Omigod Backy

Omigod Backy, this is paradise...

Dear Backy, we have, like, totally stumbled into paradise. This plaise is like totally unreal. The people basically don’t speak anny Anglash and like, there’s this river which is brown. Oh and there’s totally mountains too... it’s not like, JUST a river. They have these long boats which are like made out of wood or something and lederally no-one speaks Anglash. Oh wait I already said that. Did I mansion the butturrflies? Hundreds of tham, lederally. Totally. Laderally. I’m serious; laderally.
Wash you were here! (Naat)
Janie.

Well omigosh and buttered poodles, could Janie have been righter? Poor Becky. To die for... And yet here I find myself whimpering quietly in pain, alone in a bamboo coffin with a squatter, clasping at my stomach like John Hurt in ‘Alien’. It seems as though the entire village community has decided to hold the primary school ‘father/daughter dance’ right outside our hut whilst I slowly but surely work on my ‘picking up the soap in prison’ stance (always bend at the knees). Bastard stomach. But I suppose this does give me the opportunity to sit in and write a few words whilst Tim sits by the river engulfed in a swarm of pesky butterflies.

Let’s talk about music since I’m singing the blues anyway. They say that to learn languages such as Thai, Lao and Chinese you need to have a pretty musical ear. This comes down to the many different tones that these languages use to change the meaning of a word; for example ‘kaw’ in Thai means ‘rice’, but saying it ‘Kaaw’ means ‘white’. Therefore ‘Kaw Kaaw’ translates as ‘white rice’ in Thai where nouns precede adjectives in sentence order. But what this all really boils down to, the central question at the heart of this vein-poppingly difficult concept in language is: why are Asians so bad at karaoke? I mean, it’s only like the national pastime over here. When people sing in the street small graphics appear beneath their faces bearing the lyrics they are singing being slowly filled up by a time-bar that keeps tempo with the music. They are literally dripping with cheesy Asian playlists full of whiny songs about love and mosquito nets; so why so tone deaf?

What I believe lies at the heart of this issue is the Asian concept of being polite even when inside you are creasing with laughter at the flatulently flat noises being passed off as singing. If a piece of toilet paper gets caught on your shoe as you leave a bathroom, well, you can forget anyone kindly but amusedly pointing it out. Also, I imagine that no Asian man has ever been concerned about the size of his penis or his performance in bed. People here are quite anxious about remaining shtum if they run the risk of offending or embarrassing. Now, this is all very sweet and sour pork, but if you think about it things can get pretty sticky rice when no-one speaks up. Just think about the singing...

But also think about the marriages and the infidelity; which I’m told by informed sources is positively rampant.

“Umm, Asian-Janice?”
“Yes Asian-Beatrice?”
“I’ve got something to tell you... but I’m not quite sure how to say it”
“Well don’t worry, you can tell me anything as long as it doesn’t put the tiniest wrinkle in our highly respectful relationship”
“Well actually that’s the problem Asian-Janice, I really believe that what I have to say will put a wrinkle in our honourable relationship”
“Well gosh then Asian-Beatrice, you must be very embarrassed about having brought the issue up in the first place!”
“I truly am”
“Let’s not speak for several weeks and then casually pretend this conversation never happened”
“That seems like an awfully good idea, lets”

Doesn’t seem like it would work does it? Though in Thailand men do actually get their comeuppance in a manner that finds them waiting ‘more than a little impatiently’ holding a bag of ice in the Penile-reattachment Clinic in Bangkok. It is incidentally, the most advanced clinic of its kind in the world, or so I’m told... Like, omigod Backy, you wont believe what I just did to Brian... Interestingly, even despite the terrible consequences of Brian’s extramarital affairs, Brian went off shagging away anyway. What was he thinking? He was probably thinking that no-one would say anything, but he was underpant-emptyingly wrong about that. In the meantime Asian-Brian is probably laughing himself to sleep every night after being politely told that he was more than sufficient in bed and that his guttural rendition of ‘Moon River’ is lederally the best version his wife and girlfriend have ever heard.

Even as I shake at the ankles at my most recent rendition of the song I’ve written called ‘Bamboo squatting bastard gastro-intestinal system e-coli blues’ I wonder at how people here vote. Can you imagine Gonzi at a mass meeting on the Fosos timidly proclaiming that if it wasn’t too much of a bother to the other party, whom he firmly believes would also do a great job of being the government, he would quite like to stay on as Prime Minister. Followed by a similarly sheepish statement from the Labour party that they also quite wanted a chance to sit in the good offices but they were basically okay with staying where they were because they didn’t really want to put anyone through the bother of emptying their drawers. Uh... nah! Not in a gadgillion years.

Though it is perhaps beyond the scope of this woefully uninformed blog to make suggestions, I will venture a simple solution to the problem of politeness in this green, mountainous and brown rivered part of the world. Why not start a new genre of Asian blues music with my song about diarrhoea as the flagship tune of this new musical wave? Think about it, the blues is one of those few musical genres where being tone deaf is just not an issue and its a format that leaves a lot of room for the whinging and bitching that is so absent from Asian life. Get them started on the blues and wean them slowly off the harmony that they have so long had to endure. I would sincerely like to develop this idea further and perhaps obtain international backing from the DNA Testing companies which surely have a vested interest in people being blunt, but, my stomach tells me its time to write a new stanza to ‘Bamboo squatting bastard gastro-intestinal system e-coli blues’... Good lord help me. Ciao.