opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr

You know, I don’t exactly know why my uncle George migrated from a village in Cyprus to Sale, Victoria in 1947, to work as a carpenter in the post-war boom. I can pretty much guess though: family with seven kids, of which he was the eldest; in economic hardship; limited opportunities for work; and the streets in Australia were supposed to be paved with gold.

It was likely the same for my uncle Chris, who joined George in Tasmania. Chris had book learning as an engineer, but he settled into retail like his brother.

It wasn’t the same for my father. My father had a series of jobs in Cyprus: nurse, telegraphist, greengrocer. I don’t think he needed to leave. But with two siblings already overseas, he decided it was meet that the whole family join them. He moved out of family loyalty. He even paid for the whole family to get their medical testing done in Beirut.

It didn’t pan out that way.

• Andrew followed my father, stayed, and did retail too; he eventually moved to Melbourne. When we came back from Greece, dad decided we’d stay in Melbourne too after all.
• Dora followed my father, couldn’t find anyone to marry, and went back. (My father delayed marrying out of the traditional obligation to see that his unmarried sister was settled.)
• Helen was already married, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
• Chris left Tasmania, and returned with his family to his wife’s home town in Greece.
• My grandparents decided to stay in Cyprus at the last minute, and they kept their youngest, Savvas, with them.

So much for my father.

My aunt Steffie, Chris’ wife, was from a village in Eastern Crete. My father waited to marry off Dora, and gave up waiting when he was 35. (Dora, God rest her, married a year later. But that’s another story.) Just as Dora couldn’t find a suitable Greek to marry in Tasmania, my dad didn’t either.

So he put out word to Chris, now back in Crete with Steffie, whether he might know of any eligible partners.

My mother was from the same village as Steffie. Her family was not quite as poor as my father’s, but as a daughter she still got the short end of the stick. She did not want to be stuck in the village, and she rejected all local suitors. She was, therefore, an old maid by 1970 Cretan rural standards (at 25).

Steffie approached her. She said, why not. Her father chaperoned her to Tasmania, to make sure my dad was a suitable match. And she went straight to work in the fish and chips shop.

A year later, I was born.

Three answers.

When I left for the States in ’99, I did a farewell tour of my friends in Melbourne. One of the last was Russian Maria. (That’s what I called her behind her back, to differentiate her from my friend Croatian Marija, or my sister’s friend Greek Maria.)

(Maria was in fact from Kharkov, but she spoke Russian, so get off my back already. For those stalking my every word, she was Ekaterina’s best friend.)

It was a surprisingly emotive meeting. Then again, the Russians are a surprisingly emotive people. I tried to defuse it, by suggesting we make a clean cut at the end.

And Russian Maria turned, and went home, and did not look back once.

And I smiled.

I farewelled my home city of Melbourne one last time, by driving my trusty venerable old Datsun 120Y (just classed unroadworthy by the Victoria police) down to the intersection of Swanston and Flinders St, the gateway of the city. And I gazed out my window at the twin guardians of the gateway of my city, St Paul’s Cathedral, and Flinders St station.

And smiled.

As I told Russian Maria, the Turks have it right when it comes to farewells. Güle güle. “Smiling, smiling”.

I went to the States. I came back. The linguists did not give me a job; they were happy to string me along as a casual, but they had zero interest in any European languages I might find interesting.

So I dusted off my shoes, and spent three very happy years doing IT support in the Dept of European languages. And having as little as possible to do with the linguists who broke my heart.

The job was an indulgence and a luxury, and it couldn’t last. It didn’t; and just as it was going to become untenable, I got a better offer. Which is the career path I’ve followed this decade since.

I knew there was going to be a farewell function in the School of Languages and Linguistics. And I wrote a speech.

A scathing speech. A spiteful speech. A speech that summed up all the disappointment and disillusionment I’d had. A speech where I’d finally tell the linguists what I thought of them.

I have a dry run of the speech to my closest buddies, two Germans and an Italian. They were impressed. They had the erudition to appreciate my closing, straight out of Socrates’ Apologia:

And so, men of Athens, we go our separate ways. I to die, and you to live. And which of us ends up better off, only the Gods know.

The appointed day came. And I was dragged out of my office by a smiling French prof I’d known for a decade.

I looked around me in the meeting room; and all around me were the faces of people who were happy to see me. People who wished me well. People I’d come to think of as my family.

And mercifully, not a linguist among them.

One of the Germans sidled up to me.

“Aren’t you glad you wrote that speech?”

“… Yeah.”

“And aren’t you glad you didn’t have to use it?”

And damn me, if I didn’t smile.

My Russian is rudimentary.

I was a PhD student. There was another PhD student, from Moscow. She was a single mum. She did not want any unwelcome attention, so she went with the cover story that she was married, and the fella was back in Moscow.

I did IT oddjobs in the department. In fact, it got to the stage where I’d avoid going in to the department, because the minute I’d walk in the door, every PhD student in the building would jump on me with their IT problems.

But I liked Ekaterina. So, in between banter in bad Russian and talk of literature and morphology, I found myself repairing her laptop.

At one stage, I needed a mouse for her laptop. So I stormed out from the sideroom I was at, and exclaimed:

—Катя! Где твой муж?

Excellent bit of triangulation there, I thought. Mūs, μύς, mouse: I’d heard the word muž somewhere in Russian, that must be the Russian word for mouse.

Ekaterina looked startled, and stared at me:

—Excuse me?

—Где твой муж?

Ekaterina stared at me some more.

—I think… that is something of a personal question.

I looked at her bewildered.

—… I’m just asking where your mouse is. What do you mean, personal?

Katia did a double take, and started guffawing.

And guffawed some more.

No, muž is not Russian for “mouse”.

It is, however, Russian for “husband”.

A few months later, Katia said that she doesn’t want to play games with her friends, and no, there was no husband.

No, nothing happened. But at least her laptop got fixed!

Permit me, Quorans, to introduce an Antipodean personality into this thread of woe.

Permit me also to try and comprehend why we have this annoyance for no (or least no rational) reason.

I mean, if you’re not from Australia, this chap looks unexceptional, doesn’t he?

Raffishly unkempt, perhaps. Glasses; he could be studious! A computer in the background: might he be in IT? On a mobile phone: must be always on the go. Looks to be in his fifties: surely not an age bracket anyone can take offence to.

OK. Australians, don’t say anything. That’s my job, it’s my answer.

So. Let me pitch you a story.

A young carpenter by the name of S. Caminetti, travelling the country, from sheep station to dockland, settles down in his native Sydney, marries and establishes a successful building business. It is the Australian property boom, and business is good.

He is affable and charming, with all those virtues Australians appreciate in their tradespeople—those they call sparkies (electricians) and chippies (carpenters) and brickies (bricklayers) and dunny divers (plumbers). And somehow, ten years into his successful building business, he ends up doing building segments, during a lifestyle show on Australian TV.

He’s a hit. The public loves him. He gets a series of TV shows that rotate around building and renovations (now an Australian craze). He gets sponsorships from sundry building-related enterprises. He refuses to let his unlikely fame get to him: in fact, he famously makes a bottle opener out of his Logie Award (the Australian counterpart to the Emmy).

Why on earth, Nick Nicholas, you horrible heartless inner-city effete snob, would you despise such a man? Why would you put your hands over your ears and demand that S. Caminetti vacate your sight, whenever you flick past a show with his whimsical stylings?

Mm?

Perhaps these images can begin to convey why:

Scott Fricking Cam. Take your blokey bloke hijinks, Scott Cam, and your shit-eating grin, and your bogan tradie antics, and your endless succession of Ocker reno reality shows that all look the same, and your one-man bolstering up of an entire TV network, and your smug condescension, and your banter with your irritating reno reality show contestants, and have I mentioned that god. damn. shit. eating. grin; and get out of my sight.

NOW!

Fuck me. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to hate Sydney already.

EDIT: I realise, in the torrent of my rage, that I forgot to explain why we hate these people.

As you can see from the images: it’s the overexposure. And the bombardment of media telling you you must. love. this. person.

No, pilgrim. No I must not.