Sunday, March 25, 2007

Application - Coach of the Pakistan Cricket Team

Dear Sir/Madam/General,

I would like to apply for the recently vacated position of Coach of the Pakistan Cricket Team.

I am highly familiar with the Pakistan Cricket team, and have taken a keen and profitable interest in their performances over the last few years. Indeed I have an ongoing relationship with a number of the players through an intermediary.

I am a great believer in backing talent, and feel that as coach of the Pakistan Cricket Team I would be outstanding in providing tips. I have never been afraid to gamble on any player in which I have recognised a willingness to play the game. Working closely with my captain, I am confident that we can get the best out of the team, when required.

I am well connected within the cricketing community and have had a number of highly successful dealings, in particular with members of the South African and Indian teams, in the past. I was very close to the late Hansie Cronje, we conducted a number of business projects together throughout his cricketing career, and indeed I was one of the last people to see him. I was due to travel with him on the fateful day, but still feel pleased that he permitted me to inspect his plane prior to its departure.

I was also a close business colleague of Mr Bob Woolmer, sharing a drink with him only hours before his death.

My philosophy of cricket coaching is centred around strict discipline. I make every player aware that the team is more important than the individual, and that there are penalties for not following instructions. The rewards will come from understanding that ultimately cricket is just a game, a small part of life, and that one’s actions have repercussions that go beyond what happens on the field and in the change room. In the greater scheme of things something as inconsequential as a result is no more important than the condition of the pitch, the weather or who bowls the twelfth over for example.

Please find attached my references from Mr S Warne, Mr M Waugh and Mr John. Each attests to my reliability in adhering to a contract and my trustworthiness in regards to discussions of important information. I am confident that if you were to appoint me to the position of coach of the Pakistan Cricket Team that I will capitalise on on-going Pakistan Cricket Board initiatives to the benefit of all parties.

Please note too that in the event that I am not appointed to the position that I may seek other avenues to obtain the position.

I trust that your heart condition will prove to be less serious than I understand and that your children continue to get to school safely.

Yours sincerely,

[name withheld pending legal discussions]

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Tales from the Mild Man of Borneo Part 2

Tales from the Mild Man of Borneo Part 1

A hint for non-budget travellers looking for an upgrade when travelling in Asia – ensure you and your partner have different surnames. It helps too if your partner is pregnant. This ensures you are booked into twin rooms and when you ask for a double you are guaranteed an upgrade to a deluxe room. Worked for us twice, though the same trick didn’t work with Malaysian Airlines – Business Class was beyond us.

The Deluxe Suite at our hotel in Kinabalu, a stop-over after Mulu, gave us outstanding views across to the stilt villages of nearby islands and that rarest of rare events, a sunset during Monsoon season. It also ensured more space to wash and hang up smalls. This is one backpacker tradition that will never leave me, indeed the more luxurious the room the more I want to spread damp underwear on every surface.

Next stop was Sandakan on the east coast of Sabah, home of the largest Orangutan sanctuary and stepping off point for Turtle Island and river boat treks up the 560 km long Kinabatangan River. At the sanctuary, once again we were warned that there was no guarantee of seeing anything and sure enough there were more Orangutans than you could point a long thin zoom lens at. While they didn’t quite outnumber the tourists there were enough young Orangutans, one large scary adolescent, one slightly frightened park staff member with a box full of bananas, and monkeys to keep us all satisfied and taking lots of photos. And it’s true – they are very human like, if humans could carry bananas in their feet, walk on ropes, and shit in midair and not wipe.

An interesting fact I learnt at an information bay along the pregnancy highway was that seasickness and morning sickness are related. A woman who suffers from severe motion sickness is very likely to suffer severe morning sickness. My wife throws up when aeroplanes turn corners on runways. She throws up in cars when reading street signs, and in boats when they bob up AND down AND up AND down. She has to dash out of movies that use hand held cameras (admittedly that’s often because Lars Von Trier is crap – he makes me sick). Her morning sickness lasted all day, and the worst trimester (three months) for morning sickness lasted five months. She lived on a diet on peanut butter and crackers and took these and powdered milk to Borneo as emergency supplies (a foolish move as it turned out, but we’ll get to that later).

Also, only days before leaving Australia one of Sandakan’s small high speed ferries travelling to Turtle Island capsized in rough seas, killing one Malay and leaving a few Aussies and Kiwis with some stories to sell that might just have about covered the cost of their lost luggage. While we weren’t going to Turtle Island (not exotic enough for us wildlife snobs) it was with some trepidation that we approached the Kinabatangan River trek, the first of four speed boat trips of the holiday. However, not only did my wife get through them all in relative comfort, but the speed boats all possessed shiny new lifejackets and everyone wore them. Anyone who has been to Asia will tell you that this is unheard of.


There's a wild orangutan in this photo - really


Accompanied by more honeymooning couples than Noosa, we sped along the river towards the Borneo Eco Lodge, a resort in the jungle about 2 hours away (Eco referring to the lack of air-conditioning and hot water). Again we were warned not to expect anything, and certainly not to expect Proboscis Monkeys (tick), Borneo Pygmy Elephants (tick), Hornbills (tick) or wild Orangutans (tick). The elephants were crossing the river as we arrived and we spent hours watching them munch on river grass and make classic elephant noises. They may be small (adults are about man size) but they make quite a racket. The Orangutans dozed and ate – which was sort of what I was doing in Malaysia too.


Borneo Pygmy Elephants doing Elephant things


For the next two days every time we stepped onto the river we were confronted by the exotic, the endangered and the delicious, which doesn’t actually explain why they are endangered. Malaysia being a Muslim country such animals aren’t eaten; endangerment usually has more to do with encroaching and illegal palm oil tree plantations. An interesting side effect of the push to ‘sustainable’ and bio fuels (especially in Europe) is a massive jump in the price of palm oil and a massive proliferation of plantations in Asia and the Pacific at the expense of native vegetation and wildlife.

Our time at the Borneo Eco Lodge included a night tour along a boardwalk out the back of the lodge. Winston, in his sixties, a former soldier brought up in the tradition of British East India and all that but ‘gone native’, was our guide. Malaysia’s answer to the Bush Tucker Man, but with coke bottle rim glasses, he described in great detail how every plant could either kill you or your enemy or sustain you. The following night over a half dozen Tiger beers he casually mentioned the three people who wanted him dead, including a palm oil plantation owner and a former soldier back in Sarawak (also in his sixties), which was part of the reason he couldn’t go back there. He refused to say how many men he had killed.

Back in Sandakan we drank Pimms and played croquet at the English Tea Garden and then to come way back down to Earth visited the War Memorial commemorating the 2338 soldiers (1781 of them Australian) who died on the Sandakan death marches and the six Australians who survived.

Diving Sipidan Island was to be a highlight of Borneo for me, with a whole extra pile of animals that I shouldn’t expect to see. But just getting out of Sandakan was an adventure of sorts, albeit a boring one. Air Asia Express once again excelled themselves in confounding and annoying travellers. Our 10 am flight was cancelled and the replacement 5 pm flight was late, finally arriving at 9pm. The 11 hours spent in Sandakan airport’s restaurant with vouchers for a complete range of chicken rice or nasi goreng (chicken rice without the chicken), was not quite wasted as I read about 30 years of Nelson Mandela’s life in Long Walk to Freedom, but the long wait for the flight was one less day of diving so I wasn’t happy.


Luxury stilt bungalows for the honeymooners, gas platform for the backpackers


We got there in the end. The Mabul dive resort was one of five dive resorts on the island of Mabul, though strictly speaking three aren’t on the island at all. One is a converted gas platform for diving backpackers, and there are two 5-star resorts made up of luxury stilt bungalows. The locals mostly live on stilt dwellings too, but that’s because they’re too poor to afford any land and live a more or less subsistence lifestyle based around what they can pull out of the ocean. I doubt the resort dwellers appreciate the irony. Not that we were slumming it of course. Yet another upgrade saw us in a luxury, land-based bungalow with all the amazing seafood I could eat and plenty of other food too for pregnant women who don’t go near the stuff.

The diving was outstanding, at least would have been if it wasn’t monsoon season, which meant the wind picking up in the afternoon affecting visibility. But I still saw lots of rare and extraordinary sea life such as sleeping giant green sea turtles wedged into the reef, scorpion fish, leaf fish, baby lobsters, a blue spotted eagle ray, mornay eels and sea dragons. My dive guides were forever excited about nudibranchs. These highly colourful sea snails without a shell are world renowned at Mabul, but as far as I’m concerned they’re just colourful slugs. If it can’t bite me then I’m not interested, and fortunately at Sipidan on the second day of diving I saw plenty of sharks but just missed a school of barracuda.


Amazing $2 meals (if you like seafood)


As if we hadn’t stayed in enough resorts or had enough lounging we spent the last few days in a 5-star resort in KK. This was truly one of the most awful, and comfortable, experiences of my life. I could have been anywhere in the world. Overfed Aussie honeymooners, elderly overfed Europeans, waddling kids and busloads of Asian tourists battled for space at buffet breakfasts that could feed African nations for a week, reserved their favourite spots around the pools, and partook of activities designed to remove any thoughts of actually venturing outside the resort. While amazing $2 meals were served down the road, meals in the resort (admittedly good but you could be anywhere) were $50. Beers at happy hour were $7 for a small. And there wasn’t even a bar in the pool which is the least I’d expect of a resort. Still, the wife needed to put her feet up before the flight home – for another $10 she could have got them massaged by the pool.

The flight home was uneventful, going through customs wasn’t. I partly blame Border Patrol for making every customs official want to be a superstar, my wife blames memory loss due to lack of sleep and pregnancy. My wooden mask and sculpture passed the test, her milk powder and peanut-butter (crunchy of course) wasn’t declared. She was lucky. She could have faced a $60,000 fine and a cavity search (fortunately her major cavity was filled by my future son) but got away with a warning and a blacklisting. I expect she’ll end up on the cutting-room floor too.

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Sunday, March 04, 2007

Male Pattern Boldness

My local barber is on holidays.

I know. I was devastated and my hair was starting to take on that Western Cape Buffalo look, parting down the middle of its own accord, curling up at the back, a proto mullet.



Just a little off the sides thanks

But it was desperate times, a job interview was around the corner. There was nothing else to do. I went back to my old haunts in Sydney's Inner West and back to the same barber I went to for 8 years while doing the share accommodation thing. Because it was cheap. And they used a switchblade.

It's a guy thing almost by definition. Hairstyles come and go, but guys like old school when it comes to getting their hair cut. There are some other musts too. The barber must speak with a European accent. Hair must pile up around his (never her) feet. It must not take more than 5 minutes. And there must be old girly magazines (formerly Picture, now FHM, Street Machine or, my all time fave, Guns 'n' Ammo) to flick through while you wait.

Travelling the world during my backpacking days proved to be a real challenge - there aren't too many Greek barbers in Phnom Penh. In Hue, a small town in Vietnam, I couldn't resist the '$1 Haircut' sign - if the cheaper a haircut back home the better then this must be the best ever. I walked into the shack by the side of the busy road. There was no waiting and no girly magazines, but there was a switch blade so I felt reasonably comfortable. The haircut itself was fine, trimmed all round, short enough and presentable, but there was more to come.

At that time in my life, at 25, I'd given little thought to rogue hair. Women seem to spend a lifetime plucking eyebrows, waxing bits that never see daylight and destroying razors. Men wake up one morning and see a hair growing out of a nostril and suddenly realise that they've turned into their Father. My moment was in Hue. I was waiting for the switchblade. I enjoy the feeling of cold metal on skin. There's a lot of trust involved. One slip and you could be dancing in a jugular fountain. The switchblade was poised and began its descent. It probably briefly reflected the glare from a motor scooter headlight, or the setting red sky. Its arc followed the time honoured path to the side of my face where my unruly sideburns demanded attention. But then it stopped, turned 90 degrees towards my ears, and scraped off - EAR HAIR. "I have hairy ears". Devastated. Absolutely devastated. He scraped both ears. Top. Sides. Front. And then grabbed scissors. And trimmed my nostril hairs.

Adolescence over I paid my $1 and mumbled some thanks. But for what? For discovering that for the rest of my life I'd be engaged in a never ending battle to not look like Cousin Itt?

By the time I got to Turkey six months later I'd more or less come to terms with my hirsute status. I'd even grown a goatee because a straw poll of western girls on the ferry from Penang in Malaysia to Medan in Indonesia liked them. But in reality I was trying to learn to embrace my hair. The shoulder fuzz was also descending south, it was a losing battle, like when Andre Agassi shaved his head after years of a ridiculous mullet but sort of in reverse.






Freaky huh?

The Turkish barber not only spoke with an accent but he spoke Turkish. Extraordinary I know but in my eyes you couldn't be more credible than that. And the haircut was extraordinary. I have no idea why some barbers can cut hair and some can't. Certainly no woman has ever been able to cut my hair, clips all over the place and millimetres chopped off at a time. One had the gall to claim I had a 'crown' of hair which was why she did a shit job. But the Turkish guy was the best. But something was missing, the switchblade. While my eyes scanned for it he reached for a cotton bud. And a bottle of flammable liquid. And a cigarette lighter. He dipped the cotton bud in the liquid and lit it and proceeded to burn the hairs off my ears and my temples and the back of my neck. It smelt like burnt hair funnily enough, like when your dodgy gas stove finally roars into life and you burn the hairs on your knuckles. And it was then that I realised that ear hair could be fun. Or at the very least it could be the topic of an interesting tale.

I was expecting no surprises in Newtown. No one expects surprises in a barber shop. Certainly you don't hope for them as the most likely surprise in a barber shop would involve spurts of blood. Other customers were coming in asking for all sorts of combinations such as short sides but no top as tops are 'out' at the moment (what is this - 1980?). I asked for a haircut and the barber just started cutting. How did he know that I don't know?

Like many barber shops, this one had a mirror in front and a mirror in back so you can check your front, back and top (if they happen to be 'in') at the same time. My current barber only has the mirror in front, so it had been a number of years since I'd seen my top. And you know what - my top was on its way out.

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