Far East, La!: A Far Eastern Journal of Personal Growths and Other Skin Conditions

By Willie Mombassa

FAR EAST LA! “A Far Eastern journal of personal growths and other skin conditions,” From the tropical shores of the Antipodes, to the high Himalayas of the Asian Sub-continent and down through South-East Asia to the teeming streets of Shanghai; against the exotic backdrop of living, working and traveling throughout Asia and the Orient, the author takes us on a journey of catharsis and self-realization that's part spiritual, part B-Grade movie and part absurdist sit-com. From the silly to the sublime, the profound to the profane; sometimes whimsical and witty and at other times deeply touching. Uncompromising, unapologetic and close to the bone, Willie Mombassa manages to wring out every last drop from the most challenging and adventurous years of his life. We are left with a feeling that something greater has occurred between the lines...if only we could figure out what....if only we really cared!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 26, 2009
• ISBN: 9781426990243

Willie Mombassa

Willie Mombassa was born in Mombassa in the late fifties during the last gasp of British hegemony in East Africa. Growing up with tales of jungles, tigers, monkeys and all the romance of Asia and the Far East, the author’s life has taken him from darkest Africa, dullest England and on to the sweaty climes of the Tropics. From fire-walking in the Australian bush to struggling through thigh-deep snow high in the Himalayas; and in the wake of several shattered relationships, the author has explored all the dark and sweaty crannies of his life lured on by the thousands of other intrepid souls who have gone before him and are sure to follow in search of answers to the meaning of life and a reliable heat-rash cream. Joining a long list of expat wayward souls, the author’s irreverent sense of humor born from years of street theatre, teaching and general desperation have led him and continue to lead him from one set of off-beat experiences to another in what are arguably some of the most exotic and culturally-rich places in the world. The author has variously incarnated as an award-winning actor and children’s music artist; corporate theatre bon vivant; teacher; writer; musician; juggler; magician; Jack-of-all-trades and master of possibly one or two. This is the author’s first published book, his other work includes children’s music albums, self-help audio tapes and two high school musicals which have been produced internationally.

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© Copyright 2008 Willie Mombassa-.

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Note for Librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html

ISBN: 978-1-4120-6227-5

ISBN: 9781426990243 (ebook)

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Contents

PROLOGUE: SINGAPORE, 2004

It is dusk. I sit cross-legged on the bed wearing only a sarong and the satin sheen of a steamy Singapore evening. Outside, the sky is looking for a fight.

PART I: THE ANTIPODES, DECEMBER 2003

Hey Dude

Surviving Here Getting There

Acts of Power, Self-Definition and other New Age rationales for doing totally stupid things

Hunting the Wild Bush Bonsai: December 2003

PART II SINGAPORE, DECEMBER 2003

So it begins....

Monkey Dancer

What’s that on the road...a head?

The Great Diaspora: 1800-2003

PART III: SINGAPORE 2004

New Year 2003/2004-Singapore

Interlude: Singapore

On Void and Actuality

The Vegemite Trail

Nepal

India

Burma/Myanmar

Thailand

Bali

Java

PART III: SINGAPORE, 2004

Singapore La !

Hector Pascals Gets Depressed: Singapore, February 2004

Singing-In The Rain

The Foreign Legion

Semi-Autocratic Weapons

Bak Chew Tah Stamp

The Twelve Days of Eczema

A Loo with a View

To Teach-er with Love

Water Music

Parade of Dreams

Nirvana Now

Parade of Screams

Life is a Beach

The Final Bow

PART IV: THE ANTIPODES, LATE MARCH-AUGUST 2004

Stranger in a strange land

PART V: CHINA, AUGUST 2004-JULY 2005

Entering the Kingdom of the Dragon

City Lights

Lug Lats in the Land of the Grand Ewok

Don’t Step On the Tunday

Fish and Chips Dreaming

Hash-Bash-Crash-Dash

Road Kill

September, Shanghai 2004

Old Bull, Young Grass

Soccerloo

Duck-Duck, Chicken-Chicken

Girls, Guys and the Prime Directive: or what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like Shanghai?

Lost In Translation

Flower, Nest and Tree

Christmas 2005

Home Strange Home: There and Back Again, the Antipodes Feb. 2005

Interlude: Shanghai, late Spring: 2005

The Circle Turns

EPILOGUE: THE ANTIPODES, 2006

Post script:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Endnotes

Dedicated to everyone who profited from me and continues to do so...!

The Fine Print: Without Prejudice-any resemblance to actual people living or otherwise is some perverse coincidence perpetrated by an idiosyncratic Id, or perhaps by some unexplainable twist of Fate, your Honor...honest!

ps. Oh, and to one of his sisters to whom, despite what she may believe, this author would like to categorically state that he is not insanely jealous because she was born in the exotic city of Brisbane, Australia and he in the rather mundane port city of Mombasa in the former Sultanate of Zanzibar.. .go figure.

pps....... was that completely necessary?.. .ed.

ppps....... hell yeah!...WM

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PROLOGUE: SINGAPORE, 2004

It is dusk. I sit cross-legged on the bed wearing only a sarong and the satin sheen of a steamy Singapore evening. Outside, the sky is looking for a fight.

The threatening growl of thunder mutters some curse before cracking into a sharp, splintering flash of lightning.

Somewhere in a stand of jungle nearby, a monkey challenges the burgeoning night with a furious scream.

The night is crowded with the sounds of cicada and the unmistakable chorus of frogs, singing-in the rain.

Getting up from the barren landscape of my bed, its single sheet tossed aside in bachelor disregard, I idle to the basin and splash my face. Glancing in the Mirror of Lies I can see only truth.

Number two all over hair, bald pate, strong chin and robust nose. Full lips. Gun metal blue eyes and salt and pepper stubble. High cheekbones, broad face.

A lifetime of experience embedded into every line, every cranny. Not too ugly not too handsome. Not too bad and never too good. Par for a very long course.

I wince, sigh and return to my bed. Reaching for the music of my soul, I adjust the volume and allow the air-conditioner and the haunting, far eastern strains of the Buddha Bar chill-out compilation Siddharta to wash over me like a prayer. Briefly, my eyes sting with an emotion too deep to contain; an emptiness full of pain. I hesitate, my fingers pausing as my blurring eyes re-focus. I take a long, slow breath and continue, resolutely tapping out the cadence of my life.

Another deep basso rumble, another distant drum calls me out of my reverie. I slide off the bed and move with a nonchalant air, parting the restless curtains to step out on to the small, almost Spanish balcony. To the east, an angry cumulo-nimbus rears its ugly head, its anvil tower boiling in the sepia sky.

Even for this time of the year the storm is big; a dark, brooding monster waiting to strike; another one of those tropical giants that inhabit the sullen skies of the Doldrums, that belt of flaccid humidity that girdles the Equator in a standing bath of sweat.

The Monsoon is lingering past its due date and another night of bucketing rain seems imminent. The rising wind brings a welcome relief from the sauna-stillness of a long, hot day.

Wandering back to my bed, I settle down to a night’s reverie, contemplation and type dancing. I pause to collect my thoughts.

I search my pockets and find nothing but torn memories and other sharp objects. My fingers gently brush the keys; my fingertips tingle slightly at their caress.

As the petulant cicadas and patient frogs drone their mantra to the night, your humble protagonist, I, Willie Mombassa, redoubtable raconteur, armed with only my trusty laptop and a two-fingered quickstep typing-style, ponder the Meaning of Life the Universe and Everything Else; fated to wander the planet seeking out lost diatribes, hoisting petards of prose and generally making it up as I go along, I start this work in progress, this journal of a life well traveled, on a latitude far from home and far from my life as I knew it.

Actor; corporate theatre bon vivant; teacher; writer; musician; juggler; magician; Jack-of-all-trades and master of possibly one or two.

Once again, tossed on seas of incredulity and battered by storms of protest, my life has come to rest briefly in a steamy land far away, a land of cappuccino skin and almond eyes, amidst the exotic and the ecstatic, the quaint and the quixotic; the profound and the profane. My life just more curious flotsam washed on the shore of yet another improbability.

Caught between the jungle and the deep blue sea, between a joke and a hard face, I sit in Buddha Bar reverie as the closing night slides off my skin.

Reaching back through the dance of my days I touch my fingers to the keys and recount the times of my life."

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PART I: THE ANTIPODES, DECEMBER 2003

Hey Dude

Feeling a whirlpool of emotions skitter through me, I drove through the heaviest torrential downpour we’d had in many years.

All around, the rain battered at the windows and the wind buffeted the car. Every so often the tyres would aqua plane gently around a corner and my brain would snap out of its blinkered obsession and focus on more immediate matters of Life and Death.

I was navigating my way across the Blackall Ranges in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. On this day it was more like the Un-shine Coast. I wiped the windscreen and frowned. I felt a certain titillating sense of drama and purpose. Another Antipodean, sub-tropical wet season vented its yang on my roof and sent curling feelers of mist to lick at me as I flew through the curtaining rain. The range road snaked its winding way beside long, steep, forested valleys and through tunnels of cliff and bush where often on heavy, rainy days, large boulders would rudely dislodge themselves from the hill above and sit just off the shoulder waiting for an unwary driver to stray too close to the edge.

The radio had long since shattered into a white noise hiss that matched the drumming downpour on the roof. Glancing out the foggy side window I could see the ghostly tendrils of mist reaching toward me. Even the trees, bending to the force of the wind, seemed to be clutching and whipping at me, throwing everything they could in my path to stop me. Branches, leaves, whatever could fly. If only I’d been watching. If only I could have foreseen. The message was clear: turn back before it’s too late. Nature itself seemed to be grasping at me to stay.

Perhaps I should have paid more attention. In hindsight, I should have listened. But then hindsight is, at the best of times, an I-told-you-so-bastard.

On this portentous day, the elements were conspiring to make it as difficult and as dangerous as possible to achieve my goal, which was: to find a Clairvoyant, a conduit to higher knowledge who might help me make what would arguably become the most important decision of my life. Despite the fury of the Tempest around me, I had made my appointment with Fate and only death or disaster could stop me now.

I was about to finalize my decision to take up a teaching job in Singapore. It would mean leaving my wife, my lovely house, my beloved bonsais, two cats, two rabbits, one dog and basically my life, as I knew it. It was not intended to be a permanent change, just something to relieve the pressure of a frustrated and disaffected life.

So, as another Antipodean sunset leeched through the glowering skies, two weeks (which now seem like a lifetime ago) before my fateful decision to up and piss off to Singapore, I was a man on a mission: find a line to the Big Dude. Find a clairvoyant. I was hoping that perhaps I could get some inside info, the good oil, the drum on what my life ahead held and how stupid my decision to go to Singapore might really be. Finding this particular psychic was not a mystical moment to write home to anyone about, really. There were only ten names in the yellow pages phone book under Clairvoyant.

If the names were anything to go by, there were some real talents out there (or maybe they were just really out there?): Solara; Artemis; LoveSpirit (one word); Saanthii (several a’s and i’s repeated for effect); Luna and Tic. Well, with that sobriquet smorgasbord to choose from I opted for Yvonne." I figured if you had to market yourself with an exotic spiritual name to be a Clairvoyant, you might be making up for lack of talent. But far be it for me to say. After all, I suppose, if you had a choice, who would you go to see, a psychic called Auriel or someone called Bob? It’s one of those things, I guess. Though I can’t help having niggling doubts about where a person’s coming from when they change their name-especially if it’s to something weird, spiritual or hippy-ish. Reginald Dwight might of course argue the point.

My little hinterland hippy home town was full of the requisite spiritual types who often seemed to think they were too good to be called Bob or Shirley, lured by a vague promise of spiritual purity by adopting some far-out moniker that waseither Hindu, vaguely environmental or pitifully Celtic chic. If you ask me, changing your name is a faux New Age cesspit of self-deception. But then, who the hell asked me?

One Christmas, a partner and I were invited to a friend’s for the usual drinky-poos. In this case, though, it turned out to be wheat-grass juice all round, yeah baby! Bearing in mind that we lived in a small country-style community where hippy names, fashions and being spiritual were de rigueur, I suppose wheat-grass juice or something similarly profound wasn’t entirely unexpected. When the introductions began of course, we realized that things were not quite the full Chardonnay!

First of all our hostess was introduced as Goddess, by a lairy old high-priest of a bloke calling himself Beautiful All, whose best friend (another hoary old goat) called I AM, then introduced us to his friends Rainbow, Morning and Dewdrop. And here we were: plain old Willie and Tina. How we managed to keep a straight face I’ll never know.

Perhaps I attract this sort of thing. There was another time a previous partner and I had been visiting a local ashram thingy in a lovely Adelaide Blue-Stone cottage. It was the local center for that Indian guru (yet another) with a penchant for western acolytes, known as the Mother. We had been told that her very own (and of course by definition, very holy) personal assistant was arriving this very week and weren’t we all blessed by his imminent, eminent presence?

Within the Ashram you could feel the rising excitement as the devotees pulled out their very best spiritual looks and voices. You know, that I am above everything infuriatingly patronizing air with the requisite calm, vapid, Mona Lisa smile? Beatific, I think the condition is called. The cure for which I believe is a hearty steak dinner, several pints of grog and a good old-fashioned shag.

Anyway, when the great man arrived and we were introduced I’m afraid I did worse than soil the carpet. I soiled my Soul. I think I set myself back at least a thousand lifetimes by bursting into a loud totally un-spiritual laugh. The problem was that the previous night around a suspiciously bubbling instrument of illicit pleasure, accompanied by plenty of good Barossa Red (South Australian), someone had told me an hilarious joke (well, I thought so at the time): What do you call a man with fifty Rabbits up his bum? Warren!

So next day when were introduced to his Holiness ...Warren, well, goodbye Paradise hello the Seven Hells! After that, no amount of bathing my feet in salt water and Omming could have lifted my Kundalini anywhere beyond my backside!

On this particular torrential day years later when I spoke to Yvonne, my chosen Dude Dialer, I was met with a refreshingly un-contrived earthy, Strine (broad Australian accent). I admit I half expected a cultured if not exotic accent. You know, something that evokes mystery, lavender, candles and the musty fragrance of the after-life, something that said Gyp-seeee in an exaggerated and bad Hollywood accent. But I figured this lady obviously wasn’t hiding behind any exotic airs or graces. It was a punt, but maybe, just maybe, she was the Real Deal, the Oracle who would tell me all the amazing things my future held, how right my decision to go to Singapore was, how great it would be for my marriage etcetera etcetera.

It took just three months to find out how totally wrong she was about my marriage.. .not to mention Singapore.

Anyway, at the end of what became a very long psychic session I was emotionally wrung out. Unfortunately the Big Dude didn’t show, but I got His people to talk to my people and we got a real dialogue happening. The prognosis was glowing.

The Angels (His people) were all for it, my Life Path was destined for it; my Mastery was finally in my hands and my fate was sealed. It was destined to be. Now was the time, Carpe Diem! Though what fish had to do it with was beyond me.

Apparently I would end up selling my house and moving overseas. This was of course unthinkable, not just for me, but for my wife. She was at last in her dream home living her dream life and I was quite happy to be ensconced in our home for at least the next ten years. Sure I’d like to travel and try living overseas, but sell the house and up and move? It would be a prosperous move, she assured, which would herald the start of a nine-year cycle with lots of romantic and exotic holidays. Very exciting!

The other side of her coin was not so shiny. I could just stay of course. If I did I would come to a virtual standstill,spiritually that is. My sense of frustration at my life would keep growing and I would feel trapped and resentful.

I thanked my Dude Dialer, crossed her palm and left. Fear and excitement played counter point to each other inside my brain and in my heart there was not more than a little sadness that the Fates would lead my wife and I apart for the best part of two years (the period I would be contracted for in Singapore), or, as it turned out, somewhat longer. Oh yes, there would be holiday visits and many bittersweet romantic times ahead but the bottom line was always: two years away from the home where my heart is. Or was.

I was feeling all girlie and skittish as opposing emotions played ping-pong in my chest and killer butterflies slowly devoured my stomach. I knew the siren song was going to win, but there was one more ritual to perform.

Squinting through the mist as I drove home, I challenged the Fates to give me a sign, one final so-be-it kind of sign. I didn’t care if there was no safety net, but if I was going to jump, I wanted a parachute to at least slow my fall.

Hastening through the tropical downpour that followed me all the way home, I rushed inside and turned on the computer. I booted up, logged on, sat back and waited for that funny broken spring noise followed by a little ping! to tell me I was in. I double clicked the message icon. Up came the message: NEW MAIL. I opened it, read it and re-read it to make sure. I don’t know if my heart sank or jumped. But there it was. My sign.

They were going to pay me the extra money I had asked for (the price for being away from my wife and dedicating my life to their organization for two years), plus they were happy for me to continue with my three-week research project in Bali. I would have to work pretty hard of course, to make up for it all and be prepared to teach across all their curriculum areas, but hey, not a problem. It was my sign. It was good enough.

I phoned every performer I had on stand-by cancelled everything for the New Year and for the end of the year (four thousand dollars worth of work), put the phone down and shook.

When my wife arrived back from school my stomach churned and twisted. I told her all the wonderful things the clairvoyant had said for me and for her as well and for us. How everything would be fine, how the money would all work out and how positively our lives would change.

Then I said those words we both knew I would say.

I’m so sorry, but I have to go.

I know, she whispered through her tears.

My eyes got wet too and she cried some more. Happy for me, sad for her. Tears blurred my eyes, sad for her sadness and maybe a little sad for me as well. I encouraged her to come with me, just one year at least. The school had also offered her a position as well. It would be an exciting and richly colorful year for the both of us. I pleaded with her but she was resolute. I sighed and gave up. One year seemed a small ask in a lifetime of marriage. We had been having a few problems, nothing too big and worrisome, but a romantic adventure like this, together, could have refreshed our marriage and turned our lives around (which, of course, it did). I was convinced, she was too scared to change. That was that. I was going, she was staying.

Surviving Here Getting There

So now that I had condemned myself to loose end Hell, I had a lot of tying up to do.

I had my final school show on the day I was due to leave at a prestigious International Folk Arts Festival and I would be totally buggered come departure time at 11:55pm, but I could make it! Of course I would be dead the next day and not fit for anything except perhaps a good soaking in a hot tub and being wrung out. They told me living in Singapore was exactly like soaking in a hot tub and being wrung out. I recalled my first experience of Singapore stepping off the plane and being hit with a wall of dank heat. I felt tired just thinking about it.

The next few weeks passed all too quickly with arrangements sliding into place at each last heart-stopping minute. Outstanding cheques slipped silently in to the mailbox in the nick of time, bills were paid and tickets were bought.

Everyone I spoke to was gob smacked. I had some interesting reactions. Touchingly most people’s first reaction was what about your wife? which was sweet but it stabbed guiltily into my heart. For our marriage, it was less the writing on the wall and more like careless graffiti left by some emotional vandal. It was the fine print I should have read carefully. No wonder I didn’t see it coming...! wasn’t even looking, I was too obsessed with the adventure of it all. A gnawing sense of guilty pessimism was eating steadily into my brain. Part of me felt that I was being totally selfish, not thinking about my darling, precious wife, thinking only of my needs and myself; prepared to give up what we had to chase my dreams.

But no, another voice would counter, you’ve discussed this. You have both understood the positive benefits to your relationship and to your economic future this opportunity offers. We had spoken to other couples whose marriages had survived one person having to go off somewhere far away to work for sometimes years at a time. It was not un-common. It didn’t necessarily make it any easier, but it also was not something too devastatingly off the planet to rip what we had apart. It’s ironic really, how blind one can be. It’s that bastard hindsight again.

No, we both felt strong enough together to not merely survive this drastic change in our circumstances, but to in fact prosper and become stronger individually and grow together from the experience, otherwise I would never have undertaken it. If I’d felt it was a serious threat to our marriage and relationship, it would have been carefully pushed aside with all the other Worst Ideas of Our Time.

Despite the obvious anxieties and concerns, my wife had been so supportive in everything she had said. In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to what my wife didn’t say. It might have saved us both a lot of pain later.

But there is no doubt I needed to initiate some dynamic changes in my life to unstick me from the cross of anger and bitterness I carried. I had been deeply unhappy for many years, not with my marriage, god no, I thought it strong and sure. It was with my work. Nothing seemed to ever feel right. Something would invariably go wrong, circumstances turning on me leaving me with a deepening sense of betrayal and bitterness. Now my conscience was telling me I was betraying my love yet again. And indeed, painful as it is to admit, I had betrayed my wife in so many ways over the course of our marriage, not the least of these betrayals being an affair. There were other betrayals too, of the mind and heart. But like some pathetic alcoholic, I had always returned seeking forgiveness and she had always taken me back and soothed my pain.

This going away wasn’t a leaving in the sense of a separation, or in the sense of abandoning her never to return, I was embarking on a journey of self-discovery and hopefully, healing. I would come back stronger and more at peace. My return would be a triumph of the spirit of courage, faith and love. I was going to embrace the power of change and my belief that positive change can cure all self-growth ills. For better or worse, I was invoking an act of Power: Metamorphosis.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

Acts of Power, Self-Definition and other New Age rationales for doing totally stupid things

The constant refining and redefining of the Self in terms of personal power is part of our conscious and unconscious metamorphic journey.

So, once again for the umpteenth time in my life I was about embrace change to re-create my life in my search for Self-definition through metamorphosis.

One previous partner of mine spent a fortune (you know, the by your way into Reiki mastery kind of fortune) becoming a holier-than-thou that’s-not-red-meat-is-it? New Age Guru (bitter, who’s bitter?) and used to accuse me of being afraid of change! The same Me who has spent his entire adult life changing tack constantly to create new opportunities for self-growth and self-fulfillment. Don’t talk to me about change!

Change is a curse I have lived with all my life. I was tired of the only constant in my life being change! But like a fool perhaps, I clung to my belief in the power of Change to heal mylife and despite all my fear I had decided to welcome it, seek it out, capture it, tame it and eventually, become it.

The jingoistic new age personal growth junkies tout that fear of change and fear of the unknown traps so many people into mediocrity. And they’re probably right. My life may be filled with stress, anxiety, confusion and self-doubt, but thanks (or possibly, no thanks) to my obsession with change, it damn well aint mediocre (God bless me with peaceful, predictable mediocrity, please!).

Curiously though, no matter how fearful they are or how painful their life may be, people will often prefer to live with their fear or pain than do something to change it. So, more often than not, people will complain about their lives without taking the necessary steps to actually make any serious real changes. This is because change and action require effort and the pain of leaving your comfort zone is much harder to bear than staying put and suffering. Like the dog and nail story:

"There was a petrol station on a remote desert road. A car pulled up and a man got out and proceeded to fill his car. On the verandah nearby a dog would occasionally howl in some kind of obvious pain. After sometime, the man asked the grizzled old station owner what was wrong with the dog.

He’s lying on a nail. He’s tellin’ us he’s in pain.

If it hurts so much why doesn’t he just get off the nail and stop the pain instead of lying there howling? inquired the bemused and curious fellow.

Oh it aint the pain, said the Old man, and I reckon he don’t mind complainin’, he’s just too dog-gone lazy to do anythin’ about it!

So many people live their life howling about their problems and their pain without either the courage or the strength to do something about it. I was tired of howling. Quite frankly, my wife was tired of my howling as well. I could write a book on the one that got away stories or my particular favorite, those cheatin’ bastards that done me wrong. My life seemed to be filled with disappointed expectations; peopled with character assassins and traitors. No, stuff all that, this time I would jump.

Take any of the headline motivational and success speakers or writers and what do they say? Jump into the Void! Take that risk. Plunge yourself into the Unknown! Without taking those life-changing risks our lives will never change. What do you do if you want your life to change?

FIRST YOU HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE !

It’s one of those annoyingly obvious statements so favored by the human dynamics movement. But like many clichés, it has a basis in solid experience. In this whole, crazy Singapore thing, I was attempting to follow my own formulae for success, which is:

INSPIRATION + DYNAMIC ACTION = UNLIMITED SUCCESS

Your success will always be limited by lack of action. Action will always be limited by lack of motivation (inspiration). Like the weight-loss clinic at the Vatican whose motto is: God helps those who help themselves and help themselves and help themselves etc. Unless something truly motivates and inspires you to act, you will never take any action and therefore never succeed. Find that inspiration, act on it and you will be all the personal success you can!

And take heart, for those among us who have