Dear
*
There were clouded times, but there were also times of infinite success, infinite happiness. And it was the latter that caused him so much grief. He didn't know who he was any more. He had never been happy, simply didn't do happy, and so it was a confusing quagmire, these balmy, blissful days, not on an island, not cursed by palm trees, but here in the heart of the city, in a sea of glass and steel, with skyscrapers for mountains and buildings for trees, hemmed in like the forest of old. Perhaps it was the same as that brief, blissful time, in another life, when he had returned from the township afar to that tiny, rustic village nestled in the foothills, and fallen in love in the cold European spring, and yes, been happy as the years rolled by and the children came along. He couldn't conjure her face now, not from so long ago, not across so many life spans, but he did remember that brief respite from the wars and angst that had bedevilled every last stay. Nate got into Safe Haven and while he seemed to expect the world to pay for it, these brief sad times, moi, moi, drunk, drunk, the interconnectedness that played out in farcical reunions, in collapsed realities, in passing friendships, also played out as he sat in the garden restaurant near the Malaysia Hotel with Alex the author of books for teenage girls, Boyfriends With Girlfriends being the next item out, and they talked about anything and everything, as if there was no need for pleasure.
Time out of mind they called it, but Jack the lawyer from Washington who called everyone dear was all excited because his boyfriend was flying in from Malaysia or Singapore or wherever it was, and he was declaring they would have a quiet dinner and almost for free, just like that, he would have sex and be loyal. It's the best sex I've ever had, dear, Jack said. It wasn't an erotic thought. He'd only been happy, on their inspection of so many of Bangkok's available apartments, when they were in high rise buildings, antiseptic flats on the 24th floor. And an extra room, well he didn't need that dear. You'd only have to cool it. What, no one's ever going to come and stay? You wouldn't like a study? But the views were spectacular in an ice like way, while he was happy to look out on the backs of houses, walled in, with the sound of the metal grinder in the evening and the blanket privacy, as if they were ground into a heart, as if nothing mattered, as if the full weight of circumstance hadn't crushed them already. There was no narrative sense because life didn't flow in a linear fashion. He bought his ticket to Pnom Penh and didn't want to go; although once he got there it would be a different story. The sins of the past and the sins of the future, they would all come down to a simple afternoon in a five dollar flea pit; where nobody asked any questions and the crack down on vice had never happened. Not that this was vice. It was simple love; passion in a passionless life. A land bereft of love.
Im, I'm full, Aek said, rubbing his belly after a confusion over dates and times and a trip down to Silom for food. The previous day Nate and Shawn and he had walked through Limpini to Ruhm Rudi after sitting at Coffee Society near Salen Dang for an hour. Being close to DJs, there was barely a straight person there, a couple of tourists who must have wandered in by accident, otherwise nothing but gangs of swishy young men. But Jack, with his infinite capacity to offend almost everybody, showed up later at the meeting; after which, as they walked off down the soi, he declared loudly of Nate: "That's a sad case, dear", only turn to find him right behind them. It was typical of Jack. Who was no doubt happy this morning, after the advent of his lover. He had sought out Chinese herbal viagra the night before, but when the chemist had it in stock decided against it, frightened of a heart attack. Have you ever tried it dear, he asked Alex and Shawn and himself. No, they replied in turn. Oh you're all young, dear, he declared unabashedly. They were on the way to a restaurant. Foreigners were always on their way to a restaurant in this town. It was easy to put on weight. They had spent part of the afternoon in a very up scale French restaurant around the corner, not a Thai in sight, except for the staff, and a little woman who looked for all the world like Coco Channel, but when he said she looked very much like Coco in the movie, she had no idea what he was talking about; and they had no idea who Coco was, or what a Channel shop was. But when they finally got the idea there was a movie they grinned: and the male waiter explained: you look like a superstar in a movie. That got a grin, and a hoped for tip. And as they left and the owner, sitting at the bar, thanked them for their custom Jack declared once again: That's alright, dear.
THE BIGGER STORY:
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As Pakistan turns 63 years old in exactly nine days time, its worst floods in 80 years have left up to 3 million souls stranded amid outbreaks of disease after monsoon rains forming floods kill almost 1,500 people.
The situation is grim over most of the country. The water which broke from breached Muzaffargarh canal is now a threat to the nearby oil refinery and Kot Addu Power Station which produces 1400 megawatts of power. “Main highways are cut off as bridges across the country’s inflated northern rivers have been washed away,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA): "More than 29,500 houses were damaged and a key trade highway to China was blocked by flooding.”
Over 900,000 cusecs of water was released from the head Chashma in Layyah over the past three days, now posing a threat to Taunsa. “The floods have damaged 8,16,842 acres of crop across the Punjab province,” said Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of Punjab province.
The South province of Pakistan, Sindh, is to face the worst of all, as the combination of the flood streams from the north and north-east finally heads down to the south. About 100,000 extra cusecs of water has entered the Guddu Barrage and the level is speedily mounting in River Indus. The water level at Guddu Barrage now points to 470,000 cusecs and to 225,000 cusecs at the Sukkur Barrage in Sindh.
“Sindh has been put on code red and there are fears that up to 150,000 people could be displaced in the province," says a government official. “In case of further rain, it is expected that out of 23 districts in the Sindh province, 19 will be affected.”
Torrential rains are forecasted for the next two days by the meteorological department, so the River Indus will be in a very high flood situation. DG Met Office Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry forewarns: “The first half of the current month [until August 15] is critical as another system of heavy rains would enter Sindh province from Bay of Bengal on August 8 or 9."
The Pakistan Army has rescued over 60,000 stranded people in the last five days, a spokesperson of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Wednesday. Some 40 helicopters and 450 army boats are participating in the continuing rescue activities in the wide spread areas of the country.
The army is also providing cooked food to flood-affected people at Army relief camps, set up at diverse places. Army engineers are working on opening roads and making diversions to facilitate the flow of traffic. Around 2,600 tourists have been evacuated from Kalam. Thirty Chinese engineers, who were working on the Dobair-Khwar Hydel project in Kohistan, have been safely evacuated to Bisham. Helicopters and boats have so far ferried 28,000 people to safety from the areas nearby.
Pakistani officials warn the shortage of drinking water is spreading diseases, including cholera, a stern bacterial infection which chiefly affects the small intestine. Syed Zahir Ali Shah, health minister for the Khyber-Pakhtunkhua province, says around 100,000 souls, mostly children, are suffering from illnesses such as gastroenteritis, involving both the stomach and the small intestine, resulting in acute diarrhea.
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PR flaks buzzed anxiously as Crikey arrived at the University of Melbourne's Carrillo Gantner lecture theatre last night to witness PJ Keating lay down a well-researched speech on the Australian media's notorious allergy to privacy.
As the country's 24th PM gasbagged with Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis, Centre for Advanced Journalism chief Michael Gawenda warned the audience about the exhaustive analysis to come, chortling that "if you haven't had a comfort stop, you'll need one at the end," before Keating shuffled to the front to slam News Limited and deliver a 17-page plea to reform Australia's hodge-podge of media snoop laws.
This was a no-nonsense restatement of the country's shortcomings on privacy -- that, given News' obsession with pointless and ineffectual self-regulation, was both well overdue and getting worse.
Keating started big, quoting privacy's intellectual forbears Warren and Brandeis on the "right of the individual to be let alone" and universal charters on civil and political rights. Those concerns were lined up against the modern day perils of Google StreetView, "peek and seek provisions" and data mining by business and government.
The current toothless triptych of the publisher-funded Australian Press Council, the Australian Communication and Media Authority and internal union processes has meant that complaints almost never get up, and sanctions are never enacted. Self regulation was a joke, with the "everything is working well" line bleated by News supremo John Hartigan and his Right to Know coalition utterly indefensible. Keating said it was telling that amid all the failed attempts at self-policing the one accountability mechanism that stood out was Media Watch.
Serious opprobrium was reserved for former Sunday Telegraph deputy editor (and current Woman's Weekly editor) Helen McCabe who, in the aftermath of the Pauline Hanson debacle, famously chirped that the public interest was anything her readers might find interesting.
Other potentially actionable incidents, including the Tele's decision to run photos of Sonny Bill Williams and actress Candice Falzon's toilet tryst and Adam Walters' report on David Campbell exiting Kens of Kensington using a "taxpayer-funded vehicle" (an hypocrisy pointed out by Crikey hours after the story appeared).
Tellingly, no News Limited publications decided to report Keating's comments this morning, despite editors and journalists being provided with copies of the speech well in advance of their deadlines yesterday.
The former PM's renewed interest in privacy was almost certainly piqued by an outrageous Sunday Telegraph piece last November, that claimed his lobbyist daughter Katherine had threatened to "kill" a News Limited photographer while dressed as Amy Winehouse at an Absolut Vodka Halloween party.
Crikey understands that Keating has been fastidious in his desire to wrap an intellectual framework around his anger ever since.
The day after the offending report Keating used Fairfax newspapers to assail News, prompting a war of words with Hartigan who said it was "difficult to stomach the hypocrisy of Paul Keating". Last night, Keating hit back, making special mention of the News chief on four separate occasions.
Keating turned Hartigan's words from last year back on himself: "The hypocrisy, to use a John Hartigan phrase, is ‘stomach-churning’," he demurred.
Other senior News figures also came in for a bollocking, with in-house lawyer Julian Quill questioned over his take on the Herald Sun's decision to run Brendan Fevola's camera-phone picture of Lara Bingle on its front page.
Picture of Bangkok: Peter Newman.