Sunday 27th
January
The wedding was so beautiful – full of love, laughter, sensational
food, copious wine. A splendid and
wonderful bride and groom, lots of friends and family old and new – what more
could we want?
(Oh- a photo booth – what fun was that! I got the card of the people who provided it,
Duane and Christine, in case you want one for your next festive occasion –
guaranteed to keep people in fits of laughter.
Nicola and Gus now have an album full of cheery photos and messages,
with their nearest and dearest posing and sometimes shrieking in a variety of
silly hats and moustaches.
1300 303 700
if you want to enquire about this possibility for a forthcoming Big
Event.)
Sunday 27th January
Can there be more MONAFOMA, I
hear you cry? Why yes! Pete and I (finally) got into Faux Mo, the
after-party in Bidencopes Lane. It was indeed along the lines of if
you build it they will come. Bidencopes Lane isn’t all that attractive,
in daylight. It is full of lurid graffiti murals and back doors.
But done up for a Faux Mo party it was quite spectacular, with a disco feel –
lights, DJs, music, flame-grilled hot dogs.
Pete and I got a drink and sat
on a handy comfy couch and watched the flame-grilling with great
interest. This stall is owned by a father-and-daughter combo, very handy
with the blow-torches and speedy at assembling what looked like delicious
hamburgers. I watched with some alarm as Kylie Quon sauntered over to
look – the father-and-daughter combo weren’t in the least fazed but I would
have trembled in my boots of Kylie Quon, chef par excellence, came to
watch me cook!
We were actually waiting to get
into the downstairs area, fiercely closed off by a team of security
guards. We asked one of them what was down there, and the answer was, We
have no idea. Good strategy; keep it mysterious! When we finally
did get down there, what did we see?? Well nothing much at all… Several
large rooms, one of which was the old Tatler cinema. This was only
relevant to a few of us; Pete and I were amongst the very oldest people there
by several decades, the only ones likely to remember the Tatler. The
rooms filled up with a bright, cheery crowd of hipsters, some of whom were
wearing extraordinary outfits:
•
tight shorts, topknots, tight home-knitted jumpers with animal designs
(boys)
•
50s dresses and flowery hats (girls)
Nobody seemed to mind the
presence of a few oldfarts so we wandered around and then found another comfy
couch, where we sat, bemused but happy, for a few hours. There were
random happens – a disco in the Tatler room, a small below-ground dance floor
where the projector screens must once have lurked, a random small Asian woman
playing an obscure and very quiet instrument and then singing, soprano and very
loudly, a strange Asian song.
When we left the whole laneway
was heaving with happycampers, dancing – was this really Hobart, on a Sunday
night??
India #76
Ali Baba, who Pete
met by chance in a plumbing shop. Yes indeed, this was his New Best
Friend’s name. … Should have been some sort of clue… We had been invited
for dinner at seven, so, being punctual Australians there we were, delivered to
the designated address by a slightly silent Raj. Hmmm. Were we at a warm
and welcoming Ali Babar house? No indeed…we were at a jewellery shop…with
our three bottles of cold Kingfisher. We rolled our eyes at one another
and entered, a bit reluctantly. Pete, ever the optimist, said that this
might be the perfect opportunity for me to buy a gold bracelet. It had
been one of my aims, while in India, to buy one thing made out of gaudy Indian
22 carat gold, and I had been singularly unsuccessful thus far in getting
within cooee of real gold in a real jeweller’s shop.
Ali wasn’t there.
Yet. His offsider, known as Smile Ali – yes he did smile ALL the time; he
was a very annoying man – stayed back to entertain us while we waited and
WAITED for Ali Babar. He brought us glasses so we could drink our rapidly
heating Kingfisher and there we sat, surrounded by jewels and faced with a huge
smile and a fairly unpleasant line of conversation. Smile Ali was a
really sleazy bloke, with, as I said, a line of conversation – hot chickybabes,
dubious nightclubs – which made me very uncomfortable. Pete just sat,
stoically polite but not smiling back much at Smile Ali. We managed to
interrupt the flow for a brief moment – did they have any gold bracelets in
this shop? Well yes – and here is one just perfect for the Little Lady.
And yes indeed it was. I have never been one to covet jewellery – after
all whatever would have been the point?? – but this was truly gorgeous. I
gasped and stretched my eyes and wanted it very badly. It was made of
flat links of gaudy gold interspersed with white gold, just beautiful. OK
how much?? Well, said Smile Ali, expansively, it is really very
cheap. Only 1500. Pete and I exchanged cautious looks – this was
very cheap, about $50. Surprisingly astoundingly cheap. No haggling
needed; he said that he would buy it for me straight up. We chatted away
about it for quite some time – was the clasp strong enough etc etc – and then
it dawned on us – NOT 1500 rupees, 1500 US DOLLARS. Gasp once
again. I dropped it like a hot potato, although my eyes still slid covetously
towards the little pouch I knew it was resting in… But no, I could never
justify spending that much on one single bracelet, too silly for words.
And where was Ali
Babar? Why off at a temple, praying, ofcourse! Licking his chops at
the thought of his Australian juicy prey more likely, and waiting for us to be
softened up with Smile Ali-induced boredom and rapidly warming
Kingfisher. Finally in he came, wreathed in smiles and exuding
bonhomie. Would we like to come into his inner sanctum and listen to him
talk talk talk for another three quarters of an hour…I was very bored; Pete was
very polite. Out came a big portfolio of Ali Babar’s artwork – hundreds
of exquisite miniature paintings, with goldleaf, each painted by his own fair
hand, and each taking at least a week to complete. Well I don’t think
so…and yes they were excessively cheap, only US$100 or thereabouts each; why
didn’t I buy a dozen? I murmured soothingly, “Yes very beautiful, oh how
lovely, aren’t you clever, but no thank you, not even now you are showing me
Kama Sutra ones, no thank you very much, very lovely, but NO.” And then
FINALLY he came to the moneyshot. He lives six months of the year in
Sydney, and his Australian wife Lea would love to talk to us on the phone.
We protested – it would have been about 2am in NSW, but no he said she would
LOVE to talk to us, his new bestfriends. She was very cheery, and very
wide-awake for 2am. Hmmm…. I asked her a few pertinent questions, eg,
“Where do your children go to school?” “Locally,” she said,
unhelpfully. When I had finished talking to Lea, I said, casually, to
Ali, “So where do your children go to school, in Sydney?” “Umm…The
Victorian Something or Another.” Yes ofcourse, all schools in New South
Wales are called the Victorian Something or Another!! By now I was
getting tired, hungry, grumpy. I was ready to get to my feet and say,
“Well I’m off! Pete, have fun with Ali Babar and Smile Ali!!” Poor
Pete, he was being more polite and forbearing than me…
Ali must have
decided it was time for the Big Pitch. Almost casually, he started out
with saying that, as we were now such Great Friends, would we like to help him
out? He has two jewellery shops in Sydney and has trouble getting jewels
out of India and into Australia, there is a limit to how much he can bring into
the country each trip. Maybe I would like to wear a ruby necklace,
carry one in my bag, ditto with bracelets, and Pete could do the same.
Well yes Pete would look very lovely bedecked in rubies and emeralds… When we
got back to Tasmania, Ali would drive down to Hobart in his BMW and pick up the
jewels. We would be rewarded with $10,000 each. Did he think we
were totally stupid or what??? I just sat back and watched Ali with a
jaundiced eye; Pete asked, in polite tones, how Ali was going to guarantee that
we wouldn’t just scarper with the jewels. “Well no problem, my
friend! If you just give me your passport and your credit cards, I will
photocopy them, and if there is a problem I can recoup the money.” He had
a whole folder full of testimonials from delighted people all over the world
who had helped him out in this precise way; we would be very foolish to miss
out on the opportunity. By this stage – I am a bit slow – I had recognised
that we were in the midst of The Jewellery Scam. I had read about it in
several places in Lonely Planet. What happens is that the poor
unsuspecting people who decide to help out Ali Babar and his kin get back to
their country of origin only to find that their credit cards have been cleared
out of quite a lot of money. When they go to sell the jewellery to recoup
the money, the jewels, ofcourse are worth very little. Pete hadn’t read
these pages in Lonely Planet, but he was not going to be conned, not at all.
He thanked Ali for the wonderful opportunity, and said, “We’re not really
interested. We don’t need $20,000 that badly. But we are hungry,
and would like some dinner.”
Ali did in fact cough up for a
meal. He took us to a cheap and cheerful restaurant. I am sure that
if we had given him our credit card details we would have been indulging in
Fine Dining… He also paid for Raj to eat with us, which made me happy.
Ali didn’t really talk to us much during the meal, which was a blessing.
But before we left, he told us that the offer was open, that we could even get
in touch with him from Udaipor, our next port of call, and he would rush some
jewels down to us. When Raj drove us back to our hotel, we asked how he
knew Ali. He told us that Ali is a famous man in the district; famous for
being married to an Australian woman, and for having (dodgily) made a lot of
money. “But,” he said, darkly, “I would never have taken you to his shop,
if it had been up to me.”
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