Monica, you wet bitch.

I received a text message from my mate Ben earlier this morning. Ben lives in Darwin, and had disturbing news:

We are going to be hit by a category five cyclone tomorrow. We have to go to special bunkers in case it destroys the houses. We've stocked up on bourbon and beer.

Frightening stuff. Ben is of course referring to Tropical Cyclone Monica, which recently crossed the Northern Territory Coast. It has gale-force winds 200 kilometres across and is responisble for ripping the shit out of parts of Northern Queensland last week.

For those unfamiliar with the geography, imagine Australia as the Bat Symbol. Darwin is on the left ear. The other capital cities should be safe as they are on the wings, and Adelaide (where I currently am) is on the tail.


Those readers currently in Darwin and other parts of the Northern Territory, please take the time to brush up on your emergency procedures:

CYCLONE SAFETY TIPS

1. Be aware of all News and Emergency Updates.

2. Domestic animals have an innate sixth sense when it comes to Natural Phenomena. Take note of any pets who seem flighty, such as these labradors seen leaving Darwin earlier this week.


3. Take refuge in government sanctioned shelters. Do not try to build your own.


4. Do not take refuge where there are a lot of glass windows.

5. Do not attend an orgy during a cyclone, as this poor soul did.


6. Do not take refuge in fields or farming land. Even if you are clear of the cyclone, the farmers may not be aware of your presence.


7. Do not lend the cyclone money.

8. And above all, remember to stay clear of power lines.



That should just about cover it. I will post another update once I have heard from Ben. To everybody in Darwin, look after yourselves.

THIS HAS BEEN A SHODDY COMMUNITY SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Review - Hostel

Unfamiliar East European towns. Is there anything more creepy?

Discussing Oral sex with your grandparents? Yeah, maybe. But as far as a film setting goes, the outskirts of Bratislava is definitely up there - and is the location of the new film Hostel.

Before I get underway with a descriptive review, let me set the scene of how I went about viewing this nasty piece of celluloid.

I awoke 6:15pm Sunday afternoon after a monster weekend. Wandering downstairs I found my flat-mate Sam flaked out on the couch and asked if he wanted to go watch a film that some critics were describing as "Torture Porn". Of course, he agreed.

We caught the Bus to the cinema, whereby a mildly insane pregnant woman stood at the front and lectured everyone on Christianity for the entire journey.

After the sermon fuelled Bus ride we entered the cinema, hungover, scattered, with heads full of religous babble. We could not have been better prepared for the oncoming visual onslught if we tried.

Hostel is the tale of three young men doing as they should in their early twenties. No, not studying hard or working summer jobs - on a mission of scoring drugs and women throughout Europe. The adventure begins with the boys enjoying a weed-fuelled exploration of Amsterdam's Red Light District. Arriving home after curfew, they are locked out of their Hostel only to be taken in by a young European man named Alex.

Upon chatting with the mysterious Alex, the boys learn of a small town just outside of Bratislava. This is no ordinary destination, as a war has taken most of township's men, leaving a sex starved female Utopia. There is one particular Hostel that guarantees foreign travellers sex, so the three protaganists give up on their current agenda of Barcelona for the Shagger's Wonderland of Slovakia.

One train ride later and to their extreme pleasure the boys find the Hostel to be exactly as described. It's Disneyland, but instead of the 'Tea Cups' it's C-Cups and the Enchanted Castle is a sauna full of exotic women. What follows is a night of dancing, drugs and sex, and the boys are more than plum-pleased with their Bratislava adventure.

It's about at this point that the audience has been lulled into a teen sex comedy haze, as the film feels more Porky's than Pyscho. But what fun is an Air show if the planes don't crash, and it's not too long before our travelogue of sweaty sex fun turns into a bloody power tool nightmare. Turns out the Hostel is actually a front for a far sinister operation, and the boys have fallen into it's trap like the gullible drug fucked horn bags they truly are.


Sure enough, all three of the boys end up Torture creek without a paddle. Though the protagonists aren't the most likeable of heros, the acting is of a decent standard - especially the resulting torture scenes which are some of the tensest moments I've seen while at the cinema for quite some time.

I have seen gorier special effects - especially when it comes to Asian cinema, and some of Hostel's ideas come across tamer than they could have been. That considered, It's still one of the classic kick-in-the-nuts-for-tourism films. Just as Once Were Warriors tarnished our image of New Zealand and City of God kind of put that Brazilian tour on the backburner, Hostel is going to leave Eastern European Back-packing with a sour taste in your mouth. I can see the tourism advertisments on the Underground already:


Any film that starts off with drugs and sex in Amsterdam, and ends up with blow-torches and chainsaws in down town Bratislava was always going to trip my trigger. Half teen Sex Comedy, half Snuff film - this is definitely not a film for all tastes. Those who like gruesome Horror movies will really enjoy Hostel. Those who don't? Well, I hear there's a great Penguin Documentary doing the rounds. Go watch that instead.

Hostel. The perfect Date movie? I doubt it.
The perfect film for a Hungover Sunday? Oh God Yes.

Selemat Datang to the Jungle

Everybody has a different definition of what a feast should be. For some it's the joy of a greasy burger and a bucket of chips. For others, it's that snobby buzz they get from a 60 quid steak the size of an acorn.

Fuck that.

For me a feast is always going to be a spicy Asian cuisine onslaught that leaves your tongue on fire and your stomach wondering what the hell just hit it. You can stick your french fries and your Cordon Bleu in your pee hole, I'll take a ten course curry and rice blowout any day of the week. And what better place to dine on Asian cusine than in Asia itself. My location? Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

To get home to Adelaide from London I had to fly over South East Asia, and thought it a good idea to drop into KL to see my infamous coleague Ozi. I'd already been to Malaysia eight years earlier, and had done my lion's share of sight seeing then. So this six day trip we gave the statues and museums a miss and concentrated on something far more important, the restaurants.

For the following six days we engorged ourselves like a couple of mosquitos on a week old tampon. I pounded so much food into my guts, that I needed a mid wife present everytime I took a crap. But before my similes and methaphors get even more graphic, let's check out some of the high-lights:

Kahvitha's Curry House

What better way to wash the taste of two years of fish and chips from my mouth then to blast it with some local KL fodder. My first meal in KL was at a back street diner named Kahvitha's, an advocator of what Ozi has christened "Elbows In" dining. Plates are for pussies, and knives and forks will only slow you down. This is a shit load of curries, pastes and fried sea foods and meats dumped on a banana leaf. No utensils are necessary, as you dig your whole fists into the array of meats, veges, spices and sauces. I hadn't eaten this way for eight years, it was Fantastic.

East Malaysian Lady Boy Dining

On my second day Ozi and I ventured into the heart of the city to find a specific Thai Restaurant. As the Thai place had closed down, we instead went into a place next door specialing in Eastern Malaysian Village Cuisine. We ordered the spiciest Tom Yam soup the chef could muster, and asked for a few of the local dishes aswell. Our waitress recommended a Village favourite, a kind of Vietnamese Roll but with a lot more spice. It was at this moment Ozi realised that our waitress was in fact a Lady Boy (layman's terms: Tranny). I was hynotised by her apples adam bobbing up and down, as she told us that the portions had to be eaten in one go.

We did as she/he asked and downed the roll in one hit. I'm quite a fan of spicy food, and have built up a reasonable tolerance over the years. I was quite happy with the rolls, noting that there was a mild burning sensation in my mouth that was getting stronger. I was then blasted with a spice explosion like a cricket bat to an old woman's face. The chili fried so deeply into my body, that I swear my kids will be born as burn victims. 2 cans of coke and a bowl of rice couldn't stop the sweating and tears, but another waitress came to the rescue with a special bowl of seeds that would dull the chili flavour. Through my watering ocular sockets I realised this waitress was a Lady Boy too. This place was the Crying Game, for more reasons than one.

The fire in my belly dulled down to a slight burn. Rest assured, my stomach and I were no longer on speaking terms for the rest of that day.
(Side Note: That is just a figure of speech. If at any point you find yourself conversating with your own digestive system, please see a Doctor. As you are probably insane.)

Fatty Crab

A simple bare bones diner with an even simpler message "Get in here you bastards and feed your fat fucking faces".



Fatty Crab is a Malaysian Classic. So popular that we actually had to line up to get in, an act usually unheard of when dining in Asia. This isn't a case of sitting at your window seat, sipping your chardonnay and discussing how 'clever' the latest epsiode of Desperate Housewives was with your date as you wait 90 minutes for your entrees to come out. This is pure feeding, the food hits the table as soon as you order it. A foot high plate of crabs cooked in special curry sauce lands on the table seconds after we requested it. A mallet and a metal nut-cracker are provided so that you can pound those bastard crabs til every last fibre of their meaty bodies goes prisoner to your gaping mouths.

Yes kids, this is serious fucking dining. I saw these two bastards at a table, and boy did they look like they meant business:


Throughout the restaurant all that could be heard was the cracks and crunches of tool on shell, as every patron guzzled out every last molecule of crab meat that they could. It was a midnight feast of kings. Throw in a icy cold longneck of Tiger beer, and I was in Hog Heaven.

And here's the hand job at the end of the culinary massage that is Kuala Lumpur: it's damn cheap too. I could get a three course meal for the price of a cheeseburger in London. The British Pound goes miles in Southern Asia.

I recommend a visit.

Let's learn to speak British!

Hello there.

I'm sitting here at my keyboard ready to type some stories for you. Should I write about the time I came home from the pub to find a 6 foot blonde girl in my bed who didn't leave for three days? Or how about the time I almost urinated on a burglar?

But I'm getting way ahead of myself, as there is something that I find very concerning.

I've been living in London for two years. Though I've managed to fend off the stigmatism of a sort-of-not-really-almost English accent, I'm wondering how many of the British colloquialisms my brain has absorbed. I'm paranoid that words and phrases will slip into my articles that you, the reader, will not be able to understand.

There's only one thing for it - I'm going to have to teach you to understand British.

No point in diving in head first, so we'll start off with something basic; The word snog. Not a word I use much, if at all - but as good a launching pad into the British language as any.

The word snog originated from the name of a Scottish farmer Edvard McSnoggle (1780 - 1855) who used to passionately tongue kiss each and every one of his cattle before going to bed at night. When asked if this was some ancient form of superstitious ritual to ward off evil spirits, his response was "Sure, why not".

A few hundred years later, and the word snog has evolved into the following:

snog

Verb. To kiss lengthily, passionately or lustfully.
Noun. A lengthy and passionate kiss.

Though it is a very basic word, it is always wise to take great care when learning a new language. So let's make sure that you have completely grasped the concept and will not confuse something that is a snog, with something that is not a snog.

These young ladies are participating in an act that contistutes a snog.

This does not constitute a snog. This is a dog dressed as a Face-hugger from the movie Aliens.

This is snogging.

This is not snogging. This is the Japanese Boy Band Yatta.

Okay, now you try. Three Pictures will follow, of which only two will constitute a snog or snogging. See if you can pick the odd one out:





Did you choose the last one? You did? Well done! That is the correct answer. The third picture was not a snog. It was a Squirrel trapped in the spokes of a bicycle.

Congratulations, you have grasped the word snog and have taken the first step towards learning British.