Asia, the graveyard of western popular culture

1. A few days ago a friend who was holidaying in Bali sent me this message:

2. “The scene: quiet bar in Ubud, Bali. The soundtrack: “How Do You Talk to an Angel?”. It’s the song that won’t die!”

3. Indeed. I’ve been to Indonesia twice now, and while I have only spent a cumulative total of 32 days there there has been some eye-opening music experiences — and I don’t mean the ethnic local music kind. Ever wondered what Maroon 5 sounded like in Engrish? I didn’t, but I found out several times. Did you know that The Spin Doctors is still together? And touring? And speaking of touring, Foreigner, Whitesnake, and by God Michael Jackson have all toured Japan in the last 12 months. Marty Friedman from Megadeth lives in Tokyo. While you’re at it Billy Blanks’ new fitness video, Billy’s Boot Camp, is so fucking popular that in the space of one week I had some 20 people volunteer that they have used the video. Someone, please, shoot me.

4. (And, as my friend notes, Jakarta sports its own fair share of anachronisms: [Timezone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timezone(videoarcades), Sizzler, Fido Dido (when was Fido bloody Dido popular anyway?), and a tenacious fondness for Frente.)

5. And it’s not just music and fitness videos, cartoon characters are all the rage as well. While the rest of the world may be fixated on Japanimation, the Japanese is fixated on Disney. Oh yes, Mickey might be an arthritic geriatric mouse, but boy does he sell. So does Winnie the Pooh (a.k.a Pooh-san), Stitch (as in Lilo and Stitch), Tweety, Miffy and Gaspard et Lisa, to name a few.

6. (And that’s not including the home-grown characters — Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, Charmy Kitty and the rest of the Sanrio stable are still hard at work earning Mr Sanrio his dinner.)

7. But perhaps there’s a shift happening; Asian movies are finding its way into Western cinemas, Asian music is starting to find traction overseas, Asian actors are finding their way onto Western screens and into Western minds. East and West are merging, interwined in a web of images and sounds and thoughts and ideas, creating a new mosaic of identity: one defined not by the geography of past centuries, but one where we can be anything, limited only by what we are willing to accept.

8. And what will we do with our cherished notion of nationality? Will it be thrown out, or incorporated into a wider notion of “humanality”? Or am I just making words up? We are certainly living in interersting times.

Natural Disasters

1. Did anyone notice that Japan has been hit with not just a typhoon, but an earthquke as well this weekend? All we need now is a volcano warning and we’ll have the trifecta. Or we could go for the Superfecta with a North Korean missle launch, Russian territorial dispute and Chinese environmental disasters drifting across the seas.

2. I think I live in the most exciting part of the world.

Much Excitement!

1. I’m finally coming home! Well, for a visit anyway. I’ve booked my tickets, The Girlfriend and I will be in Sydney between September 15th to September 25th, in time for my sister’s birthday, as well as seeing Christian Lingberg play with the ACO. Happyness!

2. (Incidentally, 15th September was also the day I first set foot in Sydney, 21 years ago.)

June

1. Summer, in all it’s humid glory, is here. It’s actually not quite as hot as I remembered it last year, but it’s plenty hot enough for everyone. Though I do really love summer, the humidity makes it feel like a sauna but I prefer it to the dry furnace heat of the Australian summer — and I’m less likely to get sunburnt just sticking my head out the window. The Ozone Layer is really great like that.

2. (It’s so humid that at night, it fogs. At 24 Celcius.)

3. Summer never travels alone, so trailing its tshirt-tails are the festivals and festivities that happen around summer. Beginning of this month was Tokasan, which celebrates the coming of summer, where everyone dresses up in their best Yukatas and enjoy the street stalls and street food and street drinking. And dancing, as my friend Dan found, who looked his, err, best, in his man-Yukata dancing with the old ladies. He lives in a country town after all.

4. The beginning of the month also saw the leaving of two close work mates, and the arrival of a new one. It’s always sad to see people go, and it can be difficult to deal with friendships as a transient experience. But thanks to the magic of Facebook and email, they’re never that far away. Later this month my best friend here will leave for home, and tears may well be shed. *sob*

5. But it wasn’t all bad news. Fireworks are legal here, and people here love nothing more than to go down to the river and run around with sparklers and shoot off some explosives. So last weekend we did as the locals did, and went to the park to play with explosives. While drinking a lot. And I mean a lot. We also climbed trees, and you can see the photos here.