THE SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK NOOS

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… Scrap that, just give me Noodle.”

It seems to me that if you’ve just inked somebody’s fingers to hell and back for the purpose of obtaining fingerprints, giving them something large and wet-ish to clean their inky hands with would be kind of a nice thing to do. Not something that’s, say, roughly the size of a gnat’s nappy. In the interest of globalisation, I’ll repeat that for my US punters—not something that’s, say, roughly the size of a dragonfly’s diaper.

But you don’t get a decent-sized thing at all. You get a moist towelette. Like the ones you get from KFC. A Colonel Sanders moist towelette. One. It’s the size of a postage stamp. And I got inked twice. Once to get a ‘Certificate of No Criminal Conviction’ in Singapore, and the second time to get a set of prints to send back to Australia. To be fed through the criminal system just so at the end, there will be confirmation that I am a good, wholesome, cherub-cheeked person. A clean skin. A very model citizen of a very model society.

It has all been rather dramatic lately. If I’ve neglected to speak to you, I’ll speak to you now—I won the Green Card lottery last week. All you actually win, if you care to know, is the chance to apply for your Immigration Visa without going through the whole pain-in-the-butt drama of convincing some US company to hire you, or even more difficult, some poor US gentleman friend to kneel before you and say ‘Let’s marry our fortunes together, stranger’. Oh well. No more marriage of convenience for me! Oh, and before anyone gets too, too excited, there’s still a chance I might not get my green card. But let’s wait for the interview to roll the dice, shall we? Read the rest of this entry »

The Chinese character for ‘no’ looks like a picnic table. At least I think it means no, or it means words that roughly mean no or ‘not for you’. It pops up in the sub titles at the cinema whenever someone says ‘no’, or ‘don’t’ or ‘can’t’ and words of similar meaning. It’s also displayed on the signage outside Chairman Mao’s Pub, the slogan for which, Singing is not guilty. Dancing needs no reason, amuses me greatly. It’s also across the laneway from Molly Malone’s Irish pub, which is where I was today.

I didn’t mean to sit down there of course. I was just out for a jaunt—ducking, diving, weaving and careering around Boat Quay trying to take some pics to thrill the punters. I just happened to wander down the laneway to take a snap of Chairman Mao’s and well, the call of the Guinness got me. ‘Just one’, I thought. ‘I’ll consider it lunch’. I went in. Is 11.00am too early?

I think Irish pubs must be the same the world over. I’m remembering a snippet of a conversation now that I had with Roy when we were in Dubai. At an Irish pub. In Dubai. Forty-five degrees in the shade—oven forced air outside. And Roy and myself (I can’t remember if Crazy Val was there?) inside, wolfing down a Guinness. It looked like every other Irish pub that I’ve ever been in. Except for the abundant supply of big moustaches and chiselled walnut-coloured faces in this Dubai one. Read the rest of this entry »

So, another Thursday and Giles the Manchurian and Noodle the … Macslandian (parental estate) stroll down to Brewerkz for lunch. There are plenty of cheap eats in the vicinity of the office, but what narrowed down the field of lunch choices for the both of us was the possibility of a pint to go with it. Oatmeal stout. Not to be sneezed at. And only $2 if you order it with the lunch set. Extremely cheap for Singapore.

Much of the conversation is simply venting, venting, venting about work. Giles has a vent, then I have a vent. It’s fun, really fun to have a good whinge about it, and he being the pom…. Hang on, actually I held my own there. Maybe even hogged the conversation? Anyway, anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to sit with me over a beer and listen patiently while I moan about ‘being on the wrong road’, just insert your own experience here and the scene will be set.

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