It's time to feed the chooks. The what? If you are an
Australian of a certain age, with a little political memory, you
will know exactly what I am talking about. If you are an American,
you probably don't know a chook from a Chinook, and even if you do,
well buddy/honey, the association is way over your head. If you are
one of the uncounted millions who speak Chinglish, Konglish,
Japlish, Singlish, or any of the other exotic flavours that English
is dished up in, well this is all blah. Chances are that you get
lost as soon as the semantics go deeper than "pass the chilli
sauce".
This should be the point where I enter a telephone
booth, strip off my used-to-be-white shirt with the fraying cuffs,
and emerge as a superman of the witty, profound, wise, worldly, hip,
sonorous, wildly popular, hilarious and reverberating utterance.
However, just before takeoff there's an admission to make. My
repertoire is limited too. For example, if you talk about football,
baseball, golf, netball, balls of any kind ... I will struggle
bravely for about two minutes to maintain focus, then my eyes will
glaze over. Balls to Thor are as chooks are to Konglish. I am full
of admiration for folk who can reach a state of frenzied cleverness
about balls, and the people balls control, but to me it is, well,
just all balls. On the other hand, if you want to discuss Asian
politics, internal combustion engines, memetics, web page design,
verb particles or freshening bread with a steam iron, I'm right with
you ...
Incomprehension is thus a matter of degree. Happiness
may be how well you learn to live with the fuzz. Take something as
critical as a life partner. Pity those poor saps, all the millions
of them, who stutter tatty cliches on the matchmaking Internet sites
- "n.s., g.s.o.h. rock star lookalike chick/hunk wants fireside
romance with dream partner...". We'll avert our eyes, not decode the
flesh and bone ordinariness behind this. The emotional void it
speaks of is familiar enough to us all though. How I dreamt long
ago, before graduating to spiritual independence, of meeting that
gorgeous soulmate, with whom mutual understanding would shimmer, and
the subtlest shades of our auras blend. What mush. So it's all
animal genes, huh? Some German researchers (ref. Sydney Morning
Herald, 28 May 2002) have just decided that humans are intelligent
because women select men for intelligence, like peacocks select
mates for their tail feathers. Ha, wrong tail feathers again. You
can't win. Alas, like most of humanity, I have also learned to
survive without exuding a killer scent, and get by on platitudes. I
fear that's my karma. Once you settle for communicating like a
baboon instead of beaming wisdom like a Yodi, well at least there's
brain space left over to admire the sunsets.
So moving to the funny-talk English twilight of China
or South Korea was not altogether falling off the edge of the known
world. It was just a couple more steps back away from the sunlight.
Anyway, when you think about it, a good deal of the fun almost
anyone has is in the shadows after dark. Sunlight and shadows? Well,
understanding, seeing things this way or that, or not seeing them at
all, is mental stuff, sort of. Once I worked in Papua New Guinea for
a couple of years. The first time I ventured out it was scary, like
being a white ghost in a tide of black bodies, a walking freak geek
flittering through a froth of strange vowels. It took a while to
realize that amidst midgets with ten centimetre earlobes doubling as
tobacco pouches, ebony giants with hands like meat plates, and a
babble of 800 languages shared by 1000 tribes in this amazing
country, my "foreignness" was utterly uninteresting. After that it
was easy to fit in. Along with everyone else, my expectations of
deep and meaningful discussion started at ground level zero. Each
new stage of understanding, hard won from perching on my head and
wiggling my ears, came as a triumphant achievement. An important
lesson there. Sharing TV programs, pizzas and slang with the mob we
grow up with, we become communication slobs, demand understanding
and ideal friendship to arrive as casually as a bus to the shopping
centre. But the real world away from mum's kitchen ain't like that.
The secret of perfect communication, and the secret of
speaking a foreign language well, is never to have an original idea.
If you are utterly predictable, even the dogs and cats will
understand your intentions perfectly. My own misfortune in every
latitude is to frequently come up with off-centre brain waves. Take
fresh bread and the steam iron. The corn bread which now passes for
my daily staple in the little South Korean dong (suburb) of Bansong
is, well, edible for just a few short hours after it leaves the
bakery. None of those dangerous moisturizing agents in this stuff. I
pondered this awful problem for a week, until scorching my finger
one morning with a puff of steam, inspiration struck. Ouch, uh-huh!
It is not a perfect world though. Iron-steamed bread was a great
success, but after I'd also ironed bits of gluey bread into my
shirts a few times, a little more innovation seemed in order. Why
not use one of those plastic steamer things that hucksters in
department stores try to flog for smoothing curtains ?
The first rule of shopping in Korea is that if you
really want something, it won't be where you expect it. Tissues are
sold in vending machines outside toilets, but not in supermarkets.
The mandarins that small trucks were frantically selling door to
door yesterday have just vanished for at least a year. That simple
audio jack for your tape recorder will need a special trip to the
one part of the city where a whole block of electronics shops grimly
compete. So heading for the local bits-and-pieces shop in search of
a steamer-thingummy, I wasn't hugely optimistic. There were pocket
knives that promised twenty functions, Mickey Mouse pencil cases,
and plastic implements for doing uniquely acrobatic tasks, but no
steamer. The lady who works there had seen me before, and expects a
little insanity. She is cultured enough to keep her face composed.
"Shhhhhh", I hissed, waving my arms in circles. A flicker of doubt
crossed her eyes. "Psssst", I hissed, doubling over and running my
hand up my trouser legs. "Ne, ne", she crooned soothingly,
but didn't move a muscle. You had to be careful with these
foreigners. We weren't getting anywhere. Then I spotted an
advertising blurb that actually featured curtains. "Wsssssssh", I
said, running an index finger down the photographic curtains. The
lady beamed and smashed her hands together in that Korean way of
exclaiming 'aha!' . Then she hurried away and came back with exactly
what I wanted.
At this moment of supreme achievement I should have
offered a libation to the gods and come quietly home, a contented
man. Flushed with success though, giddy with hubris, I tried to
impart the purpose of my purchase. "Fssssh", I growled, steaming an
imaginary slice of bread. "Ppang (bread), mmmm", licking my
lips. A stricken look swept over the woman's face. "Ppang",
I repeated, stating the obvious, and grinning like a maniac.
Her voice tense with anxiety, she shouted for help at the curtained
back of the shop. Hey, this was getting out of hand. What had I
done? After a couple of minutes a leathery little man whom I'd never
seen before bounced up. "Can I help you?" has asked in flawless
English. Ha, he couldn't fool me. At least ten million Koreans are
able to ask "can I help you?" in perfect English, but retreat in
confused panic when you smile and drawl "well yes, as a matter of
fact I was looking for an early eighteenth century glazed pottery
cornucopia...". This time I took pity and just muttered "well no,
not really. I was just telling your admirable companion about my
patent pending bread steaming invention..." The leathery man had the
chutzpah to nod as if he had understood me perfectly. He disappeared
behind a shelf of imitation jewelry, and before I could escape came
pattering back with an ironing board under one arm, and a Chinese
chintz curtain draped over the other.
Ah, so it goes. Anyhow, as I began to say some time
ago, it's time to feed the chooks. That's what they pay me for
around here. It's pretty easy, eh, once you get the angle. The
angle's the thing. You have to go out into the farmyard and toss a
handful of grain just so. If you throw it all in a heap there'll be
feathers flying everywhere and one hell of a barnyard fight. If you
throw it too wide, the chooks are so stupid they'll stand there
scratching and clucking that there's nothing to eat. Oh, all right
you non-Australian barbarians, chooks are hens & roosters. Or if
Chinglish, Japlish or Konglish are your mediums, then chooks are
what they make from sawdust and fat in Kentucky Fried, a.k.a.
chickens. And if you are old enough and silly enough to know a bit
of Australian trivia, 'my chooks' are what a certain grizzled
Queensland Premier used to fondly call the hacks from the press, as
he fed them their daily deceptions. He had a genius for the
incomprehensible utterance, spoken with such conviction and
comforting warmth that voters by the millions flocked to his
farmyard. Now my chooks, my students, are almost as easy to fool.
Heck, they call me "professor". There's a laugh.
* Note on personal names:
all names in this Diary have been changed to protect the privacy of
individuals, unless stated otherwise.
"Whose Chook Are You
Anyway?"... copyrighted to Thor May 2002; all rights reserved
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