On my recent trip to the UK, I kept a blog over on the old Sleepy Brain site. I hadn’t quite finished it when Sleepy Brain went offline, but I’m hoping to complete the rest somewhere on this site. In the meantime here’s my favourite entry from the series.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 13 June 2007.

At one stage I used to listen to people whingeing about long plane flights and think they were dullards with no imagination, that I was above them (literally) because I was a space nut and flying to me was the closest I’d ever get to floating in space. I positively relished 24-hour flights from Melbourne to London. I was a fool.

When I was considerably younger and embarking on my first flights, I would carry in my mind a story far more essential than any hand luggage. It was something I’d read about old-time astronomers who were so puzzled by the lack of landmass on gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn that they had to invent bizarre aliens. They told the world that these unfeasible creatures — shaped like fleshy zeppelins — populated the swirling clouds and raging storms of these enormous gassy planets instead of giving the world the truth: that space was as sterile as their research. But it was inconceivable to the humanist mind that barren energy could exist, devoid of life of any sort, so the myth caught fire.

I used to make sure I had a window seat on long-haul flights, and from there I’d recall those ancient astronomical images, artists’ renditions from yellowing copies of Time-Life that my parents owned. Pressing my nose against the jet’s tiny window, I would populate Earth’s skies with them, visualising among the clouds those hovering, billowing puffballs with their huge, rounded eyes, bared razor-sharp teeth and enormous mouths, which served as air-intakes for the wretched creatures, sucking in the methane-poison of Jupiter (or, in this case, the clouds of Earth) to be ejected out the back of their ridiculous bodies, propelling their pulpy bulk through that hell-world.

I made my own fun.

Now I hate flying. It’s become possibly one of the most stressful ‘elective’ activities a person can put themselves through, except for moving house and divorce. I hate having to seal my toothpaste in a plastic bag. I hate the notion that someone thinks my toothpaste could blow up a plane. To wait an hour, two hours, while my bag waits to be searched, despite the fact its sole contents are a pair of dirty boxer shorts, a can of deodorant and a belt, and they can see that on the X-ray — that’s hell. Smelling the paranoia in the queues as we are all herded towards security and through the metal rings like cattle to the slaughter, cattle that’s beside itself with fear because it *knows* what’s coming. Terrorist culture — maintaining the fear — keeps us all in line.

I no longer have the brain-space to devote to alien fantasies. Now when I fly I just want to sleep and get it all over and done with and wake up at the other end. Valium might help. Or smack. But I’ve never been into either so I resort to gin and tonic in the hope that I can knock myself out. But the seat, made for thinner, shorter people in a different age just won’t do and the food is unrecognisable, but that’s always been a given, nothing that can be done about that.

It’s just not fun anymore is it? And I know I’m not the only one who thinks that way because I know there’s a global movement underway, a mass-psych experimental travel meme to find and make viable means and ways of ‘flightless travel’, and I’m definitely investigating that for my next trip, but for now I simply have to make do. Watch a movie perhaps, but inflight movies are as crap as the food, everyone knows that. ‘Four Weddings and A Funeral’; ‘Rocky Balboa’; chick flicks; Steven Seagal; unspeakable Tom Hanks atrocities; Guy Ritchie and Madonna.

But I was flying with Emirates, thank God, and Emirates has ICE, a ‘next-generation’ in-flight entertainment system. ICE has a ‘classic movie club’ — around 30 selections including 2001, perhaps the ultimate inflight movie (any Kubrick would do me) and the original Dirty Harry, which still packs a punch, and which contains a Lalo Schifrin score that’s funky, fuzzed out and completely over the top; D.H. is always worth seeing/hearing for that reason alone. Plus another 50 recent releases including Children of Men, something I missed when it came out. A lot of recent TV, too, like Life on Mars. Plus classic-rock albums on the audio channels, and not just overrated cock rock like Zeppelin but quality dirge-metal like Sabbath, and even some new wave and postpunk like Siouxsie. Best of all, it has the facility to rewind, fast-forward and pause films. It seems incredibly complex to set up separate feeds for each seat, but that’s exactly what they’ve done: movies are stored in a central computer and accessed by each viewer as required. I couldn’t quite believe that someone, somewhere, had finally listened to consumer demand, that someone had finally recognised the keyword ‘choice’. I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me when I discovered ICE.

ICE, then, made the flight basically bearable. But so did the lady next to me. She was rocking her little boy to sleep and he was clearly terrified by the turbulence. But he was being a good little soldier, keeping quiet and trusting mum. And mum was a real angel, with a smile that told him all he needed to know. When he was finally asleep she struck up a conversation with me and we managed to kill a few hours. Sometimes that’s all you need to iron out the stress. And I was smitten with the boy’s demeanour — he really was such a good kid — because the plane was really bumping; it gave me pause, to say the least. Then they were both asleep and I turned to 2001.

I knocked back a few more gin and tonics and then I watched Children of Men. And the impact blew me backwards. I’ve noticed (noticed? I’ve been disturbed by) a peculiar apocalyptic shakedown on the streets of Melbourne over the past few years, following a similar undercurrent that shook me to the core when I lived in London in 2001. It’s actually too huge to go into here, but it’s something I’ve been trying to articulate over here and here. To be confronted with this on the screen was just too much — Children of Men’s scenes of urban anarchy were chilling. They synched exactly with this vision in my head. The impact, even on this tiny back-seat screen, was immense, especially in a sleepless, semi-tipsy state. I couldn’t get over it and I kept rewinding and watching that unforgettable scene where the forest-dwelling crusty-feral traveller types ambush Clive Owen and his gang. There’s a lot of detail in that film, detail that’s just so jarring. The unexplained attack on the train by some vicious, half-seen gang; the doped-up guy with the tattooed face and neck playing some kind of virtual reality game that seems directly wired to his skin; the Pink Floyd pig floating past the window; the ultra-strange choice of very early King Crimson on the soundtrack, in among kode9 and Aphex Twin tracks; the rubbish and absolute despair etched into the buildings and street scenes…yes, the story has severe melodramatic flaws, but so does Blade Runner. Sometimes the setting is the story; the streets live and breathe as characters; the city is alive in these films, pulsing with an artificial intelligence that, in this case, is fetid, rotting at the core.

When you’re on a plane watching this, who needs puffball aliens?

The scene that did my head in (still from Children of Men; dir. Alfonso Cuaron).

I fell asleep to anarchic dreams and woke on the descent to Heathrow. The weather looked cold and grey. From the air I could see some urban ruins. Some smoke in the distance. We landed. It took forever to get through customs. People were in endless lines, looking miserable. The film was replaying over and over in my head; there’s a scene where illegal immigrants are herded into a refugee camp in a future dystopian England. It meshed with the scene at Heathrow. I was descending into the uncanny valley, that most spooky of voids: culture shock; the crushingly familiar made utterly strange. Future now, literally; I’d crossed however many time zones and my brain was still 24 hours into the future, superimposed onto a steel-grey past.

Jetlag. A bucking horse to be ridden. It flattens perspective, time and memory. I hadn’t said goodbye to the lady and the boy. I was shunted along ahead of them and then they disappeared. Our conversation seemed decades in the past. I was confused and sad. I’ve been through all this before and still it gets me. Circadian rhythms; do not mess with them, ever.

Then I was out of Heathrow on the Tube train to London without really realising it and I noticed that every bloke was wearing similar boot-cut jeans and patterned t-shirts. Some of the t-shirts were pink. The Beckham fauxhawk still, somehow, remained a popular haircut for males. There were big sunglasses on all the women and fake bling everywhere. Tottering high heels were common. Lacquered hair was popular. There was an old huge bald man reading a huge leather-bound book called How We Used to Live: the Britain of Old. He kept looking up at the passengers then darting back to the pages as if seeking solace. He was in very good nick for his age and looked like he wanted to bust some heads. But all the lads on the train were huge, too. Roid rage.

I was close to passing out from exhaustion. My backpack weighed a ton. I’d brought too many books as usual. I just knew at that point that I’d never read any of them. I felt like handing them out on the train. They were mostly Ballard and experimental travel books; would anyone even want them? We’d just passed Osterley and there were 15 more stops to go until Victoria.

From there I had to interchange to Norwich.

I watched the two girls across from me. They were speaking native Spanish and they were tall and their nails were pink. They were super supreme and confident and they were eating Big Macs. They weren’t trash; their grooming smelt of lots and lots of cash. They just didn’t care about eating Big Macs. I remembered being in a McDonalds in Munich where you could buy beer and where there were Salvador Dali prints on the walls. Depraved, decapitated vaginal Dalis, too.

Europe sure is different; in Australia we have Formula 1 cars on the walls of our McDonalds.

‘England is not Europe but it does have McDonalds’ — that was all my sleepy brain could think of. I couldn’t even summon up the energy to recognise that these Spanish girls were incredibly beautiful.

Because I’d fallen asleep, finally.

+ Read the rest of the Brit Blog at the Sleepy Brain archives.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain 19 December 2005.

In late 2005 I travelled around the North Pacific on assignment for Lonely Planet. I visited the islands of Yap, Kosrae, Guam, Pohnpei, Rota, Tinian, Saipan and Palau and had the most marvellous time. The fruits of that research were published in Lonely Planet’s South Pacific & Micronesia guidebook, but I also maintained a blog while away. I’ve reproduced my favourite entry below, detailing my time on Yap.

Yap is the most traditional island in Micronesia. Some men still get around in loincloth; women often walk around topless. And everyone chews betel nut, a centuries-old tradition that is stronger than ever.

When my plane landed at Yap ‘airport’ (such as it is; the terminal is about as big as my head), I looked for my hotel driver but all I could see was a huge mob of people (mainly children), all laughing, joking and pointing at the silver lump that had just landed (yes, I know my hair is getting greyer by the minute, but I mean the plane). Then a mob of kids encircled me, their tiny hands touching mine and their high-pitched laughter ringing the air. I felt off balance and had a vision of being whisked away by these little demigods, like Richard Dreyfuss was at the end of Close Encounters. Before that could happen, though, my way was blocked by a hefty guy, who opened his mouth to speak.

“Hey, man…”

He paused to spit out something crimson red.

Ptooie!

Was it blood? His teeth were whittled down to black stubs and his lips and tongue were redder than blood.

“Where you going?” he said.

Betel-nut saliva, Yap (photo: Simon Sellars).

I told him the name of my hotel and he found the driver for me, and everyone turned out to be very warm and welcoming. All the same, this bloke’s appearance still threw me, even though I knew he’d been chewing betel nut. Betel nut is actually the seed of the betel palm and what you do is you split it open, sprinkle some dry coral lime onto it, warp it in a pepper leaf and maybe some tobacco, and then chew. It makes your mouth go red (and, for long-term users, rots your teeth) and gives you a vague, relaxed high. (Did I try it? Of course I did; but that’s for later). When European contact was first made with Yap, it was assumed that the Yapese were suffering from some kind of plague, or typhoid, and were constantly throwing up blood. More superstitious types brought out the crucifixes and garlic cloves.

But a more welcoming group of people you’d be hard-pressed to find. Yapese are shy around newcomers but intensely proud of their heritage and fiercely determined to fight the onslaught of Americana that has swept through most of the other islands. They are taking steps to control tourism and they are trying hard to deal with their garbage problem, whether it’s cultural or landfill.

Yap has a wonderful history, brought into sharp relief by Sebastian, a guide at the Trader’s Ridge hotel. To my eternal regret, I only had one full day on the island (due to Continental Airline’s totally inflexible schedule), so I had to make the most of it. Sebastian came highly recommended and that’s because he’s the best; a noble, intelligent man; a warrior; a man of conviction.

I told him I especially wanted to see some ‘stone money’ (known in Yapese as rai). Sebastian drove me to one of the ‘banks’ where he explained that stone money was originally carved from quarries 300 miles away in Palau and brought to Yap by outrigger canoe; some ‘coins’ are 12 feet in diameter and their worth mainly derives from the amount of difficulty in getting them home and the amount of lives lost on the journey. Even now, stone money is sometimes used to purchase land on Yap. The ‘coins’ are not moved around, however (rather like the gold in Fort Knox, which stays put no matter who ‘owns’ it), but are kept in ‘banks’ in the villages.

Sebastian and some Yapese stone money (photo: Simon Sellars).

Driving north, Sebastian filled me in on what happened to his people during the Japanese occupation. It’s a harsh and cruel tale, and I’m sad to report that by the end of World War II, the Yapese indigenous population had been decimated to 2,000 (today, it’s 11,000). The Japanese used to smash stone money as punishment if the Yapese decided not to co-operate (they used the broken pieces to pave roads); if that didn’t work, they killed. I hasten to add that these tales were not relayed to me with rancour, rather in a very matter-of-fact (though melancholy) way – mainly as historical fact. For Sebastian, what’s important is that Yapese culture has survived and that it remains strong in the face of new challenges.

Americanism is the new threat. The FSM is under some sort of Compact agreement with the US, which means they get financial aid in exchange for certain strategic and geographical rights. Yapese can fight in Iraq; Yap can be a target for terrorists; American popular culture can eradicate indigenous tradition. It’s a familiar refrain, and we’ve seen it so many times before, but remarkably Yap is still the real deal…for now.

Bechiyal Cultural Centre’s faluw (photo: Simon Sellars).

Sebastian took me to Bechiyal Cultural Centre to see the faluw, one of Yap’s “men’s houses” where elders gather to tell stories and pass on wisdom to the young fellas; this respect for the elderly blows my tiny little mind, coming as I do from a country where old people are bashed, robbed and killed all the time. The storytelling used to happen every night but now only on weekends, because people work during the week.

We passed a concrete and corrugated-iron faluw on the way back and I remarked that it was as ugly as sin; Sebastian roared with laughter and told me he liked the way I thought.

“Yes, that’s how they’re beginning to be built nowadays. And that’s why my culture will fall apart, because no one is taking the time to do it right”.

Bechiyal used to boast a few more faluw until the supertyphoon in 2004 blew them away. I asked Sebastian about the typhoon and he told me perhaps his most amazing tale. His house is by the water and he said that when the typhoon hit, everyone by the coast evacuated to higher ground. But Sebastian knew that if the waves swept through his house everything he had would be lost. So he stayed behind and pushed against the front door so that the onrushing water couldn’t get in. He held firm continuously from early morning to late afternoon, arms weakening, with water up to his chest, until the typhoon simply went away. He lost his bamboo porch, but his house, belongings and most of his furniture was saved.

“Jesus, you must be strong,” I said.

“No Simon, only as strong as you”.

“I couldn’t do it,” I said.

He laughed. “Simon, it was a great experience! The greatest experience of my life. Sometimes you have to look outside yourself and go beyond your own strength. And now I’m a better person”.

And with that, I couldn’t shake the image of Sebastian standing on the coast, repelling the forces of cultural imperialism with his own bare hands…if Yapese culture survives into the future, this man will have a lot to do with it.

And then we had a chew; I told Sebastian I wanted to try betel nut. He showed me how to prepare it and I chomped away. A bit bitter, but not too bad. But it’s true – it really turns your saliva red, and you generate buckets of the stuff; I was spitting every five minutes. And the effect? My mouth went numb, my angst about culture and politics dissipated, and I felt well and rested as I slipped into island life and saw things anew; I saw that everything was good.

Sebastian – thank you. All the very best for you and your people.

– From Simon.

Beachfront, Bechiyal Cultural Centre, Yap (photo: Simon Sellars).

+ Read the rest of the Micro Blog entries at the Sleepy Brain archives.

In the second half of 2004 I was travelling around northern Japan on assignment for Lonely Planet. I was also commissioned by LP to maintain a blog of my trip. The entire blog archive is here, but I’ve reproduced one of my favourite entries below.

‘My First Earthquake’ by Simon Sellars. Published online by Lonely Planet Publications, Sept 6 2004.

I’m writing this entry from the town of Aizu-Wakamatsu, the first leg of my Northern Honshu trip. Before Aizu-Wakamatsu, I had a hairy time of it. I was in Kobe, near Osaka, for a few days, visiting two Australian friends who had settled there. While they worked during the day, I would invariably head to Osaka, seduced by the bright lights and compressed atmosphere.

I’m fascinated by ’second city syndrome’, when a city feels it has something to prove as a result of living in the shadow of a bigger, swankier, richer place (usually the capital). Think of Melbourne versus Sydney, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Manchester (maybe) and London – the ’second city’ invariably develops a grittier, underground attitude, some kind of chemical reaction to the perceived pretentiousness of its attention-grabbing rival.

This seems to describe Osaka. For a start, the fashions are different: there seems less of the Gucci/Prada mania that appears to be gripping Tokyo and more of the innovation and hybrid designs that the capital used to embrace. Also, centuries ago, when the seat of Japanese government was moved from the Kansai area (containing Osaka) to Tokyo, Osakans developed a lingering suspicion. Certainly in sports, like baseball, the two cities share a fierce rivalry.

These attitudes filter down to microscopic levels: people stand to the right on escalators in Osaka, in Tokyo to the left. But perhaps the biggest difference I’ve found over my two trips to Japan is that Osakans seem to be more casual, a little more relaxed in their everyday dealings. Tokyo is a mad, bad sprawling beast; a metacity, a living, breathing organism consistently wrongfooting the unwary. It can be hard to relax in Tokyo.

Which brings me to the crux of this entry. On one of my sorties into Osaka, I was emailing in the Yahoo internet cafe near Umeda train station, when I felt the bench begin to buckle and sway. My computer was jumping up and down and the lights in the cafe and the adjacent Yodabashi department store were madly flickering on and off. I leapt off my seat and felt the ground shake beneath me. I was scared and disorientated. The boy next to me wasn’t Japanese and he didn’t speak English, but we looked at each other and came to a simultaneous conclusion: an earthquake was rocking our world.

Then the boy grabbed my shoulders and we both laughed, because we realised it was over – it lasted about a minute – and the earth hadn’t swallowed us up. But the detail I remember most is that it was only non-Japanese that were panicking. The locals were laughing and clowning around the whole way through, treating the tremor like an amusement-park ride. I’m not sure if this is because Japanese are used to earthquakes, or if it’s part of the Osaka thing. In any case, I soon calmed down.

When I returned to my friends’ apartment in Kobe, we swapped war stories – they felt it, too – and switched on the news: it was only a small tremor, around 5 on the richter scale. Later that night, as we sipped gin and watched a movie, it happened again, only this time much, much more intense. This time there were no relaxed Osakans to cool us out, just three very scared Aussies.

Do you remember those old nuclear propaganda films from the ’50s? They told people to duck under a table in case of nuclear attack and that’s what we did, instinctively. But it seemed ridiculous – how the hell could a table save us? – so we bolted for the door. We were on the third floor, and when we got outside we saw the concrete-and-steel balcony dipping and swaying like a flimsy hammock in the wind. What to do? The building seemed about to collapse and we could either run for the street and risk the building falling on us, get back under the table, or die right there on the balcony. The building was shaking so much my vision was blurred and the concrete surface beneath my feet felt spongy…and then, nothing. But I couldn’t be sure it was over because my vision was still darting all over the place. I tried to light a smoke and my hands shook so much it was impossible to do so.

We turned on the TV to find tsunami tidal wave warnings on every channel. People were being evacuated from the southeast coast to higher ground as a result of waves from the quake, which this time measured 8 on the scale. Fortunately the epicenter was in the ocean, away from civilisation – no one died, but there were a few minor injuries. The rest of the night was spent lying in bed wide awake. The only other experience I can compare this to was during a major car accident I suffered a few years back. Like then, I felt like I’d broken through some veil of reality. All my senses were hyperaware, as though I was looking at white light and I felt disembodied, shot through with adrenaline.

Kobe was the site of the massive earthquake in 1995 that levelled a large chunk of the city and killed 5000 – my friends’ residential area was precisely where most of the damage occurred. I had to leave soon after, but not before I made them promise to seek guidelines for proper evacuation procedure. Who knows when Kobe might erupt with full fury again? Like the boy in the internet cafe, we all understood we’d shared a unique moment. Imagine feeling vulnerable, like a baby, knowing that everything you’d learnt in your life was totally useless in the face of the earth’s fury.

But that was then. Now, the smalltown delights of Aizu-Wakamatsu – samurai castles, temples – beckon, and with them a chance to forget about big cities and earthquakes.