Short Stories 4

RICE BEER (Sept 21, 1999)

Jinan University has a very large campus area, which is home to some 10,000 students. The accommodation for the students is basic, but very functional. Teacher accommodation is more luxurious, but the resident foreign teachers appear to be the best off, and live in relative luxury in their own guest house.

In addition to the accommodation buildings, there are, of course, many classrooms for the various departments. Most of these classrooms are in fairly old blocks, but the latest addition to the university is a large new, very modern building, which has been allocated to the science and computer technology departments.

The whole campus is about one kilometer square, with 5 separate entrances, which are all strictly monitored by security guards. Very few vehicles enter the area, but two wheeled, people powered contraptions are found almost everywhere.

A complete service industry has sprung up within the campus area to service the needs of the students and staff. There are restaurants of varying quality, from take-away noodles, to the delightful Ming Hu, which is situated beside the lake, and offers a wonderful selection of Chinese cuisine at a very reasonable price, and is frequented by students, teachers and professors alike.

There are small shops and supermarkets, which sell a wide range of food and consumables. Bike repair shops, laundry facilities, clothes repair shops and a host of other small light industries, which are too numerous to mention, are all to be found within the perimeter fence. In truth, the campus is a small, self-contained city, within a city, but without the pollution and traffic noise normally associated with the typical Chinese urban environment.

Having received my teaching assignments from Professor Au, of the English department, I spoke to him about coaching the university football team, or at least, assisting the present coach, if that position was already taken. The good Professor personally escorted me to the Physical Education building and introduced me to the coach. I was invited to come along to training that same afternoon and meet the teams. I eagerly accepted.

At 4-30, I was at the training ground, my bike chained up to the fence and ready to begin. The coach explained, through an interpereter, that there was a friendly game scheduled for 5 pm and we could assess the players and I could join in the game if I so desired. Sounded good to me. The game began, and it was soon apparent that there were some very skillful players in the squad. After about 20 minutes, a tactical substitution was made. I came onto the pitch to play left midfield. The old war wounds of the past, my dodgey knee, worn-out hip, and 50 year old body were all forgotten as I wound the clock back almost 30 years and had a wonderful time showing the young men of Jinan university that there was still life in the old dog.

After the game, I was invited, as guest of the team, to dinner at the Ming Hu restaurant at 7-30. I was delighted to accept their invitation, so I was quickly away on my bike again to shower and change for the occasion. As I chained up my bike outside the Ming Hu, one of the guys, who had been waiting for me, approached me and then took me up to a room in the restaurant, which had been hired especially for the occasion. When we entered the room, everybody was already seated at the tables. One seat had been saved at the head of one of the tables. I was the guest of honour. As I took my seat, the players and coaches (two of them) applauded and cheered loudly. It was a really warm and wonderful welcome.

The delicious food, which included chicken, fish, pork and several other dishes that I didn’t recognise, and chose not to inquire about, was served over a period of about 2 hours. The speeches, including my own, were very short, and, of course, I didn’t understand a single word of any of them because they were all in Cantonese. But, I clapped and cheered with all the others, caught up in the swell of warmth, happiness and youthful enthusiasm generated by these very likeable young men. Their laughter and their high spirits were highly contagious, and I was soon infected and exhibiting the very same symptoms.

With every speech, and there were very many, came the inevitable toast with a glass of ‘RICE BEER’. The weather was very hot and sticky, so the first few toasts were very welcome and quenched the burning thirst developed as I rode my bike to the venue. If only it had stopped after 2 or 3 toasts. No such luck. The guys explained that it was rude to leave any beer in the glass after saying cheers. Toast after toast after bloody toast.

The food came and went, the speeches came and went, but the toasts just came and came.

I knew I had reached, and passed my limit of alcohol consumption, but was so infected by the electricity generated in that room, that caution was thrown to the wind. What an incredible evening.

My bike was a little unsteady as I rode home that night. It probably needs a good service, or at the very least, some oil and grease to stop the wobbles which had suddenly developed. Fortunately, it wasn’t far home, and I arrived safely, although the key seemed far too big for the lock as I attempted to chain up the bike. The walk to the lift was thwart with danger in the form of concrete steps put there on purpose to perplex the hapless traveler. And then the lift would not come when it was called. Only when I threatened to cut it’s cables, did it finally decide to come down to the basement and convey me up to the 4th floor. The ecurity door to the unit had swapped locks with the front door, but it didn’t fool me for any longer than about 15 minutes, and the light switches had all crawled 6” higher up the wall.

The first priority after gaining entry to the unit, was to prevent further dehydration, so I downed at least 3 glasses of water, trying not to think of words like ‘cheers’ or ‘toast’ or ‘good health’ as they went down the hatch.

It would be less than honest to say that I slept well that night, or even that I didn’t suffer any ill effects for my over indulgence. Fortuanately, I had the following day totally free of any engagements, and took most of it to recover from such an incredible experience, and particularly, the after effects of that ‘Oh so sweet’ RICE BEER.

Poetalan

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SOS

The time is 7pm 10/7/99. The place is the main bus stop (inbound) in D.Y. About 16 eople are at the bus stop. Five are intoxicated.

Three young boys about 16/17 are talking foolishly whilst drinking beer.

A young couple are waiting for a bus, but the girl staggers away from the guy, falls off the kerb onto her side on the road. She gets up, walks back onto the pavement and collapses in a heap.

I rush to help her up and onto a seat. Her boyfriend helps me, but no-one else bothers. When I tell the boyfriend to go and get some water for her, he goes into a nearby shop.

An older man who was watching, lights a cigarette and staggers across the busy road. Cars beep their horns as they change lanes to avoid him. I cannot assist him because I am still holding the girl. Nobody helps him. Fortunately, he crosses safely.

Poetalan

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THE BULLSHITTER

In May of 1983 I started working on a contract at CASE Communications in London. As a contractor, the salary was very high, so it was a position I needed to keep. My job was repairing ‘datacommunications equipment’. It was all new to me, but fortunately, I picked everything up quickly, and settled in very well. I got on very well with the permanent employees there and soon had most of them laughing. I stayed at CASE till April 1986, and left to migrate to Australia. I was sponsored by Case Australia.

There was another guy who started just before me as an engineer. His name was Grant Harding. Grant came to CASE directly from the ‘Royal Air Force’, and the training there was generally accepted to be of the highest standard. But,It soon became clear to me that he had very little talent as a repair engineer, but the man had a wonderful talent for talking.

He might spend several hours on an easy fault which should only have taken a few minutes, then having found the easy fault, would wander around the workshop telling everyone how difficult it had been, and how clever he was to have fixed it. The more difficult repairs, were normally put to one side by Grant, and then I would fix them later on. This went on for a couple of months, and before the manager became aware of how bad an engineer Grant actually was, the supervisor’s job became available.
Grant applied, and because of his indisputable talent for talking, managed to get the job. The other contenders were astonished. Everyone but the boss realised that Grant was worthless.

It took the boss about 6 weeks to realise his mistake, but it was too late. The company policy was to accept such mistakes, and not demote or dismiss staff without exceptional cause.

Not only did Grant not work, but he would actively stop other engineers from working with his constant talking. He talked rubbish, and more rubbish.

When he was just an engineer, we could make some excuse and walk away, but as Supervisor, no one dared just walk off whilst he was talking.

It was my idea to give him the name ‘Bullshitter’, but never to his face. The new name spread all over the building. It described him perfectly.

Grant was in charge of 6 engineers. When he arrived at work each morning, we would all be at our bench doing repairs. That was our job. Grant would normally go to the first engineer in sight, and start talking about his car, his dog, his holiday, his house, or something else that had no connection with our job in datacoms. His strategy was simple but effective. He would approach the engineer, and say:

‘Good morning Mike, how is your car?’

Mike would reply:

‘Fine thanks Grant’

That was all Grant needed to start really talking. He might talk to Mike for 20 minutes, then progress to another engineer and so on. We all dreaded it. This happened every day.

A plan had to be devised. My solution was simple, but relatively successful.

When Grant arrived in the morning and started talking to an engineer, One of us would go to the other room, phone our extension, and call the engineer to the phone.

Grant would move on to his next ‘victim’. The same ploy would be used, and so on till Grant gave up and went to his desk. This ploy was not only used in the morning, but at any time during the day when someone was being ‘buried in bullshit’ by Grant.

Grant never appeared to understand what was going on, but he was quite intelligent in some ways, and must have had some idea.

Grant bought a used car from a dealer for 2,000 pounds. It was a Skoda, and in England, Skoda has a terrible reputation. Nobody in their right mind would buy a 5 year old Skoda for 2,000 pounds. Grant was pleased. He had a new toy, but more important to him, he had something to bullshit about. Anyone and everyone he could corner, would hear everything about his Skoda. To Grants dismay, the ‘big ends’ wore out, and the car made a loud ‘knocking’ noise. The engine needed to be overhauled, and that would cost about 1,500 pounds to fix properly. Unfortunately for Grant, the warranty had just expired, and he had to bear the full cost of the repair. Grant then proceeded to tell everybody how he had allowed for exactly that scenario, and still got a bargain. At that stage, I wrote a poem about Grant.

Bullshitter

A car salesman’s wish did come true,
Into his office there flew,
A mug with two grand,
The dough in his hand,
Yes Sir!! I’ve the right car for you.

His wife saw the car and did grunt,
Oh how could you pull such a stunt,
This Skoda is shocking,
The big ends are knocking,
You stupid, fat, bullshitting cunt.

Poetalan

I hope Grant never saw the poem. It was not meant for his eyes.

The boss finally decided to demote Grant to Senior Engineer of the Automatic Test Equipment. This position involved writing a lot of software to help with fault diagnosis of the difficult faults. He was there for a year, but we didn’t get one single workable program out of him.

When he was Supervisor, the engineers were frightened of him because they valued their jobs, but after his demotion, this fear evaporated, and some of the guys argued with him. Without the power that came with the office of supervisor, Grant was easily beaten in logical debate. The only problem was, that logic would soon disappear with Grant, only to be replaced by bullshit.

The boss gave Grant a wonderful reference, and tried to persuade him to move to another department within the company, or go elsewhere. As long as it was away from his own department.

Poor Grant was taking quite a battering from all sides. He couldn’t fix many faults, his programs were worthless, engineers were abusing him, and his reputation had spread all over the company.

When I left CASE U.K. to work for CASE Australia, Grant was looking for another job. Shortly after arriving in Australia, I had a communication from my friends in England saying Grant had left Case U.K. to take up a well paid position with a College.

With the wonderful reference from our boss, and his unquestionable talent for talking, and a little knowledge, he was able to convince yet another boss that he would be an asset to his company.

I wonder how long he lasted there.

Poetalan

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VON RIP

Uncle Dan had a little Jack Russell terrier called Jock. The two were inseparable. When Jock was run over by a car outside his home in Ladbroke Grove, Dan was heartbroken. He heard the brakes screech, found Jock barely alive in the gutter, and Jock died as he licked Dan’s hand.

Dan was a realist, and he decided that the best way to deal with his grief was to get another dog. He acquired another Jack Russell very shortly thereafter and called him Rip. The new dog was quite the opposite to Jock. Rip showed little or no affection towards his new master. He was difficult to train, and refused to obey even the simplest commands. Physically too, Rip was different. He was so stocky and muscular. The body would not have looked out of place had it belonged to a dog twice Rip’s size. His head was similar to that of the much larger English Bull Terrier. In fact, now that I think of it, Rip was not really a Jack Russell at all, but a Bull Terrier with tiny legs.

Dan and Rip did not ‘hit it off’ at all, and Dan gave Rip to me. Rip was my first dog, and as soon as we established the ground rules, and decided that Rip was the ‘Fuhrer’ and it was my one and only duty to serve, feed and obey him, we got along very well.

Rip seemed to suffer from agraphobia, and much preferred indoor life to outdoors. If he had to go outside, he wanted to get into a car, any car. As long as it had 4 wheels. Once inside my car, he barked incessantly at anything and everything. He loved it. Then it was hard to get him out of the car. I had to devise a trick with his tennis ball, and sometimes even that failed.

One day, we went to visit uncle Dan at his home in Ladbroke Grove. I parked outside the house and then lured Rip out of the car with the old ‘tennis ball’ trick. As soon as he was outside the car, I quickly shut the door to prevent re-entry by Rip. It just so happened, that at that exact time, an old gentleman had opened the door of his clean and tidy VW Beatle and was about to get in. No chance. Rip was in as quick as a flash. His back legs were on the front seat, and front legs on the dash. Rip was looking out through the windscreen for something to bark at.

The old guy thought this was really funny at first, and instead of telling me off, we had a laugh together. All that changed the instant he tried to get into the car. It was now ‘Rip’s car’ and nobody but me was allowed inside. As the old guy put his head inside and tried to grab Rip’s collar, Rip attacked him. GGGGGGRRRRRRR. The poor old guy nearly had a heart attack. He staggered back across the pavement and supported himself only by holding the railings in front of the houses. Rip continued to bark at him, but would not leave the car, even to run over and bite the poor old fellow. The tennis ball trick was swiftly brought into play. I walked off muttering some apology to the old guy, who was still holding the railings with one hand and holding his chest with the other. Rip was safely on his lead and acted as though nothing at all had happened. The man took some time to recover, but he and his sparkling blue VW were gone when I finally left uncle Dan’s place to go home.

At that time, I had a girlfriend called Anne. The next time I took Anne out, of course, Rip had to come. Rip seemed to like females, so she had no problem getting into my old Ford. As we began to drive along, Rip’s head appeared in between Anne’s head and mine. His back legs were on the back seat and he had a paw on each of the front seats. We three drove along with our heads ‘in line’. We had traveled less than 50 metres, when Rip started his usual barking routine directly into Anne’s right ear. WOOF WOOF!!!! She hit the roof. Anne was only 18years old so her heart was Ok, but her nerves were unable to take the punishment of Rip’s barking. We had planned to go for a drive that night, but it turned into an early night for all. I didn’t see Anne again after that.

Rip was something of a Romeo. There was a very large field close to my house with many houses backing on to it. Very often, there was a bitch on heat in this field, and Rip would overcome his agraphobia and run off to persue that sweet fragrance. There were usually several dogs around any bitch in that condition, all aggressively ‘jockeying’ for position. Usually the toughest dog would get first chance to mate and pass on his genes. Despite his size, Rip usually had no problem dispensing the other ‘would be’ Romeos, and when the ‘pecking order’ was established, Rip would begin his courtship in earnest. He would line the bitch up, his front legs would be able to reach her back because he would be on tip-toe, but he could never get high enough to mate. After 3 or 4 attempts, Rip would get very frustrated, decide it was all ‘her’ fault, and give her a good hiding instead of making love. I think all the local bitches were terrified of coming on heat. Poor old Rip.

My father drove a later model Ford than the one I had. He decided to take Rip down to the ‘Bunny Park’ where some rabbits had been seen. He knew about Rip’s barking, so in his wisdom, he carried Rip out of the house and placed him in the boot of the car. ‘That’ll keep him quiet’ Dad thought to himself. One mile down the road, Rip was on the front passenger seat with his front legs on the dash, barking as loud as he could. Rip had tunneled his way through the back seat, springs and stuffing everywhere. Dad had to buy a new seat from the car wreckers.

Eventually, my father had enough of Rip’s antics and told me Rip had to go. Uncle Dan knew a guy who had 2 Jack Russell bitches and needed a good dog to ‘service’ them both on a regular basis. He was very impressed with Rip’s physique, and agreed to pay me 9 pounds for him (A fair sum in 1970). The deal was done. It seemed that Rip was going to retire to a nice home with a wonderful part-time job that any dog in the world would envy. I dropped Rip off at the man’s house, said goodbye to Rip and went home.

A few days later, the man came to my front door and begged me to take Rip back. He didn’t want any money. ‘Just take him back’ He said.

I refused. The man and Rip were never seen by myself or uncle Dan again.

Poetalan

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WRONG BUS

The 144 bus travels from Manly Wharf and sometimes terminates at the RNS Hospital, but usually goes another 10 klm to Chatswood.

One winters evening, my last trip was from Manly to RNS Hospital. The destination signs were clearly displayed, the passengers were picked up and we set off.

When we arrived at the RNS, I shouted 'last stop guys, I'm going home' and everybody got off the bus. The interior and destination lights were then turned off, and I drove back to the bus depot in the dark, singing to myself as I drove along.

At the end of the day, the driver takes the bus to be refueled at the fuel bowser. I drove round to the bowser, switched off all the lights, stopped the engine and was just picking up my bag, when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

I got such a fright that I nearly hit the roof of the bus. An old Chinese guy about 125 yrs old (probably fought the English in the opium wars) had been sitting right behind me where I couldn't see him. His hearing and eyesight were probably a little weak. He asked me 'are we at Chatswood yet?' in a very feeble voice.

I took him to the office and the Inspector drove him to Chatswood in one of the company cars.

He didn't say if he enjoyed my singing on the way back to the depot. Maybe he didn't hear it. Perhaps Simon and Garfunkel were his favourite group too.

Poetalan

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ZANZIBAR JUSTICE

An east African friend of mine who was expelled from Zanzibar in the early seventies, told me about the justice system in Zanzibar in the 'old days'. Bippin's family had been living peacefully in Zanzibar for several generations after migrating there from India.

The Island was ruled by a Sultan and his word was absolute. He was a fair and just man, according to my friend Bippin. One day, there was a particularly nasty rape of a young girl. She only just survived the ordeal, and was able to identify the rapist to the authorities.

The Sultan heard of the case and decreed the man's fate.

The whole of the island's population was summoned to the town square, where the rapist was standing naked and tied to a post. His crime was read out to the people and his punishment began.

The man's genitals were cut off, put into his mouth and his lips were stitched up.

The punishment was witnessed by virtually the whole population of Zanzibar. Men women and children.

From that day till Bippin was deported 8 years later, there were no more rapes.

Alan

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