Zenga Zenga

This is fun-blooming-tastic. You were getting fed up hearing about Gaddafi the Libyan bossman who might, or might not, still be in power next week. He now features in a mocking YouTube remix rap song which uses words from one of his recent rants, especially the phrase Zenga Zenga (you can read more about if you want).
Two extraordinary things: one, the video has gone viral, heading for 3 million hits mostly in the ARAB world. And second thing: it was put together by an ISRAELI  - journalist Noy Alooshe. This is how disputes should be settled in future!

Tsunamis, grammar, mayhem, mowers, migration

Yes, another week went by between blogposts.

I think I would prefer to have been less predictive of increased seismic activity, after the New Zealand earthquake only weeks ago. The latest 'quake/tsunami and its very major devastation to Japan is beyond anything we have seen since that Christmas Eve tsunami in 2004 which caused over 200,000 deaths. "Seen" is the operative word, because, through the mixed blessing of live aerial TV coverage, we the vicarious witnesses were watching (if we were watching) unbelievable sights of inundation sweeping inland carrying a jumble of buildings, vehicles, ships and ... everything. The forces of nature make our stupid human wars look even more ... stupid.

It's not possible to wallow in misery, for too long at least, because of  mayhem elsewhere, when our immediate patch is (touch wood) spared. Well, I can't manage it: sorry. I suppose we can make gestures; and I salute those who do more, like my former colleague Jim M., a medical doctor, who used to travel to trouble spots to be a volunteer medico with the International Red Cross for the disaster duration.

I was pre-occupied for four days this week with a long editing job helping one overseas author prepare his magnum opus for publication. English isn't that writer's first language (which is true for maybe 50% of my jobs). My software's automatic counter says there were close to five thousand editorial emendations or comments but that's a wild exaggeration (take too long to explain why). Lots, anyway. A friendly rapport developed, sufficient for me to play the grumpy schoolteacher and get away with it. I emailed the author: "You and English prepositions have a love-hate relationship." He pretended to laugh, showing he is polite and has a sense of humour - something he earlier accused me of having. But I only dared to be cheeky because the work was already paid for.

Brenton fixed my elderly Victa mower which I have owned since it was a baby. This morning, out of sheer bravado, I started it up. Fired first go! Hadn't meant to, but I got carried away and went on to cut the bit of couch grass between the plum tree and the older of the two pear trees.Been so long since it was last done that I had pretty much forgotten how it goes, and the grass got the shock of its rather long (30cm) life. Happily, the area is not large. I now envisage importing a tiny herd of wildebeeste to deal with it in future. I suppose they could adjust to a migration pattern taking them around the Yorke Peninsula over the course of each year, although I dunno what the barley farmers will say... but the wildebeeste will enjoy not having rivers with crocodiles to negotiate, like on those Nat Geo docos.

La Stupenda

Believe it or not our August concert program dares to go where no intergalactic spaceship has gone before, and will include the Vilja song from Franz Lehar's operetta The Merry Widow (a 1979 performance shown). This was niggling at me because we argued over the spelling (I was the note-taker) and tonight I feel more relaxed, upon finding at least eight spellings in use. Vilja is the correct Hungarian written version (of what is, I think, an invented name for the "witch of the wood"). Velia, Velja, Vilia are other contenders, and you can permutate at will. All will be relieved to hear that I will not be the singer. Our group does have good soprano voices.

If the late great Dame Joan Sutherland had known of our existence, I am hopeful that she would have rushed here to volunteer her services, maybe in return for a cup of tea and a sticky bun. Like the rest of us.

Lack of local tsunamis; concerted effort; Kazakh stuff; fruit and wildlife.

We are certainly fortunate in this little part of the world with our run of perfect weather - not too hot, not too cold, not too dry, not too wet, and for the moment no tsunamis, earthquakes, wars or internal revolutions. The adherents of different political parties call each other names, which is all very right and proper. The farmers even say it was a good harvest on our barley-growing peninsula. What have we done right?

Today some of us stirred our stumps (where did that expression come from?) and drew up a provisional program for our singing group's August concert. Well, I took notes, so I suppose that counts as helping.

Online I have done some editing work since the last blog-post, either helping or hindering - I may never know! - Danish authors writing books on business  management, and ministerial decision-makers in Kazakhstan, still a mysterious region for most westerners. In fact, that country is a geographically huge one about which we will hear much more in the future.

I picked the last of my quince tree's little crop. Last year - exactly 12 fruit; this year 24, a one hundred percent increase. Way to go! Two quinces make a nice stewed dessert. The tree is less than head high, and it sits sheltered by an almond tree, whose almonds always get eaten by a flock of galahs. The possums have slightly chewed three of the quinces. Other wildlife: (apart from the ex-mouse mentioned in recent blogs) - a neat little skink (lizard) was resting on my bed  two days ago, but I put it out on the patio. I could see it was irritated by this. So far, no marine iguanas, giraffes, or rough-legged buzzards.

More Muammar and Mouse

I had to get to bed eventually, needing beauty sleep more than most, so I left Gaddafi at around the two hour mark but he went on for a total of three hours with his rambling effort at apologia for his long regime of internal thuggery and exported acts of murder. (I visited Lockerbie in Scotland not long after the destruction caused by the fall of the passenger plane which was bombed out of the sky by his agents. I am aware that other national governments behave in this way. It is very sad.) As Gaddafi was speaking, his jet aircraft were bombing the rebel-held oil town of Brega near Benghazi, and, according to him, the thousands fleeing the country were either a) not doing it, or b) part of a stunt orchestrated by foreign media.

It has to be reported to that the mouse succumbed overnight to one of the three traps I set, so who am I to complain about acts of terror? It is a bit like the whole Israeli-Palestinian situation: either the mice live here, or I do. Which will it be? Will the rest of the world care? And who will speak for the mouse?

Ranting Gaddafi

I have watched for the past hour live by satellite on the AlJazeera English news channel the extraordinary rambling speech by Libya's Muammar Gaddafi; his third since the major uprising in that country, speaking from Tripoli. A surreal experience. A man in denial, ranting, repetitious, not so much desperate as detached from reality.

Two things added to the oddity ... oh, he has just resumed the rant, full of contradiction and weirdness and absurdity ... the first thing is that through the magic of media we saw a split screen and simultaneous live cover of demonstrators in Benghazi as Gaddafi asserts that they don't exist.

The second thing is closer to home. IN my home! A suspiciously chubby mouse came through from the kitchen, briefly explored the bedroom, then sat in the doorway and watched the Gaddafi speech with me for a while; but got bored and went on into the front hallway. Sensible mouse. Hasn't come back yet.

'Nother Concert and Misspelling

The singers rehearsed morning and afternoon Tuesday - our excuse for lunch and story-swapping - then today another prac in the morning at Parson's Beach (on the coast a little south of Port Victoria) followed by the monthly concert we give to staff and residents at Melaleuca Court Nursing Home in Minlaton.

I was amused in a resigned kind of way to see, on the large map at the Tourist information Centre, that the local Progress Association had managed to spell the name incorrectly as Melalueca, which I mischievously pronounce mella-you-acre. It's a different word (I guess) from the real name, pronounced mella-looka. The melaleuca family of tree species is common here. But its spelling remains a grey area to 90% of the population. Serves us right for making up names from ancient Greek.

As for the concert, there were just enough mistakes and glitches to make us feel at home. Everyone enjoyed it. Our colleagues of the six-piece brass band made plenty of noise, or maybe, when the program said it was their turn, I was just sitting closer than usual. There was even a leprechaun and it's not St Patrick's Day until the 17th. What is going on?