Investigative Journalism at its Best!

Lately I have been very tired. Probably because my darling tick-infested dog sent one of his spare ticks my way - bless him. It was about three days before I found my own pet parasite embedded in my wrist. Two weeks later, I headed to the doctor because I was feeling like crap, and I tested positive for Lyme disease. Oh well...the dog is not really the point of this, but more the cause. The cure was antibiotics.

So, I am very tired in the evenings and tend to sit slumped watching other people being energetic on my behalf -God I love televised sports. But by chance the Inside Edition show was on in a break between sports, and I probably couldn't find the remote...or else it was on the top of the TV where my darling wife tends to store it (which, I maintain, kind of defeats the purpose really)...anyway I digress.

Inside Edition is on and they are about to unveil one of their groundbreaking investigative journalism shows, so I perk up a little. George Bush caught obeying the law? Guantanamo Bay Torture Techniques being reclassified as Scuba Diving lessons? Who knew? But my tired frame certainly livened up a tad.

And then came the teaser...the bit before the ads that is supposed to prevent you jumping ship to another channel...and I was amazed to hear that they were going to "Blow the Lid on Sushi!"

Huh? Sushi fraud? Were they kidding? In a country where 47 MILLION people do not have any health insurance, they were going to investigate the sale of raw fish to people who - to my mind at least - deserve to be poisoned for being poseurs. Sushi is the sort of cuisine that was clearly invented by someone like me - terminally lazy in the food department.

"What's for supper, Dad?"
"Dunno," I reply, "What's in the fridge?"
"Nothing. Oh, wait...there's some fish of some sort. Looks disgusting."
"Nonsense. I'll slice that up really thin and I bet it will be delicious."
"Dad! We can't eat RAW fish!"
"Sure you can. It's big in Japan. Plus there's no pots to wash up. I'll finish up the leftovers from the roast Mum cooked yesterday. You two have the sushi, I'll make do with the cold lamb."

Now, it may be no accident that futons were also invented in Japan - presumably again by someone who is as lazy as me around the home. A futon is a bed that clearly fits my model of housework: First off, they are so bloody uncomfortable that you don't want to even go to bed, so there is the first chance to avoid making the thing in the morning. Second, even after you have spent all night tossing and turning on the damn things, there is nary a depression or dimple. They are sort of like a Claes Oldenburg rendering of a Jacob's Cream Cracker in fabric - making the bed consists of flipping them over once a year.

Flipping them over once a year actually brings to mind the third thing about Japanese culture that I might have taken credit for... geisha girls, but I digress, and must get back to the pressing problem of RED SNAPPER FRAUD!

It transpires that this ahem...fraud is widespread, which after I watched the show I am not surprised about on several counts: First, no-one can taste the difference between Red Snapper and Tilapia - apart from a handful of really posy pricks who almost certainly have health insurance as part of their benefit package; second, red snapper costs over $30 a pound - whereas Tilapia is about $3 a pound; and third the poor schmoes who worked in the restaurant clearly didn't know that they were "perpetrating a fraud on the sushi eating public." When confronted by the fearless journalist (who had just spent god-knows how much having the raw fish DNA tested to establish its specie - not red snapper) the restaurateurs, to a man (or woman in one case) ran down to their refrigerators and came back proudly bearing aloft a packet of the fish in question and chanting "Lead Snapper! Lead Snapper!" Whereupon the journalist flipped the packets over and pointed out the label on the back that clearly read "Tilapia."

The expression on the faces of the poor buggers as they read out loud like beginning readers: "Tirrappia? ....Oh? ...Not lead snapper? ....Oh? I just found out today..." was just depressing.

Anyway, there you have it. I had McDonalds for lunch I shudder to think what they would discover if they DNA tested the contents of my Big Mac...

Weight Loss

Look, all I want to do is to loose 2 ounces of blubber a day. That's a pound of flesh a week. No need to be merciful just take it! Is that too much to ask? I'm prepared to put in the leg work; stumble out of the lift and head for the gym twice a day if necessary, then cruise up and down the pool, 20 lengths under the soft lights strung in the palm trees at night. I can do that. But I need some incentive. I need a weighing machine. These visual checks are discouraging, and a women of my sensibilities can only take so much reality. At present the only gauge I have is the zipper - two bust, and three holding.
So, I went down to the Parkson Grand at the Gurney Plaze and approached the toothless Malay in the Electrical department who was lazily securing a cardboard box with 16 rolls of sticky tape.
'Could someone help me? I want to buy a weighing machine'
'Nobloddy"
'Nobloddy?"
'Nobloddy" This time accompanied with sweeping gesture round the vast acreage of the store.
Well, we had a bit of a wrestle about the nobloddy factor. The Parkson is a huge department store by Penang standards with nobloddy in it most of the time, and definitely nobloddy buying, ever.
OK, he'd come and look, so we wove our way over to the tight little corner where the weighing machines were housed and started hoiking them off the shelves. Most of them are simply wrapped in sellophane so you can see the dial, the posher ones are in boxes so you can't. Trouble IS the dial is not on zero and you cannot adjust it so standing on the sellophane your calculations begin.....
"Ah! So I already weigh 23 pounds before I step on.. and NOW I weigh... so, subtract.. and.. then, that, means. NO! That's not possible. Can't be" Try another machine. "Ah! here I weigh minus 2 kilo's and now... I weigh.. so I add on ..which in pounds is.. No can't be."
This is impossible! I just want to know if these machines are accurate. My weight is a closely guarded secret, even from myself. I live in a twilight world of denial. What I need is nobloody to stand on the scales! He looks like a chap who knows his own Toothless FeatherweightChampion of the world requirements.
I pop him on the scales, (his very shiny black pointy shoes look sensational against the pink and white polka dot carapace) but alas! when I ask if he recognises 160lbs as anything near his bodyweight, he shakes his head and says "Too much, much La!"
So ,too, too much la for that machine then! (27 Ringgitts made in HEMEL HEMPSTEAD). We try a few more machines all made by 'I Guess Your Weight' in Hemel Hempstead.
I finally opt for one in a box simply because nobloddy recognises something on the dial that approximates to his own weight.
It is very ugly.
I bring it home.
It has got to be returned.
For two days I have stood peering down at the dial like a myopic heron looking for fish and seeing nothing. I have to crouch, naked, (We're talking ounces here) and only when my nose is about 2 inches away from its dial, and I resemble a ludicrous contestant at the beginning of the Handicap Freestyle Relay can I make out the runes on its face. In pounds, ounces are out of the question.
It has to go back.
Lucky I kept the box.

Bonsai

My devoted old retainer, my taxi driver Robert (Huat)returned my Bonsai tree that I smuggled back from Viet Nam last trip. It had been in care with him for the last few months. Dear Robert. I was so touched. It had been magnificently tended, re potted from its ugly plastic container into a handsome pottery dish. He can ill afford to buy ME things! Behind the little tree a pretty low growing shrub had appeared from somewhere which looked wonderful, framing the tree in a very convincing way, giving the whole thing some depth. In front of the tree, also a new planting, a tiny slender shoot with about seven broad leaves on it, standing about five inches high. A heavenly little spot had been created.. EXCEPT ..Ah! under the tree in a sort of lunatic 'dejeuner sur l'herbe' were seated, not a languorous nude and her louche companions, or even some bearded seer in serene contemplation but a blue ceramic dog in a red Santa Claus pom pom hat and and a small yellow duck in a blue yachting cap. They looked extremely contented and happy with their lot. One can only imagine the conversation. Santa " Look it's Christmas, you know what I mean? You're a duck. Don't take the boat out for a couple of weeks. Stay in the house. Believe me you'll thank me"
I picked them gently of the knoll and stuffed them at the back of my desk.
in the middle of the night I seemed to hear their plaintive cries. I got up, retrieved them and settled them back under the tree and went back to bed and slept peacefully.
Dear, dear Robert. How fond I am of the jug eared old Chink

We win BIG!!!

Taylors team wins BIG at Culinaire Malyasia crows the Sun today, (Education focus section). Don't we mean BIGLIEST? Anyway, not to detract fromthis famous victory and following as it does hard on the heels of the Japanese rice grinding and Harvest songs. "Students and staff from Taykors College School of Hospitality and Tourism proved they were a force to be reckoned with at the Culinaire Malysia 2007 by winning a total of 11 medals..... Eugene Liew stayed calm under pressure to secure the coveted title of Most Outstanding F & B Personnel. He accumulated the highest overall points after winning the gold medal in fruit flambe, silver medal for table setting and bronze medal for cocktail making, while Siau who competed in the Pastry Showpiece category, took the the bronze for his creation of a three -foot tall colourful clown from sugar"!!!!!!!!!!!
No fair! No one ever makes me a three foot colourful clown in colourful sugar. Ever. What kind of sons have I spawned? They don't write,, they don't phone, they don't make me three foot colourful clowns in spun sugar. I blame the parents. But bronze? What won the gold for Petes' sake! A twenty foot represention of Mao Tse Tung in chocolate with retractable Marzipan penis? Oops sorry, I forgot this was a family blog. "OOh look boys there's a squirrel!" Did your hear about that? A free thinking/wheeling family with a taste for the ribald when visting a straight laced Auntie in Perthshire would be met with a blank stare at the onset of anything not quite 'nice' after which gathering herself she would cry "Oh Look children! There's a squirrel!" It went into the family venacula,r so that anytime after that things got a bit risque, they would cry in unison "Oh look theres a squirrel!'.
Time to wander downto the beach for some grub.
Back again. SHUT. Deepvali has claimed my servants. Bugger!!! . Oh look boys! there's a squirrel!
Ps Good to see Max has joined the team.

When Worst Comes To Wurst

Pigs in Alabama, on the other hand... Lovely though the picture is, it appears to be somewhat Snopes-y.

Pigs in Germany

I just got home from a week in Germany. Saw some nice English laddies in Cologne sporting t-shirts bearing the legend: "RAF EUROPEAN TOUR 1945" rather touching...

Also, couldn't help noticing that pigs have a tough go of it in Germany - menus that feature everything piglike fom Bacon to Bratwurst indicates that the best they can hope for as they approach old age is a decent gravy.

G

Man Discovers Fire

While my mum tiptoes around the volcanoes, it's been Guy Fawkes' night back in the UK, so the other night we went out to let off rockets.

This was a new experience for me. Firstly because I am, by nature, extremely cautious. I would probably put one of those non-slip mats in the bath if my girlfriend would let me, out of a neurotic terror of falling over and cracking my head open and dying - so obviously I haven't ever let off a firework. On the rare occasions I've help sparklers, it has been with the demeanour of a man holding a radioactive hooded cobra with six-inch fangs.

"It'll be fine," says my friend L, who is not nearly so much of a worrier. He's bought 30 rockets to celebrate his wife's 30th birthday. "We'll just hop over the fence into Stonebridge park, stick them in the ground, light and retire to a safe distance."

I'm eyeing the munitions. 'The love bomb', the climactic pink heart-shaped starburst, is approximately the size of a V2 rocket. If they'd found it in Iraq in 2002, George Bush would have been waving it at the UN five minutes later shouting I-told-you-so.

"Goggles. You have goggles, right? And gloves? Do we need a licence from the DTI? How long is the fuse on this thing?"

"Jesus, it'll be fine! Honestly..."

"But is it supposed to be coming off the stick like that? Seems kind of wobbly."

L has a look. A small plastic flange, whose purpose, we surmise, is to keep the ordnance on target, seems to have snapped. He suggests strapping it to the stick with masking tape. This seems to work fine, from a stability point of view, but suddenly we begin to wonder if it isn't supposed to fly off the stick entirely. Maybe the heat from the rocket is supposed to melt the glue, leaving the pole stuck in the ground? Are we going to be speared by falling javelins of debris as a result of our adhesive hubris? Nobody knows. In the end we decide to remove the tape and just try to make sure it's not pointed anywhere near a major population centre.

The other thing that gives me pause about the whole DIY fireworks thing is that I have always been somewhat of a casual-fireworks killjoy. I like big organized displays, but every year from, oooh, October 1st until February, the estate where I lived until recently is the scene of pyrotechnic mayhem as the ASBO kids get into the spirit of blowing things up. You walk through the gates and your chances of having a Starmine hit you in the eye are pretty good. (This year, before we moved out, it looks like the kids are more interested in setting their vicious killer pit-bulls on each other; although I would not be surprised if tonight one might witness a mournful hound with a Roman Candle stuck in its bum, streaking up St Pancras Way in a shower of sparks.)

Anyway, we clamber over the fence and set up three of the smallest missiles. The spectators retire to a safe distance. L lights the blue touchpaper. At this point, we have no idea how long the fuses are, so it's all kind of tense.

Whoooosh! Bang! OOOOOhhhh!

Damn, that was fun.

In the end we all take turns lighting the fuses and miraculously nobody is killed or maimed. In fact, we elicit OOOOOHS from passing members of the public. I am pretty sure this makes us professional pyrotechnicians, or something.

I may even survive my next bath....