Luck By Chance

Aradhna and I just returned from seeing a masterful Bollywood film called 'Luck By Chance' at the CBD Greater Union. As much a behind-the-scenes depiction of the machinations of the Hindi film industry as a boy-meets-girl romance, it features a compact script, heaps of cameos and an ending that could only have been envisioned by a female director (in this case newcomer Zoya Akhtar) in male-dominated Bollywood.

Outback heat.

While my friends back in the US Northeast break out snow shovels and salt spreaders the city of Melbourne is melting. Literally. Train tracks like the ones shown above buckled in yesterday's 43 C (109 F) heat. At 6 am this morning it was already 34 C (93 F) and the mercury is supposed to top 43 the next 2 days. Australian Open officials have sparked controversy by closing the roof of Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena to prevent players from dropping out of matches. The already bone-dry city hasn't seen a drop of rain in 4 weeks. The state of Victoria is under fire alert. Girls are wearing the skimpiest of outfits.

Who's complaining?

Rest, Updike, Rest

Best college professor I ever had was a man named Dick Blood. He joined Seton Hall University's journalism department after retiring as City Editor of the NY Daily News. New England born-&-bred with a Cape Cod accent infused with the 'New Yawk-ese' of midtown taverns, Blood attacked teaching the same way he'd pummeled one of the hardest beats in the world, the mean streets of NYC in the 1970s & 80s. I'll never forget being awoken at 4 am by a phone call telling me to cover a teacher's strike in Paterson and have a story prepared for class at 11:00 am. He had a shock of white hair that seemed out of place atop his taut, tanned body. He told anecdotes about drinking with Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin. He was sleeping with his psychiatrist. In Aussie parlance, he was a 'legend'.

Thought of Blood this morning with the news of John Updike's death from lung cancer at the age of 76. I was a latecomer to novels outside the Tolkien/Asimov/Bradbury realm and so at the age of 20 was unfamiliar with Updike's groundbreaking chronicles of a character named Rabbit Angstrom. The morning after Updike did a reading at Seton Hall, Blood bounded into the classroom like a 5-year-old fresh from Santa's lap. He asked us who'd been in attendance. No hands went up. Blood was apoplectic. He went around the room and demanded that each of us tell the class what we'd opted to do instead of hearing Updike speak. When I said I'd worked from 4 to 8 at my part-time office job, he shook his head and spit out one devastating word: "Pathetic."

Updike was a giant. I've since read all of his Rabbit books and New Yorker columns and come to appreciate Blood's disgust at a roomful of journalism students who'd passed up a chance to breathe the same air as a true master of words.

This reminiscing made me curious as to what became of Blood after he left Seton Hall for the Columbia School of Journalism the year I graduated. Found the following Blood anecdote in an article on journalistic plagiarism written by one of his former students:

The week has taught me nothing if not how maddening and thorny the issue of plagiarism is for journalists and educators. It's reminded me of a line I came across years ago from Blaise Pascal: "Man is so necessarily foolish that not to be a fool is merely another freak of folly."

The week also completed a cycle for me that began just over 10 years ago, when I walked into my first day of an Intro to News Writing class at NYU’s graduate school of journalism. On that day, my professor, Dick Blood, had slammed a fist down on the table and bellowed, "There are no standards anymore."

Mr. Blood, a city editor at the Daily News for 18 years, had just resigned from Columbia Univ. because of a plagiarism scandal. The story was that he had caught a well-connected student, and when the administration hemmed and hawed about expulsion, Mr. Blood let it be known that either the student would go or he would go.

So Columbia expelled the student, and then someone got him a job at the New York Post. Mr. Blood contacted the editors there and made sure this ex-student was now an ex-employee as well. Then the kid went to the West Coast, where he was handed a job at Wired Magazine. Blood soon tracked him down and got him fired from there, too. And that’s when Blood quit Columbia and came to teach us.

At first, I thought Blood was just a blowhard. But by May of that school year, the Stephen Glass scandal was in the news, and by August, Mike Barnicle was forced to resign from the Boston Globe. Almost immediately, there was talk of book deals and pay raises for both of them. By the time of the Jayson Blair debacle, I stood firmly in Blood's camp.

I caught my first plagiarist—-the first of seven that I caught over three years—-while I was teaching a freshman Media and Society class at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He was a 20-year-old basketball recruit on a full scholarship, who was barely literate.

I even called Blood and asked him what to do.

"I know you'll show him mercy, because you've got a heart like a marshmallow," Blood said. "But you won't be doing him a favor, and you won't do the school a favor, either."

Classic Blood. Like Updike, they broke the mold into a thousand pieces after he came into this world.

A most banana republic.

For the third time in less than a year, an Aussie publisher of a major Fijian newspaper has been deported. This time Rex Gardner of the Fiji Times was declared a 'prohibited immigrant' and forced to leave the country. In typical military regime fashion the government gave no reason for the decree and refused to comment. Gardner's work contract was scheduled to end next week -- he replaced his similarly expelled predecessor 9 months ago -- but Fiji's interim government never misses a chance to expose themselves as cement-headed, dick-swinging thugs to the world community and so ordered his immediate exit.

This is the third time a foreign publisher has been subjected to a humiliating deportation. Think the interim government is sending a message? Military minds loathe a free, aggressive press. Australian news media is far from perfect but they're free and unfailingly aggressive. Intimidation and control of the media is this government's intention. I pray the seeds of skeptical reporting and journalistic integrity take root among those left behind and grow strong enough to defend Fiji from those who would stifle free speech, a linchpin of democracy.

Australia Day

Some photos on this national holiday recognizing the landing of the First Fleet in Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) in 1788 (known to many indigenous people as 'Invasion Day'). Aradhna and I took a short ride from our new digs in Ivanhoe to Warrandyte yesterday. Long known as an artist's retreat only 30 km from Melbourne's CBD, the rustic village offers a smattering of shops and cafes along a sublime stretch of the Yarra (above).
A stand of towering eucalypts.
This kayaker was among many enjoying an afternoon on, in or by the river.
Australian wood duck.
Like good Aussies, Aradhna and I sought refreshment at this 113-year-old hotel after our hearty riverside walk.

Don't worry, girls. Stupidity isn't contagious.

Barack & The Babe

Bill Gallo's been drawing sports cartoons since long before I started reading the NY Daily News back in the '70s. Taking a crack at politics in the drawing above, his blue-collar sensibilities put America's new president in an unfamiliar, but perfectly appropriate, milieu. In a column sure to enrage disgruntled Republicans who've labeled President Obama 'The Chosen One' or 'The Annointed One', Gallo compares Obama's inheritance of a nation in strife with Babe Ruth's rescue of America's national pastime from the Black Sox Scandal of 1919:

I think of another time when a grand institution was in danger of being destroyed, but these four words ('lots on the ball') -- and one man -- saved it, and the game has flourished ever since.
I refer to the game of baseball -- which, in 1919, went through its most dire days because of dishonesty, greed and stupidity.
You, Mr. President, who I understand to be an ardent sports fan, know what I'm about to recall. But I bring it up once again because it's germane to this message of change and saving a troubled America.
Today even a non-baseball fan can tell you something about what shame occurred when the supposedly most honest sport in the country deliberately and without conscience, threw a World Series for money.
{... snip ...}
Was anybody going to trust this once-pure game ever again? Of course not! Baseball was forever tainted! Who, if anyone, could possibly patch up all the broken pieces? Was there such a person in this country to do it? There was. And he came into the picture just in time to not only cure baseball, but to change it. As if sent from heaven, along came a burly, confident young man named George Herman Ruth.
The Babe came on the scene to change baseball from a singles game to the more exciting and appealing home run game. While Ruth was starting as a pitcher and sometimes outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, his esteem as a player was looming larger and larger. By the time he came to the Yankees in 1920, Ruth would sell out any ballpark.
The Sultan of Swat, with his prowess on the field and his happy and ever-popular personality, was capturing the fans. And without realizing it, Babe was also winning back the fans' trust.
One man saved a wonderful American game that desperately needed saving through change and honest indulgence. I use this as just one example to show how, in our country, there is always someone who comes along at the opportune time.
President Obama, America has faith in you, and even for the little we know you, we don't see you ever letting us down. Our view of you from television is that of an intelligent individual who is honest to the core, and one who can deliver the goods.

'The time has come ...'

Up at 3 am. Pot of tea, some toast, on the couch to watch my homeland take out the garbage.

The homophobic Rev. Rick Warren offers an opening prayer. He asks God to 'deliver us from evil ...' Amen to that, brother.

Clock strikes 4am as Joe Biden takes the oath of Vice-President, giving the boot to the darkest of dark shadows that have skulked White House hallways these past 8 years. Appropriate that Cheney's looking like Lionel Barrymore in It's a Wonderful Life, being pushed in a wheelchair. Perhaps a little waterboarding might take his mind off his injured back?

Obama is like a race horse during the oath with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, champing at the bit, hungry to begin. The oath ends. He's President Barack Hussein Obama. Hallelujah!

The Miserable Failure is now an ordinary citizen. Albeit one who, in this perfect summation by Dan Froomkin:

... took the nation to a war of choice under false pretenses -- and left troops in harm's way on two fields of battle. He embraced torture as an interrogation tactic and turned the world's champion of human dignity into an outlaw nation and international pariah. He watched with detachment as a major American city went under water. He was ostensibly at the helm as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression took hold. He went from being the most popular to the most disappointing president, having squandered a unique opportunity to unite the country and even the world behind a shared agenda after Sept. 11. He set a new precedent for avoiding the general public in favor of screened audiences and seemed to occupy an alternate reality. He took his own political party from seeming permanent majority status to where it is today. And he deliberately politicized the federal government, circumvented the traditional policymaking process, ignored expert advice and suppressed dissent, leaving behind a broken government.

Obama thanks him for his service to the nation. I hope to never again reference him in this blog.

Obama's speech ends at 4:26am. Oscar lays against me, purring, his nocturnal routine disturbed by my pre-dawn patriotism. A part of me rejoices in knowing right-wing haters, Limbaugh/Hannity dead-enders, and, most especially, racists are adrift in poison seas of their own creation, miserable, paranoid, desperate for something to grab on to and sustain them through this Democratic-led political era. They'll comfort themselves with cheap Obama slurs and mock him as a media creation, a false idol, or much, much worse.

On this hopeful day, those people don't matter.

Here in Australia, where former Prime Minister John Howard was chucked from office in 2007 for being a Bush/Cheney toady, inauguration coverage is non-stop. People are happy, excited, relieved. The knucklehead substitute teacher, the frat-boy goofball who trashed American ideals like a spoiled child of privilege tearing up his family's Cape Cod summer home, has been frog-marched from the building and replaced by a thoughtful, inspiring, self-made adult. Seeing Michelle Obama beside her husband as he takes the oath is to know dignity has returned to the White House. There's no Fox News to spread conspiracy theories and propaganda about 'hidden agendas'. If you were to headline the Aussie -- and I dare say international -- angle on this inauguration, it would be this:
Obama/Biden Sworn InEarth Improves Instantly

The Day The Earth Stood & Applauded

Melbourne is 16 hours ahead of Washington, DC, but it's not too early to celebrate the removal of The Miserable Failure for President Barack Obama. In the absence of an Obama t-shirt for this 37 C (99 F) day, I'm wearing a shirt bearing a message that will be (thankfully) irrelevant after today:

The aftermath.

Thankfully, sunshine has returned to Viti Levu and floodwaters have receded. The western division towns of Sigatoka, Nadi and Ba remain under 6pm - 6am curfew, however, as businesses struggle to clean up and re-open. As noted in a previous post, all of the crops on Nana's farm have been destroyed. His house, along with Dev mama's, was swamped with up to 4 feet of muddy water. Randhis bhai's home 100 metres away was completely inundated. He, his lovely wife Sangita bhabi and their 2 beautiful children have to rebuild their lives from scratch. Can anyone reading this imagine themselves in that situation?

For perspective, here are photos taken by me before the devastating flood of 2009.The land that Nana and his sons have farmed for over 50 years is nestled in this bend of the Sigatoka River. Nana's compound can be seen far left.
Nana's compound. Randhis bhai's home is to the left. The hill overlooking the compound is where Nana hopes to build a home someday.
Sangita bhabi and Randhis bhai in their kitchen during a pooja.
The Sigatoka River as it runs south of Nana's farm. The 'old bridge' that this flood washed away was approximately 5 kms downstream.
Nana, cane knife in hand, waits for rains to end.

Flooding continues in Fiji.

A neighborhood east of Sigatoka sits underwater as floodwaters continue to wreak havoc on Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Army troops have now been deployed to Viti Levu's northern & western districts to help the relief effort. Food prices have skyrocketed. Like all farmers in the Sigatoka valley, Ajay mama, Sindhu mama and Baba mama pick vegetables every day & sell them at the Sigatoka market. Their crops have been destroyed and the market is flooded, leaving them and everyone else in Fiji dependent on expensive imports they cannot afford.

Those of us blessed with western upbringings cannot imagine how devastating a flood like this is to farmers trying to survive in a third-world country. There's no Plan B. There's no government assistance. It's sink or swim. Right now, the beautiful people of the Fiji Islands are, like the man shown here, up to their necks.
Chunks of pavement lay scattered by floodwaters along the northern route into Nadi Town.
Nadi Town.
Nadi floodwaters recede, but mud remains.
A man uses a 4-legged off-road vehicle to cross a flooded Sigatoka bridge.
Bus stand outside Sigatoka market.
Suva shopkeepers gaze at the spectacle.

Sigatoka devastation. [UPDATED]

Sigatoka's 'old' bridge is shown at the top during my Fiji trip of 2007. After posting this entry I came across the middle photo, taken just hours before the bridge got washed away. The aftermath is shown in the bottom photo. Besides being a major resource for pedestrians, the old bridge delivered electrical lines and water pipes to villages on the river's eastern side. As the top two photos show, it also carried tracks for a cane train, common sights around Viti Levu that transport sugar cane from farms to processing mills.

A tropical depression is currently dumping more rain on beleaguered Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Residents have been warned about floodwaters rising again. The death toll stands at 11.

Ba: Before & after

I visited Ba on my way to Navala Village in the Nausori Highlands of Viti Levu last October. Snapped the top photo of Ba's commercial district from inside a grass traffic circle. You can see the tops of shrubs within that traffic circle in the bottom photo.

More photos via residents of Ba ...

... and Nadi.

Sigatoka is underwater.

As if family & friends in the Fiji Islands don't already struggle, every day, to make a decent life for themselves, they're now dealing with the 'worst floods' to hit Viti Levu in 20 years. Sigatoka town has been hardest hit and is now under 12-hour curfew. Nana's farm sits on a bend in the Sigatoka River. Sadly, very sadly, we heard earlier today that Nana's farm is underwater, as is Randhis mama's property next door.

These are the hardest working people I've ever known. In two days they've seen their homes flooded and lost at least 6 months of crops. And as the headline above reads, the worse is yet to come with a possible cyclone hitting the islands next week.

Just before leaving the farm, Nana pointed to a hill across the dirt road from his property and said that's where he wanted to build a home. On high ground. If only he and the rest of my family weren't stuck on a piece of land both blessed and cursed by its proximity to a force of nature that's decimated them once again.

Slumdog Millionaire

Rare that a film takes the best of a thrilling novel (Vikas Swarup's Q&A) and at breakneck speed creates a grandeur of place and people perhaps unimagined by the book's author. Director Danny Boyle has taken Swarup's narrative device -- a Mumbai slum dweller's life story provides answers to TV game show questions -- and crafted a perfect movie. How did he do it? It is written.

Cat owners ... look familiar?

Fiji Redux: Trip to Ovalau part III

My last night on Ovalau was spent a few kilometres north of Levuka at a poorly managed but tropically spectacular (as shown above) place called Ovalau Holiday Resort.
My bungalow.
Sunset over the Koro Sea.
A friendly local and his son enjoy the view.
From my bungalow's porch I watched hundreds of crabs crawl from well-dug holes to slowly, slowly munch stalks of grass.
It's slightly unnerving to be completely alone but for an army of large, grass-devouring crabs who watched me like I was a ticking time bomb.
A glorious final morning in Ovalau. Next stop: Caqalai Island.

Red. Amber. Green. GONE.

Love the premise of this argument: Traffic lights make drivers too dependent on technology and less aware of 'movable hazardous objects' like pedestrians & cyclists. The solution? Get rid of most traffic lights!

Good night & good riddance.

While many columnists have unloaded on disgraceful attempts by Bush/Cheney to whitewash their atrocious legacies, none does so better than former military correspondent Joe Galloway:

The president and his spinmeisters keep talking about how, with the passage of time, historians will come to judge his presidency a huge success, much as history has come to judge the administration of Harry S. Truman.

Balderdash. Or as I much prefer to say in situations like this: Bullshit!

Historians are more likely to rank George W. Bush as the worst president this nation has ever had in the 232 years of its existence.

While I'm at it, George W. Bush shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a friend of mine early in my career, and George W. Bush is no Harry Truman. Not even close.

Truman kept a little wooden sign on his Oval Office desk that declared: "The Buck Stops Here."

The buck never stopped anywhere in the Bush administration. It just circled the Capitol Beltway at ever-increasing speeds.

More holiday snaps.

Aradhna and I met with friends & new acquaintances for civilized drinks at the St Kilda Sea Baths (above) on New Year's Eve.
Bam-O with best friends Julia (left) and Alison (center).
Craig with Aussie Bronx Bomber Charlie.
St Kilda pier.
View of Melbourne's CBD from the pier's end.
Aradhna showing no signs of the grind of packing, moving & unpacking.
Team photo.

Temptations of Melbourne: Chocolate cafes

As family & friends (should) know, Aradhna & I maintain a 24/7 'Open Door' policy. Overseas visitors are especially welcome. In 2009, I will post more about the rewards of making a trip to this wonderful city, such as the rise in specialty chocolate cafes popping up around Melbourne. Think you know hot chocolate? Guess again. This is steaming, velvety, lovingly crafted sex in a cup. Don't take my word for it ... try it yourself!

Holiday snaps.

Holidays aren't the best time to move, as shopping & visiting friends & eating will always trump packing & cleaning & unpacking & organizing & cleaning some more. Even now clusters of untouched moving boxes remain scattered throughout our new place, taunting us with promises of drudgery. So I'll take a nod from the Driffield House cherub shown above and blissfully share holiday photos instead.
Aradhna & Liz on the deck of Liz's parents' home in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, where we shared dinner on Christmas Eve.
Mr & Mrs Bamford, Liz's lovely parents.
Christmas day brought a trip to the Dandenongs ...
... to visit the amazing new home of Emily & Michael in Sassafras.
Michael mans the heavy equipment for what was my first authentic Christmas bar-b in Australia.
Giant ferns act as sentries throughout the property.
Astounding views abound at Emily & Michael's 'Diffield House'.
I'd slow for it, if only I knew what it was?