mike. Nok blamed Mike.Mike & Michael sat in the front hatching a plan to crucify the rabbit as we really hadn't done anything Eastery. Nok comforted Boat & I tried to convince Nok that the rabbit hadn't died of asphyxiation but shock. Mike & Michael discussed tracking down his parents, practised eulogies & wailed that it was too good for this world. Nearly home, we stopped at a 711 to pick up beer. Mike bought Boat a tractor with a trailer containing a mama panda, a baby panda & a tiger. Boat was thrilled, the rabbit was forgotten & Mike was pleased that the purchase was the same cost as the rabbit.

Family Ties Perth, April 2008
This was an unexpected return/ interlude, a family affair that involved me slipping into here without anyone knowing – a very difficult thing to do in a city that, at any time, you are bound to walk into someone that is connected to you probably only by one or two degrees of separation rather than the usual six.

The timing of my departure was, well, rather timely as the Dottore was booked to come & visit Macau & HK. We took the same flight which helped with that extra suitcase I had had to leave behind at the airport with my mother the last time I left for Macau - Perth Qantas ground staff weren’t nearly so generous as Melbourne - remember that 20 kilo excess I spoke of back in December?…


Landed Macau, May 2008
The humid season had begun & the Good Doctor & I went looking for a hotel swimming pool. We thought we’d try the Wynn, a big Vegas operated number with suitable glam factor. Alas, no, we were not allowed into the pool area unless we were guests of the hotel even after we tried to grease their palms with a few patacas (or mananas as Michael calls them). There is a doorman stationed at the big glass door to the palm-fronded compound & one requires a room swipe card to enter, so we couldn’t even try any other entry options.

We stayed in the complex to eat club sandwiches in a café with a ceiling height glass window that separated us from those series of terraced blue-tiled pools with bejeweled camel statues & palm fronds – beckoning, mocking……

We had to skip this joint & search for that jackpot – entry to a hotel pool. Next stop – the Casino & Hotel Lisboa.

The Lisboa is one of the casinos owned by Stanley Ho whose company had a monopoly on the gaming licenses here in Macau from the 1960s until 2002. It was built in the late 60s & this beautiful ( & to his credit, largely unrenovated) confection owes as much to Hollywood Regency style as it does to the surrounding Portugese architecture & concrete block screens.

The basement is made up of a series of narrow, curving & labyrinthine arcades lined with shops that have seen better days though still displaying, in a very haphazard fashion, luxury brand items, basic fruit & juice shops, linoleum tabled dining rooms & strange souvenir shops.
Everything is tinged with the colour & odour of stale cigarette smoke. It is a place frozen in time seemingly populated by Chinese versions of Ari Onassis on his yacht – big glasses with gradient lenses, fine cotton polos (not the American sports variety) & casual loafers. Realising this is where we did not want to be, the Dottore & I tried in vain to exit. We always seemed to return to the same spot. Strains of “Hotel California” came to both our minds. A little exhausted we stopped for a freshly squeezed orange juice at one of the open sided shops located on a major arterial pivot point. We stood & sucked on the juice. Suddenly from beyond a blindspot in the curved arcade came walking a young Chinese woman arm in arm with another. I was initially curious at the sight of another woman in the arcade besides myself & the shop assistants. After half a second this gave way to surprise as my eyes could not help themselves but drift to their chests which ,by any standard, were full..some. Then from beyond that blind spot came others…. All late teens or in their early 20s in really bad outfits e.g tight white suits with mini skirts & no shirts or tops underneath that should have been buried a long time ago with flesh – FLESH - coloured stockings, & clompy stacked shoes. I wasn’t sure of the “story” they were intending to convey. They all had long dark straight hair & walked in pairs or groups of threes arm in arm. They acted like confident, sassy teenage girls – a power group doing the rounds in a schoolyard, whispering, gossiping - like a scene from Mean Girls or Clueless. Out of this context, they would’ve come across rather less Lolita & more as rebellious teen trying to display some independence.
Like schools of fish they darted hither & thither in a strange swarming pattern. When they spun around in front of us, & then returned some moments later just to repeat the whole process, our suspicions were confirmed.

The Dottore: “ Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
Me: “Yes, and I don’t believe it.”

They were indeed working it.

We started to walk amongst them to see where they went, but they just used the arcade like a catwalk & walked back & forth before they netted a client. The strategy was this – walk up & down in groups, see a guy, step inline with him, if he responds ever so slightly either try & make him stop or stand still beside him. There is generally some conversation with no eye contact. This is very different from the “Me love you long time, Mister” & full scale harassment & strutting you might get on a strip say in Bangkok. That’s why it never came across as overtly sexual solicitation; neither was it all coy unknowingness.

Of all the men in the arcade, the Dottore was the only one not approached - not even a look-in. He decided I was cramping his style & ,perhaps to prove this asked me to not walk beside him.
I lingered a good couple of metres behind, but alas, the mere fact I was the only Western woman in there & he the only man seemed to logically indicate that we were, in fact, together.

Having failed in not getting the sales pitch, we returned to our pool hunt & was told by someone at a desk that there wasn’t one. The Lisboa has no pool, but working girls, yes. After being expelled on the ground level & back on to the stifling open street, the Dottore turned around & dubbed it The Lishoa.

So we hotfooted it in a cab to Cotai ( a reclaimed strip of land joining Taipa & Coloane, two islands that along with Macau Peninsula, make up Macau. The Cotai Strip was inspired by the Vegas Strip and is the site of a massive casino complex building frenzy).
We were off to the biggest casino on the planet – The Venetian, Macau.
The Venetian, Macau is an enlarged copy of The Venetian, Las Vegas which in turn is a partial copy of Venice, Italy (take that all you Baudrillard reading, simulacra critiquing poststructuralists).

This time pool entry was a lot easier. In this vast complex, there are north & south hotel towers. We simply went to the south tower lifts, got off at the appropriate floor, checked in at the pool desk by scanning the registry & signing in with a room number that hadn’t been written in. They neither checked the room number & name against anything in their computer, nor did they ask to see a room key. We were in! We collected our towels & within minutes were floating in a terrace top pool high above the gambling thousands.

After cooling off, it was time for a drink. We found the only bar that overlooked the gambling floor – it was called Bar Florian, of course. All the other bars were situated in arcades in the complex along with restaurants & shops. We took a ringside seat, ordered Negronis by way of writing the recipe down on a coaster for the barista & watched the floors team with thousands of gamblers from the Mainland & Hong Kong.

Michael met us after work for a drink. We asked him what the proposition for the evening was. He replied, “After a wonderful Portugese meal on a terrace overlooking the sea we shall commence Michael’s ‘Macau Bottom Five Sleaziest Bars Tour’”. We were to make our way through at least 5 bars, each one more sleazier than the other, ending the evening at the sleaziest of them all. The Doctor & I arched our eyebrows at each other, wondering what could possibly be in store for us. With Mike at the helm & the Dottore at his side we were surely in for a long ride down that river…..and to hijack that well-worn phrase from its haggard older sister, “what happens in Macau stays in Macau”.