This is not a royal wedding post

The fact that Kate and William are being globally applauded for being vaguely normal today is a sad indication of the state of the UK, I think.

Clowning around

I’ve always been a fan of titting about, doing ridiculous things and potentially hurting myself; last night, I found my mecca: a place that lets me do all thee.

Centre of Gravity is, for want of a better description, a circus gym. It’s the home of the Zero Gravity circus and as well as doing things like yoga and poi, they hold an aerial arts class, which I attended for the first time yesterday. I used to do gymnastics when I was a kid, and particularly loved the half-hour between classes when we were allowed to mess about on the asymmetric bars, so I was stoked about the idea.

The space itself reminded me of the Red Rattler in Sydney. It had that vaudeville feeling that makes you feel somewhat lawless, and the trapeze and hoops hanging from the ceiling are aesthetically gorgeous.

The class started off with a lot of stretching and some yoga, then some basic acrobatics. This sounds intimidating but in reality is just some very very basic jumps, turns and somersaults (forward rolls to you and me) moving into some that look easy but in fact, aren’t. Then the good stuff started; first, the silks. They’re the big ribbony things that hang from the ceiling, that lithe women inexplicably wrap themselves around in Cirque du Soleil and that Pink made look pretty cool in one of her videos. To me, they looked like the easiest part of the whole operation. They’re not.

Even the most fundamental parts of doing silks, like wrapping your forearms around them and letting take your weight, seriously kills your hands. Obviously you’ll build  fist strngth over time, but grabbing is usually something that you do fairly unconsciously and for your hands to totally cane after  about a minute of doing something is disconcerting to say the least. It gets more difficult with climbs and foot wraps, and I never ever thought I’d be able to inch up a silk as I can’t even climb a rope, and I found the idea of puttig all your weight on a slack rope to be particularly challenging, but the feeling when you get high up, both your feet wrapped in the silk and you do splits in the air is definitely worth the effort!

Even better though is the trapeze. I was most looking forward to this, mostly because of how much I loved the aforementioned asymmetric bars, and I did remember a bit of the stuff we used to do. We hung upside down, sat on it, stood on it, stood on the sides of the ropes above it to create a star shape, swung off the side of it and generally got all giddy about the stuff we were doing. It felt so natural to hang off by my knees, no hands, upside down. I can’t wait to go back next week, if my poor aching-in-every-fibre body will let me.

Oh, and in response to my “I’ve never been able to do a headstand” comment, my awesome yoga teacher friend Steph taught me to headstand in about a second. Win!

Slutwalk Toronto

Back in January, police constable Michael Sanguinetti, while holding a talk on safety to York University students, made a comment that makes me more disgusted every time I think about it. Discussing a speight of sexual assaults, Mr Sanguinetti felt it appropriate to offer this piece of advice: if women don’t want to be raped, they shouldn’t dress like sluts.

Just take that in for a second: if you don’t want to be raped, you shouldn’t dress like a slut. If you do get assaulted, it’s most likely your fault.

It’s not just the audacity of this comment that is so shocking – though stating publicly that victims of sexual abuse probably had it coming is sickening to every woman who’s ever been touched in a club, or hollered at on at the street, and I can’t even imagine what it does to women who have actually been attacked – but it made clear that sexist and misogynistic attitudes are not only tolerated but seemingly prevalent in the very forces that are put in place to deal with this sort of thing. How does a woman report horrific sexual abuse when she knows that the people she must report it to probably think she deserved it?

I’d heard of the first Slutwalk through the U of T professor friend of my boss; this was to be a march through Toronto’s streets to the police headquarters to demand proper training for police officers in how to deal with victims of rape and a whole reorganization of how these attacks are dealt with. I went along to the march expecting to see only a couple of hundred people, and was gobsmacked to see a hell of a lot of people people all milling round, declaring themselves as “sluts”, carrying signs and raring to go.

I had also expected this march to be comprised mainly of women, so the massive male contingent was a pleasant surprise, as was the presence of many older people, of both sexes, also wearing “slut” badges and signs. One couple in their sixties, with their little dog waddling behind them, hit the nail on the head with their home-made sign: it’s not about sex, it’s about ethics.

The vibe was joyous and peaceful while still simmering with anger, and the first speech of the day, by Sonya Barnett, was particularly rousing; in defending their choice to use the word “slut”, she discussed how the word is steeped in the implication that a woman who has sex and enjoys her sexuality is necessarily a bad person who deserves what she gets, whereas promiscuous men are known as “studs” and “playboys” and get a veritable pat on the back from society for boning everything that walks; “Sexual confidence is not an invitation to violence.”

An estimated 3000 people marched through the city streets, chanting, singing, and demanding to be heard. As the march reached the police headquarters, Jane Doe made a particularly impassioned speech. She was the fifth woman raped by the infamous Canadian Balcony Rapist in 1986, and after an 11-year legal battle successfully sued the Toronto Police department for damages, due to her treatment after the fact and her allegation that they had used her as “bait” to catch the rapist. She spoke about the treatment she received, and how she had been made to feel as if she’d deserved it despite being in her own bed behind a locked door when she was attacked. She spoke about having been allowed into the Police sexual assault training classes and was shocked at how substandard they were, and called for the Toronto Police Department to be trained by professional Adult Educators and to eliminate the sexist and misogynistic attitudes that have shown themselves to be present.

It was pretty chilling to hear the stories of these amazing women who’d been violated in the worst possible way and have not only rebuilt their lives but have spoken out to make sure no one else suffers in the same way. The reaction of the huge crowd was very telling – tears in people’s eyes, and men, women and children all calling for something to be done, and for women to be spared the terrible judgment that they face having gone through the worst time of their life.

                                          

The success of the first Slutwalks in Toronto has led to others being organised all over North America: in London (Ont), Ottawa, Yellowknife, Montreal, Vancouver, and even, in the future, New York. Hooray!

Check out more photos here

Ruminations of a far flung voter

I have been terrible at keeping up with these blog posts since I got back to Canada, mostly because of adjusting to the cold and catching up with friends, among with looking for somewhere to live.

One thing I have been doing, however, is watching some English TV.

Now, having lived for a year and a half without a TV and with absolutely no passion to get one in the future, this would seem an odd activity for me to content myself with. However, I've been missing the UK quite a bit, and this has led to me wanting to catch up with what's going on. This, in turn, has made me watch Rastamouse.

Now, kids' TV shows worldwide, and in the UK especially, have always been a bit effed up. The Magic Roundabout is patently terrifying, and anyone who's ever seen Bagpuss or the Trumptons know that this isn't a contemporary trait. In recent years though, kids TV has been getting pretty awesome, while keeping this same abject strangeness. Take Pocoyo for example; a Spanish show, translated into English and narrated by the wonderful and acerbic Stephen Fry:

If this isn't the trippiest 7 minutes any child could ever spend, then I don't want to know about the state of parenting in the UK at the moment.

I love that show and have done since my friend alerted me to its existence back in the heady, time-wasting days of uni. Yet I could never imagine that a new show could so eclipse its nihilistic surrealism.

Enter Rastamouse.

There isn't much on youtube due to the BBC keeping it firmly in their hands, but Google it and you'll be able to hear the glorious dulcit tones of a rastafarian rodent talking in true British-Jamaican patois.  Rastamouse and his band members Scratchy and Zuma, who together make up the crime-fighting Easy Crew reggae band, regularly exclaim "Dat's irie man!", "Whagwan?" and "Me love de cheese!", much to the apparent disdain of middle class mothers in Kent who are terrified that they babies might start talking like black people...but that's another discussion altogether. The theme tune especially is a mind-blowing amalgamation of cute liberal ethics and riding ragga: he's a Batman-figure, helping out President Wensley Dale (a modern-day Commissioner Gordon) whenever he's needed, but languishes in the joy of playing reggae when he's not. He's about redemption, not retribution, and is "always there to make a bad ting good."

It's not just the concept of this show that makes it so great, because both the puppets and the script totally deliver on such a promising idea. I can't convey how much I laughed when I listened to the cheese thief's soliloquy about having to eat all the cheese-based baking that resulted from his actions as he had no friends to share them with: "It's why me get fat. Look."

So heartbreaking! So sweet!

Anyway, gushing about Rastamouse wasn't my original intent. I actually meant to talk about 10 O'Clock Live.

Apart from Lauren Laverne, whose delightful fashion choices may "urban up" the set slightly but whose attempts at comedy fall flat (and why should they do anything else? She's not a comedian!), every presenter makes me laugh out loud. I've loved Charlie Brooker ever since his TVGoHome days, and though he may have become somewhat more mainstream in recent years, the self-reflexivity of his comment "I would volunteer but I've got no skills. What can I do? Go to someone's house and whine though a box set...for free?" makes me love him even more. David Mitchell draws simliar feelings from me, ignoring the Mac commercials, and the fact that series 7 of Peep Show is as funny is series 1 is a source of constant gratitude from me.

Even Jimmy Carr, whose particular style of comedy can be a little grating after a while, provided many lolz during a discussion of the activities in Egypt by captioning the map "Biffy Cairo".

The best thing about this show, however, is the fact that it tries to make disillusioned students and 20-somethings interested in politics again - and succeeds! The most shamelessly educational part of each show is David Mitchell's round-table discussion with 3 opposing and regularly passionate/angry political activists, writers, and the like who actually, really discuss a real, contemporary issue. They've covered the proposed selling of the forests, the idea of Big Society, and a whole host of other issues that, having lived outside of the country for 2 and a half years, I haven't even heard of. The problem with getting most of your info from the pages of news websites is that these more minor issues (and I use the word on a global scale) get pushed to more hidden pages while other horrific stories take the front pages, and not having 3 hours a day to plough through the subpages of guardian.com, I feel somewhat underinformed. 10 O'Clock Live is rectifying this situation for me, while providing me with some much-needed humour about it.

They also do a good job of letting the Tories make themselves look stupid, which always goes down well with me.*

It's distinctly left-leaning but David Mitchell in particular gives it some balance (I feel he's most about logic and reason than being partisan). Their satirical "Bankers in Need", despite seeming to be the most light relief available, is regularly interspersed with quite radically-strong comments such as "if it wasn't for your mindless compliance...the bankers wouldn't be able to screw you quite so easily" and constant reminders that the incalculable greed of bank CEOs has shafted our country to the extent that we now all have to pay for it. Strong stuff hiding under the guise of comedy. Good for them.

Living outside of your home country while an unelected government systematically removes all of the best things about it is both frustrating and upsetting, and this show is making me feel that little bit more connecte as well as amusing the hell out of me. I never thought I'd say this, but thank you, Channel 4!

*My favourite example of this came during a discussion about the selling of forests, when a promoter of the dissolution of the Forestry Commission said "well, if the public are so bothered about the forests, why don't they group together and buy them?". David Mitchell instantly stepped in with "Isn't that ....the Forestry Commission?". Perfect, David, perfect.

American cars are massive

I had decided that hiring a car was an inevitability while I was on Hawaii, as I was desperate to go to the Kona coffee farms and the transport network on the Big Island is almost non existent, and highly interrupted by the most active volcano in the world, so I sucked it up and ordered a compact for a day.

Of course, this being the US of States, land of brave and home of the over-sized, the "compact" I got was a Chrysler Sebring, a car the size of my Dad's car, if not bigger. I've never been allowed to drive my Dad's car, with the feeble excuse that it's a company car (while we all know that he's just terrified of my impeccable driving), and as a result I've formed the judgement that I can only drive cars the size of a VW Polo, or the ridiculous size, weight and shape of a New Beatle - which, by the way, is the size, weight and shape of a bubble.

Being on the wrong side of the road, in a hugely massive car, in the wrong side of it, driving in a foreign country went fantastically, despite all the odds, and I had a fantastic day driving around with my new friend Larry, a yank bike-shop owner from Washington, seeking out the best sights of the Big Island, drinking too much coffee and listening to the Smiths way too loud.

One of my favourite experiences was the tour of the coffee farm from the owner herself, who was very expressive of the love and passion for her industry and the reasons they won't ever sell to Starbucks or massive companies. The coffee is the shit, too.

The next day brought around my last few hours in the gorgeous and tempestuous land of Hawaii, and I used this to great effect, getting a forearm tattoo and my microdermal replaced. The first time I had the microdermal put in, it was a 3-second process involving breathing in, breathing out and being surprised at the lack of pain. This time, due to scar tissue and other complications, it took what felt like an hour, with the poor Erika hacking away just under my skin, doing a tap dance on my chest then taping it all together again like a smashed up Jenga. Thanks to the endorphins careering around my body due to that ordeal, the tat was a breeze, and I celebrated with a brunch with my new comrades - Larry, another American, and a ridiculously friendly and lovely Canadian girl.

As I boarded the first of several planes, I bid a mournful adieu to the South Pacific. I know one day I'll be back with a surf board under my arm.

The Big Island

The Big Island has already proved itself to be much more of a pain in the ass than O’ahu when I stepped off the plane and had to pay $25 to get a shuttle bus 9k in to town, and despite 2 emails to the hostel, they hadn’t got my booking and were full. Just when I thought I’d have to trudge crestfallen to the $75-a-night hotel round the corner, the lovely guy at the desk said that someone hadn’t shown up and as it was technically past check-in time I could have her bed and fight over it with her if she showed up. Result!

The Koa Wood Hale Inn (also known as Patey’s Place) is the only hostel in Kona, and brilliant with it. It’s got a uni-dorm feel, but the crowd is much older. In my bit of the hostel are a 50-year old Mancunian woman, a 45-year old Canuck, a 30-something Washington bike shop owner and other lovely people around my age or a bit older. The owner, Zero and the girl and guy that work there are heaps helpful and lovely to hang with, the girl being from New Brunswick and the guy being from Nashville, Tennessee and so having one of those accents that you only ever see in movies.

The main towns on the Big Island (which is officially Hawaii) are Kona and Hilo, on opposite sides of the island and a 3 hour drive away from each other. I am staying in Kona, mostly for the coffee. Kona coffee is grown between 800 and 2000 feet on this side of the island, and the process of picking and roasting these beans is so labour intensive that only a handful of family-owned farms do it. They control the Kona coffee market, and also therefore the quality of the coffee available, meaning that it is of the highest standard, and not sold to places like Starbucks who will buy the lowest quality available and peddle it as some sort of new wonder drug. This makes me happy.

The island is also relatively big compared to O’ahu, and to see everything I want to in my 3 days here, I think I will have to hire a car.

On my first day, however, I contented myself with wandering down to Kona town, meandering through the holiday markets and having some awesome grub. I stumbled upon another free display of hula dancing by the most beautiful women, and as is custom for hula dancers, they were elegant and fantastic, wearing gorgeous clothes and amazing hair adornments. I fell in love with one of them a little bit.

I was searching for a decent wave or two, but it turns out that in the town, all the breaks hit onto a mad amount of rocks, so only the most skilled or desperate really go there. The strong tides and relatively big waves mean that it certainly wasn’t an option for me, as I didn’t have travel insurance and didn’t fancy paying the US hospital bills to deal with my broken back.

The amazingly beautiful hula women of Kona

Ruminations on my way over

There’s nothing like nice surprises when you’re traveling. I managed to get all the way from Pupukea to Waikiki on a $2.50 ticket, actually used my return shuttle bus ticket to the airport, wasn’t manhandled by US security like normal and didn’t have to pay the $10 fee for checked baggage because I’m international. Win!

There’s only a Starbucks in the airport though, so I had to fund my most hated of companies by buying an oversweet drink and a shit scone. Fail.

I’ve seen quite a lot of off-duty Army or Navy people in Hawaii, wearing their military ‘civilian gear’ or carrying a camouflage rucksack or something. I think that’s a bit odd. Also, while boarding the Hawaiian Airlines flight, I heard this between a dude and a girl wearing a football shirt. There’s been some kind of massive American Football game on just prior to boarding:

Dude: I hear they love [team] in the military.

Girl: I am in the military. I just got back from Iraq.

Dude: (suddenly much more reverent) Well thank you for serving.

I wonder whether Americans stop to think about why young girls and guys are being sent to farflung countries to risk death or what the rationale is being pushing this idea of “serving the motherland” for the sake of the “land of the free”.

What do Americans get for their taxes? Their education, except for the very top schools which of course no one but the rich can afford to go to, is an international joke, nothing is free on healthcare and even their transport systems are lacking in most places.

Why aren’t they annoyed in paying as much tax as the rest of the Western world and still getting a shit deal because their government spends it on invading Middle Eastern countries on morally-dubious grounds and paying a million dollars a piece for those horrible intrusive new xray machines at airports?

I also wonder if they notice that no one else in the world pronounces it “eye-rack”.

Like ever, the North is better

The North Shore is turning out to be much more interesting than Waikiki, not only for the people I’m meeting. From Corey the surfer who thought it fine to call me Baby Girl and invite me to “go to the beach, look at the stars, you wear your bikini, we’ll take some beers, get playful, “ to the Spanish girls eating rucks of chicken, everyone is a character.

The most interesting guy though was a wicked surfer/farmer from Uruguay who told me heaps about his country and South America generally and was so calm and affable that I found myself drawn to his conversation. He specializes in bovine genetics and said I can stay on his farm when I go there.

Here are some facts about Uruguay that I did not know:

-       no tourists

-       great surf

-       Uruguayan peso

-       Bit more expensive than the rest of South America

-       Politically left

-       Corrupt

-     lovely people

-       Peaceful, rural place.

Who wouldn’t want to go?

The night ended up being wicked, hanging out and drinking with US surfers Gordy, Kevin, Amy and Jake, Juan the Uruguayan cow-genes-fiddler and a few others wanderers all night in the shack. Great people, and we had a lot of laughs.

I wish I’d come to the North Shore sooner instead of wasting time in Waikiki for so long. It’s way more becoming up here. People stay in Pupukea then cycle to Halei’wa to surf and hang out – the whole North Shore is a giant surf beach, bereft of the tourists but full of surf bums. It’s a fantastic space and I’ll definitely come back at some point, though now my time restraints take my on a plane to the Big Island – which is apparently even more beautiful than O’ahu.

Excellent signs

Hawaiian Jesus

Abandoned beaches on O'ahu's North Shore

I got to the North Shore (Pupukea to be precise) having forgotten what uncommercial beaches could be like. Waikiki is entirely man-made (they shipped in loads of sand at some point) and at all times is full of people. It was nice to see this isn’t the case up north.

The North Shore is a total surfer’s haunt, and Pupukea itself is basically a small stretch of road, with 2 parts of the same hostel on it and a supermarket. It is literally steps to the beach though, and the only place to stay near the hella famous Waimea Bay, which is strangely bereft of accommodation.

I’ve got myself own to one meal a day, because its too hot to eat and I’m desperately trying to save some cash (this consists of a mid-day binge usually bookended by 2 ridiculously cheap coffees to start or end my day – not my healthiest eating plan, I’ll admit, but certainly my thriftiest) and have been exploiting the Honolulu Cookie company’s ‘come in and try every flavour’ madness policy to full effect, but by the time I got to the north I was starving.

After an orzo salad, a huge slice of carrot cake and an apple ($12, thank you very much) I headed west, or ‘windward’ in Hawaii speak*, for a walk along the beach to find some good waves and a surf hire shop.

2 hrs of walking face-to-the-burning-sun later, I had covered Shark Cove and Three Tables and reached, passed or failed to find Waimea Bay. I swear to God it was only 3 bus stops prior to where I got off for the hostel, but nowhere seemed to be the world-famous surf spot. In fact, for the most part of the 2 hours I’d been walking along deserted beach ankle-deep in the cold waters.

Let’s just take a second to imagine how soul-shakingly glorious that was. Yes, it was that good.

Anyway, my legs were caning and I’d started to get a bit thirsty, having drained my water bottle with dinner, so I decided to head back up to the road that I thought was running parallel to the beach. Problem is, most of the beach at this point with lined with houses, which is delightful when old people are waving to your from their nulti-million dollar abodes (and every one of them does wave and smile) but it is a bit of a pain when you just want to buy a can of coke. Just in case you ever do find yourself in this situation, don’t freak out that you’re trespassing on private beaches and are soon to be arrested – it’s illegal to deny public access to any part of any Hawaiian coast, which I like a lot. 

I eventually found what I thought was a path (after a lovely chat with a 40 year old life guard which somehow ended in my trying to explain both Russell Brand and dubstep to him) but in fact turned out to be an old woman’s garden. I only realized this once I was already in, and she was sat watching me. I’d already committed so I just kept on walking, unbuckled her front gate and kept on walking, but not before I’d found a pager on the lawn and handed it over to her as she incredulously watched me. Smooth, you might think – no, because beyond the house was nothing but a scrap heap and I had to walk back through the garden with her eyes boring through me to get back to the beach.

After half an hour more I was spitting feathers so miraculously got back on to the road and started walking back the way I came. I went down a driveway to what I thought was a drinks stand, but yet again it was just someone’s house. Thankfully this woman was amazing, laughing off my drinks-stand hypothesis and filling up my water bottle from her house.

“It’s perfectly fine to ask some water, honey.”

“Yes Jula, but I am English, and forgot that strangers can be nice”

We had a nice chat, during which, like all Americans I’d met in Hawaii, she asked about my travels and life, including the much-asked quandary “You’re not traveling on your own, are you?!” I’ve been asked this with surprise in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and America now, and I don’t know whether the surprise is because travelling in mostly Western, mostly English-speaking countries holds many major hazards of which I am unaware, or because I look like a 14 year old who can’t look after herself. Perhaps, as I’ve actually got lost and confused in all those countries listed above, its actually the latter.

*Interestingly enough, this is about the only Hawaii-speak you will actually hear, apart from ‘Aloha’and ‘mahalo’, which are almost anagrams of each other.

Pupuoops

Broke a bed in Pupukea. Amazingly, I was on my own.