To balance - a good book

A long time ago, in uni, or perhaps even the end of high school, I remember a very short friend of mine (not that her height has anything to do with this...) spending a very long time (but that was neat!) reading a very thick book...

I think it may have been part of our English curriculum as my recollections of the film are all stop start and broken images which usually indicates that the film was "studied" (ie: mercilessly destroyed of any chance to be appreciated by mad English teacher with a remote). The only part I really remembered from the film (which may actually indicate that even WORSE than "stop-starting" the teacher only let us watch "segments"...god how that used to irritate me!). I can't imagine...oh, forgot to say the part. It was the beginning, where the girl is forced to marry/sleep with someone she doesn't want to and she runs away.

Anyway, I can't imagine that it was on the school reading list. I would have read it as I did not start skipping the reading of books until uni - ironically when I started my English literature degree, so outcome achieved by the uni!

Anyway, Katherine carried this book around for so long that it is forever associated in my mind, with her. A while back I found it on special for a few dollars and I bought it...but despite being a confessed bookworm/nerd/avid reader, it has sat on my shelf for well over a year. It is just so frikken THICK!

However, all this talk of teaching English overseas and possibly going to Asia reminded me of the book. Plus I am trying to cut down on my consumption of murders and crime shows, which is all that seems to be on TV at the moment (I am watching City Homicide, Bones, The Strip, Taggart, Rebus, The Bill, Midsomer Murders (which I swore I'd never watch!) and probably some others I can't even recall...sad, sad, sad!). The only show outside this genre is Shameless, which although possibly the most brilliant show ever made, is pretty much all about crime (drugs, prostitution, underage drinking, child neglect, welfare fraud...)

So I read it and it is brilliant. An amazing book - why did I not read it before? Although I am glad I did not as I may not have been as receptive to learning about Chinese culture as I am now that it is a possible home for us next year. It is so insightful into the Communist regime that I understand why it was on our English reading list (in fact I can feel the English teacher rising up inside of me shouting "YES! Put that one on the list!" and I even had a few scary moments of imaging activities to convey the lessons in the book to students...argh!)

The book was a bit of an epiphany to me. If I can speak in the language of my CHC lecturers, it produced a paradigm shift, altered my worldview. It made me feel like a lazy fat Australian slob and I admit that when I see people who have Asian features in the street or the shops (not so common in Noobah but I do get out of this town sometimes!) I can feel myself perceiving them in an entirely different way. I don't want to sound like Tamara but I really was a bit like her in terms of thinking about Asia and travel in that region. Blind, ignorant and awfully condescending. My heritage is in Europe and since travelling there my future is there also, but I that is no excuse for being ignorant of the rest of the world. I think because of the vast numbers of people living in the Asian regions, as well as (what I think is) dehumanisation of them in our media (ie: desensitising us: thousands die in an earthquake in Thailand and it is glossed over UNLESS there happens to be a 'westerner' in the rubble).

I don't want to speak too soon as I don't actually have a job lined up yet, but it is feeling like deciding to go to Asia next year was a good decision, or even the 'right road for us to be on' if you want to get all freaky like that.

Books that are not worth reading

FYI - so you do not have to suffer as I have:

'Bad Karma' by Tamara Sheward.

UGH.

She deserves bad karma. One of the most irritating books of all time. I should have known by the awful prologue but her ignorance was so profound I foolishly read on, thinking that at any moment I would turn the page and enjoy her downfall and finally her epiphany (ie: when she wakes up and realises what a dopey, annoying, arrogant, self-absorbed ignoramus she really is).

Sadly, I am now at page 281, desperately trying to find the strength to finish the bloody thing so I can destroy it (oh, how I wish. Sadly it is a library copy and I have to return it in 'good as' condition. Actually it is worth the $20 fine to burn the bloody thing...)

For the first couple of months of our travels in the UK we were so green it is embarrassing even to ponder the memories. A few pub humiliations, a tour guide who put us in our place and a local job with local mates soon set us straight. Naturally we continued to make cultural errors (like the time I got into an argument trying to assert that nobody in Scotland had a washing line because it rained too much while out the window behind me was a load of washing flapping...ON A LINE) but we did assume some AND I am proud to say it was not long before we stopped comparing everything to Australia and (for myself at least) I can safely say I soon preferred the way things were in Scotland and couldn't give a rats about the fact they wash their dishes in a plastic tub instead of the sink, put vinegar on their chips and have rain that blows sideways for 300 days of the year...

I suppose we were fortunate that we were a) not in London and b) not surrounded by other Australians. It gave us a chance to lose our cultural arrogance and "go native".

This became apparent while we were working under the table in Kyleakin where busloads of Antipodeans, fresh from their 2 year stint in Earl's Court and doing the obligatory tour of the rest of the British Isles before returning home to 'real life' in Australia, would unload each night at sunset. It was reinforced a year later when my sister and I unwittingly booked seats on a bus tour of Ireland with 30 of the bastards...but that's for another time.

Back to Tamara: she is probably worse than the above, because she recognises that these obnoxious twits exist, but then goes on to behave in much the same way: moaning about local customs and culture, refusing to eat different food, complaining about everyone they meet, smoking in totally inappropriate places. And the ADJECTIVES. God, she just goes on and on and on and on and on and on...ARGH. It makes my brain hurt trying to read. And it is the WORST kind of writing - you can tell what she is writing is simply not true.

I had to go online the other night simply to google "Tamara Sheward = crap writer" and make sure that SOMEBODY out there agreed with me. My sister called me a cybernerd but boy it felt good to see that others felt the same way, and here are a few who agree with me:

http://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/0108/books.html

http://audreyapple.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html

and here is Audrey again (I think) keeping up the good fight:

http://battlecat.net/2006/12/08/a-review-of-cloud-atlas/

There was another very inspiring negative review but damn it, I can't find it.

I think it was the cultural insensitivity that really got me. I was continually thinking: who the hell does this moron think she is??

Oh yes, found it: EXCELLENT review:

http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/printed-books/bad-karma-confessions-of-a-reckless-traveller-in-south-east-asia-tamara-sheward/1051527/

Have to go and supervise some playdough squishing, but if you have had the misfortune to read this book, please use the links above to help you vent some of your rage.