Sunday, February 5, 2012

Thai One On For Joppy

LOOK, one or two bottles have gone south tonight, there's no denying it, and in all honesty it would be a terrible thing to drive. And to tackle the rest of the Silly because some sentences can make the room spin when it is quite happy at the moment being just wobbly. This is what's doing the damage. It takes up the story of an environmental woman with a job who chains her bicycle and orders lunch: 
Despite this show of competence, she is self-conscious as she rolls the rice delicately with her fingers into little balls before popping them into her mouth like the locals of north-eastern Thailand, where she spent a year on a project which helped Mekong River villagers deal with the march of hydro power and big dams.
She pops the locals of north-eastern Thailand into her mouth? It must be a comfort, one imagines, but has this approach been peer reviewd? Did she wash her hands after touching that bike seat? Are natives of south-west Thailand popped in some other orifice?Are they also being trampled by marching dams?

The rest of the article gets a bit better -- quite a lot, actually -- and if you take turns reading out choice bits with jolly companions there is a much laughing to be had. The Professor's favourite passage is author Debra Jopson's  (minds out of the gutter!) dismissal of Thai food as it is served in the suburbs.

MEMO TO GINA: Tell your reporters to stop sneering at their hick readers. Or just fire the lot and hire humans.

Readers are invited to post their favourite excerpts in comments. There are many gems to choose from.

UPDATE: In the cold light of a sober dawn it was immediately obvious this post went up with quite a few typos and other errors. They have been fixed.

31 comments:

  1. "It strikes a chord with Soutar, who travels regularly, organising and who reels off the names of federal ministers and their attitudes to renewables"

    No doubt her overseas travels involved a lot of swimming.

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  2. "Take the pressure Soutar put on her own local member"

    No article ever written has had more pressure on its local member.

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  3. she rolls the rice delicately with her fingers into little balls before popping them into her mouth like the locals of north-eastern Thailand

    who no doubt taste like chicken.

    Where's me Chianti?

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  4. "I had this moment of going, 'Well, I could never drive a car again and compost every single scrap of fruit and vegetable matter I've ever seen, but

    then I said 'f**k it - where's the fun in that? Let the Little People walk my talk; I wanna fly!"

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  5. "I could never drive a car again and compost every single scrap of fruit and vegetable matter I've ever seen"

    Fair enough: driving and composting at the same time sounds far more dangerous even than talking or texting while at the wheel.

    And the 'Young Environmentalist of the Year' is 30??!!

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  6. Do any of these people who use the phrase 'deal with' ever stop to consider what it literally means?

    'The locals' of rural Thailand often eat a large whole boiled frog with sticky rice. Yummm.

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  7. They start young...

    "But she did grow up in Balmain, home to ''the kind of leftie basket-weaver'', where as primary school student representative council secretary.."

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  8. Someone should burrow through her family tree to look for a link to the glorious Composta line. They're definitely two peas in a pod.

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  9. "Soutar arrives ... Sukjai restaurant, switches into Thai to order green papaya salad, whole fried snapper with herb salad and sticky rice, to be washed down by tap water from a big pink bottle."

    I will avoid this restaurant if there's a need to speak Thai to order anything - dunno why they can't just speak English - but I would be interested to know how "tap water in a big pink bottle" translates. Maybe there's a compound word for it in Thai?

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  10. "Insect gravy" Yum!

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  11. I blame Albo for providing "one or two pivotal moments." Albanese should keep those pesky things safely locked away.

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  12. Just a thought for today, the alp meet today is for Kaptin Jools of the labor Titanic issuing buckets to her crew ! And what a crew ! All pooping themselves at the thought of losing thieur cushy jobs.they need them ,no one else would employ them.

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  13. Oh! My dear Bunyip, I cannot express sufficient gratitude to you for taking the hit for all of those former Age readers who must now make do with the Australian and so escape writing (and I use the word advisedly) of this style and quality. Mostly, but not always.

    It is an absolute Divine Feast and we are utterly spoilt for choice. Any more of those perfumed puffs of incense and we'll all be seeking out funky young Thai's with whom we can ferret out and destroy all those over-sugared offerings of the inauthentic suburbs. While we build windmills in our backyards and begin digging to the earth's core as instructed by our Make Your Own GeoThermal Energy Kit (Trademarked T. Flannery).

    And OF COURSE, nuclear is not an option. Cleaner, cheaper but we have to dig holes to do it. And she's not an idealogue, no, not at all.

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  14. I can't remember where I heard it, but it was interesting to hear a news reporter talking about a flooded river marching over a town.

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  15. Not exactly a favourite comment; rather, one which caused a few hackles to rise:
    "Anthony Albanese, who provided one of two pivotal moments that persuaded her to ditch paid work for activism."
    I assume this means Albanese suggested that she, like many other activists, collect the dole to support her delusions.
    AK

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  16. " ''One of the reasons I am conscious of even where we choose to eat is I don't want to put myself in a box,'' she says. "

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  17. My God it's the most painful reading I've experienced - at least by someone who gets paid to 'write' if that's what you call that rubbish

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  18. "I remember walking out of that meeting with tears rolling down my face, going (sic), 'What a failure of leadership."

    Toughen up sweetie. When you get the sobs over leadership you really are a weak person. Also, in this case, a pseud.

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  19. "..went to beard Albanese in his office, armed with scientific arguments." - cheap thrill.

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  20. It wasn't till I realised " that meeting with tears rolling down my face" was a meeting with Anthony Albanese, now that got tears running down my face, of laughter!
    Well done Lindsay Soutar you have achieved the equivalent of a Jihadist being told by Osama Bin Laden that while he is quite happy to pursue many crazy programs, some can't even be accepted by him.
    This Meerkat lived in Newtown for over 20 Years, you could put a fence around the place and start you're own lunatic asylum, and I'm sure I saw her around the traps back in the day. The place is full of Greens, 23% voted for the nuts in 2010 because they are Snobs and Green policy does not affect them and as proof I present Lindsay Soutar.

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  21. The bicycle, the ordering of lunch by speaking Thai, and rolling of rice into balls and eating by hand was as far as you needed to read really, wasn't it? What followed was predictable.

    I occasionally find myself in Capital City in the company of in-laws and associates at some exotic restaurant. I'm the one asking for a fork, and sometimes a knife aswell, whilst the rest are using chopsticks and conversing about our glorious renewable energy future, how wonderful multiculturism is, and other Leftoid meme approved topics of conversation. Sometimes I will nod or grunt should any part of the dialogue start to include me. I quite like flying under the radar as the moronic hick from the bush. Redemption is not at hand for these folk.

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    Replies
    1. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.February 5, 2012 at 7:51 PM

      And Mr. A., as your just reward you get to eat more quickly than they do, with your knife and fork at the ready. When we eat out Thai, my trencher mate, the hirsute Irish ape, takes a turn towards the delicate with the chopsticks and I do the barbarian implements of old Europe. I win every time. Hungry, hungry Lizzie. Not yet a hippo though. I move too fast to get fat.

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    2. I have some hirsute Irish ape in my lineage, Thin Lizzie. On both sides in fact. Some is the rufous kind of which the Prof is enamoured, the other would be resultant of those swarthy crew from the Spanish Galleons who liked to R&R there back in the day.

      As for chopsticks. You must understand that the orientals cut up all their tucker beforehand to a size that will suit the chopsticks. Having large portions of food on one's plate that requires the use of a knife and fork is considered uncouth. Nevertheless, it is still easier to eat it with a fork. "Those sandal-wearing goldfish tenderers". (Mr. Burns)

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    3. Thai food is normally eaten with a spoon or fork.

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  22. 1. "Such shyness in one so passionate stems from the burden of others' expectations on her..." Freud meets the Greens.

    2. "I come to this work from a social justice background." Me? I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee...

    3. "...will lobby politicians so hard they commit the nation to a total shift..." Lobby politicians so hard?

    4. "...we as individuals..." Is she channelling "The Life of Brian" or does she speak like this naturally?

    5. "...the chatter of funky young Thais..." Patronising, pretentious poser comes to mind...

    And another thing: is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that these inner city environmental types tend towards a body shape and pallor that is decidedly unhealthy? Perhaps it's the photographer's fault, but in that pic Soutar looks fairly substantial and out of shape for a person who reportedly rides a bicycle (and lived in north-east Thailand villages for a year). More papaya salad and less fried fish might work, but I also suspect the bicycle has a similar function to that big pink bottle on the table ... it's all for show.

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    1. Indeed it is all show. Phonies in a big circle jerk. Legitimised con artists and what not.

      The pallor is from denying themselves sunlight, which they believe is trying to kill them, when in fact good ol' Sol is a giver of life and health.

      You can ride pushbikes all you like, but unless you are beading out sweat and going hard, like the menaces on Beach Rd etc, it will do bugger all for your physical shape.

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    2. No sane person would cycle in that dress!! And check out the bingo wings!!

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  23. ''We did the climate change stuff for a long time and we were very effective at scaring the pants off people" .....an admission of sorts.

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    1. Well, that's one way to get an object of your desire to get their pants off, but it does not quite set the mood. In may past history if dalliances and misalliances, I knew a woman who said that she liked a man who could laugh her pants off. Soutar should try this technique.

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  24. Look at me! Look at me! I'm eating rice like a Thai villager! Look at me! I'm riding a bike!
    Look at me! I'm drinking tap water from a pink bottle!
    Look at me! I'm a thirty year old total prat! And I'm having a meal with another total prat!

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  25. "Yes I do. I'm not going to use leaves."

    Ooh, the mental pictures!!

    ROTFLMAO!!

    (Would be if I wasn't so mature,as that is a side splitting piece of journalistic trash!!)

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