A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation

What do you get when you throw someone living in a third world country a ten day pass into hedonistic heaven (Sydney) which covers three festive events of significant magnitude - a wedding, a birthday and Christmas?

One very well-fed, well-liqoured, well-loved feeling little girl (yes I can still call myself this at the age of 28) is what.

The highlight of my return to Oz was definitely the wedding between Amy and Jono which I was privileged enough to be part of as bridesmaid. In true Lyrian style I dragged the very last guts out of the night and finally jumped (ok, sort of half scrambled, half crawled and was half pushed) into a taxi at 5am the next morning (and the taxi driver used his metre without me asking!!).

Other than the nuptials, I caught up with my nearest and dearest, and must give a shout out now to my family and friends – thank you very much for all the gifts, meals, hugs, food (mum and dad have yet to see how bare their pantry is), and time you gave me. Love youze all (oh gosh – I’m even cringing at that one).

Here is what I looked like when I turned 28 (with mum, dad and Kara, my sister

Ok – so that’s the love bit over.

Now for the loss and desperation bits.

Between Sydney and here I’ve realised I’ve left behind:

Half of my swimmers, my fancy shampoo, an ‘Easy Listening’ CD made for me, and two packets of fair trade plunger coffee. The bit which worries me the most is that I haven’t yet made it back to the gong to unpack properly so I think I could be just scratching the surface of things lost. So, now it’s time for me to put on my best pleading face and ask for people to please please please post any of these things to me when they get the chance. I will e mail around my home address soon.

And the desperation…

Tomorrow is Election Day in Bangladesh and there’s a ban on transport, a curfew, a jamming of the mobile phone network, and four foreigners arriving in Chittagong with bags full of food and other spoils (mmm basil, rosemary, thyme, olive oil, smarties, oregano...) who need to spend the following few days bringing in the New Year firmly inside the walls of my apartment while hoping the world outside is going on as peacefully as it was a few days before.

For those of you who want to follow the election excitement, I think your best bet would be BBC World website, or the local The Daily Star (www.thedailystar.net) newspaper (though it does make Rupert Murdoch’s approach to media look quite liberal and balanced in comparison). Fingers crossed there will be little written about it all as that would indicate everything is going along quite peachy.

And my last little bit of desperation – this is what could be my last cocktail for ten months looked like. They really do look pretty and tasty and indulgent even when empty, don’t they?

Credits: It would be remiss of me not to give some air time for a big 'cheers mate, I owe you one' to both Shaun and Chris who dealt with my cancelled flight and all the flow on arrangements which were required to get me from Sydney to Dhaka so masterfully. I'm one very grateful (and safe and sound) girl.

Four seasons in one day

As an Aussie girl, born and bred, there is little more soothing than waking up to the sounds of waves crashing, in a tent, with the smell of salt water still on my skin from yesterday’s swim. Call me a pessimist, but I had relegated experiences like this to the back of my mind along with things like margaritas, balsamic vinegar and strawberries. So you can imagine my joy when in my bid to escape the mass street slaughter that is Bloody Eid, I found myself here:

Watching the sunset over Cox’s Bazaar beach, apparently the ‘longest open beach in the southern hemisphere’.  

Dodging the crabs while walking out at low tide on St Marten's Island (yes, that's me in the orange) to reach our snorkeling spot 

Coconut shells - a worthy last meal? 

I am trying to ignore the ridiculousness of my month where I have gone from visiting villages talking with women in their burqas about their child’s nutrition to snorkelling in my salwar kameez for a highly amused audience of Bangladeshi’s on holidays. Not surprisingly, snorkelling fully clothed made me feel a lot like I was drowning, so is not high on my Experiences To Be Repeated list, but it was fun to do something different. 

Anyway, my beach holiday to Cox’s Bazaar and St Marten’s was so relaxing and full of food and chill out time and sun and good company that for a week it really did feel a lot like I was anywhere but in a country with a population of 153 million people, most of which are not sure where their next meal is coming from.

Space, solitude, silence and candy stripes - what more can a girl ask for?

And just to throw another spanner in the works of mind-bending realism, I am packing for Australia tonight for a whirlwind visit that will cover a wedding, my birthday and Christmas. 2 months has never before felt so long – in a good way – it feels like a very very long time ago I was sipping a skim flat white and rushing around Sydney airport trying to buy a phone charger for a phone that in 4 days time I would no longer own anyway. 

Mmmmmm.... woolworths, red wine and a mattress with springs...... Free alcohol on the plane! Plane food! (surely this is a first?) Family and friends..... Sydney, here I come. 

Abattoir Blues

Sacrificial Animals

Traders up prices on short supply

Purchase and sale of sacrificial animals have already started at different cattle markets in the city ahead of the Eid-ul-Azha but prices are high compared to the last year's prices because of low supply of cattle.

...Oh how I can't wait for 'Bloody Eid'.

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

For those of you not very up on the blog technology (which includes me) there are things called 'gadgets' which you can put on your blog which do all sorts of things like tell you the time where I am. See the digital time on your left? - that's a 'gadget'. 

Anyway, since it's after midnight here and I uncharacteristically got a lot of sleep last night I am trying to do quiet things, and playing around on my laptop is (sort of) a good way to do this (i tunes aside). So, I decided it would be fun to find a gadget of a map and pin exactly where I am. But, instead of finding a great, clear little gadget which lets me pin Chittagong in Bangladesh, i found this:

ISS Position This gadget shows the current position of the International Space Station on a world map. --- Dies Gadget zeigt die aktuelle Position der ISS auf einer Weltkarte. --- Este gadget indica la posición corriente de la ISS en un mapa mundial. By Dirk Matussek

Now I was very, very tempted to add this gadget to my blog until I thought through the whole dodgy internet connection thing, and then the reality of how long it would take to remove once I was over the novelty and the realisation (not for the first time) that some people out there are really nerdy. 

Not that I have anything against nerds. I admit to having one or two nerdy traits of my own (e.g. "i thought that would be too labour intensive" is a serious reply I gave a friend today when discussing food preparation. On reflection, a simple 'I couldn't be bothered' would have sufficed). 

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Thank You, Dirk, for this little distraction! I never even knew I could contemplate the question of Where Over The World Is The International Space Station Right Now?! 

See, it's true. You do learn something new every day.

Let's Take The Long Way Home

Me: There wasn’t a jam last time, I don’t know where all the traffic is coming from

Tania: Um, we’ll be right. It only took you 15 minutes last time right?

Me: Yes, but … I’m getting nervous

Tania: We still have half an hour

Me: (to myself) this doesn’t look very familiar…

Tania: Are we sure he knows where he’s going?

Me: I bloody hope so. We said train station. We said train to Chittagong. He said ‘ok’. How long have we got?

Tania: 20 minutes

Look of panic creeping onto our faces

Me: I don’t recognise where we are…….

CNG Driver [pulling over]: Number 6?

Me [adopt tone of desperation): T-R-A-I-N S-T-A-T-I-O-N????

Tania: T R A I N???

(repeat 10 times)

CNG Driver [blank look, motions to the side of the road]: er….bus?

Me [frantic]: No!!! Train!!!!! Train to Chittagong! At 11pm! In 15 minutes!!!!

Us to Passer By: Where is the train station?

Passer By: 10 kilometres away

CNG Driver: Huh?

Us: [insert loud and repetitive expletives]!!!!!

Fast forward 15 minutes spent transferring CNGs and risking life and limb ducking and weaving through the late night streets of Dhaka

Me: Quick, run, run, run, it might be late

Tania [following me as we climb over rows of men sitting on the floor in queues]: Get Out Of My Way!

Crowd of Amused (male) Onlookers: Chittagong that way! Quick!

Me: I can see the train! Tania it’s there!

Me: AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH Noooooooo - It’s leaving! It’s leaving without us!!!!!!!

Me to Dhaka friends: Um, hi, sorry to call so late, but… can we crash on your couch? We just watched the train pull away. Without us.

---------------------

How very Hollywood. Except of course if this was Hollywood I would have missed the train only for the starts to align as I met ‘the one’ on the bus the next day. And while there was a young guy who kept making ‘meaningful’ eye contact with me – I didn’t take the leap and introduce myself as I’m almost certain his only interest would have been to ‘make friendship’. Not to mention how freaky it gets when these ‘meaningful looks’ last ALL DAY.

That’s the story of Tania and I not getting on the overnight train to Chittagong. And while I would like very, very much to blame the whole incident on Bangladesh and how ridiculous it is that we got taken to the wrong side of the city in the middle of the night by a taxi driver who doesn’t even know what a train is but… I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being just a little bit worried that it was karma.

You see, after dressing up ‘specially’ for a farewell in a sari and going to the beauty parlour to get wrapped up in the 7 metres or so of material that is the silly outfit and getting my hair blow dried and putting on makeup for the first time in ages, I confess to getting a little over excited. And then someone put a red wine bottle in front of me…

Bri and I in our saris - pre festivities

It reminds me a bit of the time my (very underage) sister downed an untold amount of bourbon on an empty stomach, and then tried to call our dad on her watch to beg for extra time to sober up only to realise, belatedly, she was not Maxwell Smart.

Except, of course, that I am by no means underage and no one was coming to rescue me from my own personal hell. No. Instead I ‘came too’ on a cushion on a floor, still wrapped up in my sari, covered in no less then 200 bright red mosquito bites (have already googled early symptoms of dengue fever and I only have three of them so far), and with a hangover that rivalled even my very best pre-Bangladesh efforts.

I stopped counting the bites on this side of my foot (yes foot, not leg) at 45.

It seems, friends, this girl can no longer (?) hold her liqour. Which makes my timing of coming home for the festive season just perfect!

Food In The Belly

I sit with the sounds of a generator humming in my ears, the stench of 80% DEET insect repellent up my nose, and a stomach full of food which I am optimistically hoping my immune system will fail to recognise was unlikely to have been prepared following any of Dr Bob’s rules (peel it, cook it, boil it or forget it for the non-developing country traveller types). Dr Bob, I apologise now for breaking almost all the rules at once, but I just have no idea how to solve the food problem when hospitality is the key to many a door, and I’m a girl in need of keys.

I could now begin to regale stories of endless cups of cha (tea) complete with three (or four or five) teaspoons of sugar, or/and salt (yes, salt), and powdered milk (melanine anyone?); of ‘mishti’ which are balls of boiled cheese soaked in sugar syrup (for those of you who know my ‘spit out face’, recall mental image now); or of … well, no, you get the point. I could. But then I would sound like every other ‘other’ who is lucky enough to get invited into people’s homes and sit on their plush lounges, eat with their silver spoons, or drink coconut milk on their dirt floor, whatever the case may be. So I won’t.

Instead what I will regale you with is the stupendous discovery that I can learn to cook! And I mean, ‘look out everyone coz’ Jamie is in da house’ kind of cooking too, not your Women’s Weekly variety. (um, ignore the gangsta/Oprah accent you just adopted mentally in your head – Jamie is a pom – I apologise). Mum, Sally and Amy in particular, I know you have your doubts, but I’m serious. Take a look!

What you see there, people, is a loaf of wholemeal bread made 100% by hand.

That loaf was made from flour lugged on my back for over 7 hours + a missed train ride, and made with 3 hours of measuring, mixing, kneading, rising, kneading, rising, baking (insert super cred for developing country-like behaviour). And that’s not all folks! You should see my fruit salads! And vegetable curries! And chickpea, pumpkin and cous cous mash, and… mmmmm If I wasn’t so full of salmonella right now, I’d be licking my lips. 

[As an aside, why is pomegranite not found in everyone’s fruit bowl? Those little purple beads of juicy goodness are not only an amazing colour, but add a pep to the average apple and banana combo I’ve completely fallen for!]

See, it’s true, I’ve become a regular Donna Hay; a Neil Perry in the making; a f*%$)@#... wait, no you’re right, Gordon’s glory days are gone if those pesky tabloids are to be believed (yes, even in the Dish I know this) so I’ll skip him. The next thing I want to master is oven-baked veggie patties to go with the tinned beetroot I’ve been saving. It really is the small things.

While we’re on the topic…

One thing I simply can’t get used to is the whole eating with your hands thing. And I’m not talking about pizza, a sandwich or even a sushi roll (which I don’t eat with my hand anyway because nori stinks!) – I’m talking rice. Curry. Dahl (of the runny-soup-flavourless variety). Diced and sliced vegetables. Fish. Leg of mutton. Chilli. Everything. For anyone who thinks learning to eat with chopsticks is difficult, I challenge you to eat soup with your fingers and then get back to me.

Now, the problem I have with eating with my hands is that it’s really bloody hard to eat it at the right temperature. Oh, and the bit where it goes against everything I was ever taught about eating food from slurping and burping to playing with my food and licking my fingers. Ok, and the fact that Bangladesh puts a whole new meaning into the ‘make sure you wash your hands’ command. You'll know what I mean when you see where I ate lunch today:

Not quite Cafe Sydney, is it? And note the pond next to it. That's the water they use for cooking. Seriously.

But really, I’m most annoyed by the fact that if I try and eat it just after it’s served, it burns my fingers. If I wait for it to cool, I’ve got about a two minute window to shovel it in before it becomes a lukewarm pile of yellowy mush – cold to the touch and boring to the tastebuds.

Reality Check

Wow. I love that I’m not waxing lyrical on my blog about the ways of the world and how spun out I am that I just spent all day filming in a remote corner of Bangladesh, coaxing villagers who have never seen a movie before to relax in front of the camera:

while trying to keep the kids out of the shot who swarm me wherever I go in the hope that I’ll focus my lens their way. And let’s be frank, they’re in with a bloody good chance considering evidence like this:

So I can’t imply that it’s all their fault I’m not about to win an Oscar for Best Documentary. 

But no, no no – I’m giving all this air time to something most of the world doesn’t get enough of - including the aforementioned villagers I’m trying my best to turn into the new Brad Pitt’s of the world:

It doesn’t make me feel guilty at all. Really it doesn’t…