Must ALL men be uncertain?

So even ERNIE is unsure of exactly when he is going to arrive. I marched up to the AVI office today to hand in my passport (gulp! no escaping now!), visa application and other assorted paper paraphernalia that needed filling out. Afterwards I spoke to the person who does all the "mobilising" and apparently the federal police check can take anywhere between 2 and 6 weeks! So Ernie might arrive a bit late, which is sort of disappointing but this kind of "liquid time" seems to be the way that the aid world works in general. I'd better adapt.

Ate the best char kway teow in Melbourne today with Don and gasbagged for a while. Had a very varied and leisurely coffee with Marz later in the afternoon. I got kissed twice (on the cheek! on the cheek!) by a cheerful middle-aged guy who may be very good friends with the bottle, claimed to have been a champion boxer, saying "Stan the Man and Terry Austin are my family" (who are they? we didn't know) and tried very hard to show Marz how to start a fight and kill a person with one's elbow. "Just nudge them...and then go, 'Ya wanna fight?'" (imagine this in very slurred tones). He also showed us two very nice holes in the armpits of his t-shirt.

Earlier in the day I went to the travel clinic and got two more needles. I found out that I don't have latent TB (ok; so tell me something I didn't know already) and thankfully that I do not need even more needles apart from the two I have next week. I've got just those jabs to go, need to take my trial of doxy (malaria) and pick up a travel kit (I'm planning to wander around Thailand in a fog of DEET and permethrin...mmmm. Appealing! I also found these weird, almost whole-body mosquito nets on Ebay, sort of like an apiarist's suit but possibly even stranger - I'm thinking these might alienate me from the locals somewhat though). Then it's just a matter of going to the pre-departure briefing and then waiting for Ernie to grace me with his presence.

Ernie being indecisive also has the flow-on effect of delaying the duty-free shopping, much to my chagrin. I spent some time today looking at digital cameras before my buying aspirations went up in a puff of federal police smoke. Bloody men.

I have started a new book today about a journalist who spent 20 years in Zimbabwe, from the time of independence (1980) until a few years ago. Now that I'm going somewhere I am obsessed with reading books about people who have gone overseas to work in aid or journalism or development - I want to say, "I do that too!", only I don't yet. Bummer. Anyway, the book is called Where We Have Hope and it's buy a guy called Andrew Meldrum who writes for The Guardian. I'm only about 30 pages in but it's looking like a great read. If anyone else has other suggestions for me to read, pop it in a comment after this post.

Edit:

Since this entry mentions "bloody men", I thought it was apt to insert this here:



How does the man look at himself in the mirror in the mornings?? What I like best (more than the video itself, because I can't watch it, too cringe-inducing!) is the tags on this clip - George bush Malaria dance africa fool idiot stupid president united states America usa us.

That just about sums it up, really.