Man-o-gram #23
He was listing side to side in sync with the boats in the bay. His words were too. Mark flopped down in the chair next to us on the beach. The 50 cent beers were having their way with him.
When the beachbar closed, barman Pich brought us free skewers of barbie’d vege’s, pointing us in the direction of a karaoke bar. Izzy, Brad and I, with Mark weaving behind were greeted by Enselema, a very enthusiatic man-woman.
Girls with pushed up cleavages magically appeared from out the back and I realised karaoke was not the gig. We made a shabby team and try as the girls might, they soon realised the only commerce from us was going to be a few beers. They went to work on Mark but he was too shuzzbutt. Enselema tried a couple of costume changes, glorious theatre, but still no takers.
Uke in hand I danced up a storm, a zumba-starved geezer pulling lead breaks over every song. Brad took up residence in the girls pink throne. They eventually kicked us out.
3am i finally crash, but not before joining a khmer builder’s beach party for 2, down to the last few cans of their 24 box. Our quartet now thinned, it’s just Brad and I, drinking their last beers and eating small snack packets of chilli’d tripe and chickens feet.
Out comes Google translate, the boys having no english, and when I tried to tell them I had 4 children, the app spat out ‘Donald Trump is coming’. 🙄 More chickens feet.
Brad and Izzy are doing youtube and tiktok vid blogs and have a bit of a following. Still not enough to make money out if it, “some vids get 100,000 hits, others get just 200, it’s random”, say’s Brad. Izzy got 3.5 million hits on one of her tiktok vids but it was a one-off.
The night had started at dusk with a beer with Scottish Ronnie, who was down to the last inch of his $2 bottle of whishky(that’s how it’s spelt on the label). By nightfall he was done. Drinking is big here.
Four immaculately uniformed policemen showed up, city cops, and proceeded to go bar to bar, posing outside each one and doing a selfie. Each bar, smiling and laughing. They never went into a single one, but they’ll be able to show the boss they’ve done the rounds. Looking good brothers, great policing.
This morning was wet as an Auckland summer. No-one hiring scooters or plying their trade, and thunder rolled in low every 3 minutes.
The weather chilled in time for an arvo beach rave to kick in. These guys, mostly young european backpackers, appear out of nowhere for these weekend beach parties and are gone again the next day. A hit and run ferry ride from the mainland, bit like Waiheke Island back home.
They drink, party and do tugs of war and sack races, good clean fun. The ‘happy drinks’ are $7 a pop and laced with mdma. Fun times, go live on insta, #momanddad 😂.
Back down the beach and I come across Snow White and the 6 dwarves. One’s missing, at the rave on the Happy drinks for sure.
That’s the plot summary, but what was my head doing out the back room today ? Well. Stay with me here.🤪😂
The workings of the worlds financial catwalk have always tickled my fancy. Strutting, posing for camera, costume changes, hair and make-up out the back room. Never did use that economics degree to work in Treasury, but I’m always scanning.
Bunch of reasons behind 2008 GFC, and developments since.
Why do I get so jubilant watching the joy and teamwork of (materially)less well-off people unloading a boat as I did yesterday ? Because it reinforces the genius that humans have in togetherness when we choose to access it. Irrespective of personal material stance. In fact likely aided by the lack of it.
This is good. I doubt any of us, wealthy stockpilers included, will be exempt from some tightening of belts and lowering of material expectation in the coming years. One of my passions is composting and growing food, I love the smell of decomposition, sick man 😝. Pickling, bottling and preserving like my folks and their folks did, is on the list too.
Our current axis is gas at the pump, food in the supermkt and some leeway on the eftpos card to make it all happen.
All good, but … any breaks in transmission, well, can we feed, shelter ourselves, and get on ? In our own physical ‘hood’s, like I’ve witnessed a version of, here in Cambodia.
I’m betting we can, but it’s gonna take some narrative changes, honest conversations, both with the mirror and each other. Cultivating genuine excitement in what we can do en masse, together, as a species.
I get my jolly’s catching evidence of that shared subsistence level working, as I’ve had the privilege of witnessing over here.
Thru western eyes it could look a bit shit, physical poverty(and there’s much worse than this round the globe) is not trimmed and tidy like a front lawn, it’s not an episode of Desperate Housewives. It’s a bit feral. So is nature. I suggest we’ve been misleading ourselves for some time … the best and well intentioned drives of human desire and ego getting away a bit maybe ?
Till next time :)
