Meth: a Ticking Timebomb Gone Viral

Lost in Translation

For someone who hates war, I sure do love war movies...and in particular, movies about the Vietnam War. I was so close to being eligible for the draft that it must have affected my psyche. I knew some older guys who had served in Vietnam, for whom I had so much admiration. The problem was that none of them ever spoke of their time there, and out of respect, I never asked about it. The only option I had to satisfy my morbid, yet understandable curiosity, was to gain insight into the horrors experienced by the soldiers in the jungles of SE Asia, in the relative safety of my lounge room.

One of my favourite movies about the conflict is Stanley Kubrick's awesome 1987 film, Full Metal Jacket...and today, I was treated to a little piece of history as my girlfriend, who has never seen the flick, danced candidly in front of me wearing a tiny denim mini skirt. And as she moved, I coached her to repeat the lines from Papillon Soo's character in the movie, "Me so horney...me love you long time." Have mentioned how happy I am.

At my old house, the walls were so thin I could hear the conversations between my neighbour, who is Danish, and his Thai girlfriend...and I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying. They spoke their own language...a cross between English, Danish and Thai, and when Nada first arrived, she instantly noticed that my neighbour's girlfriend was from the south. There are around seven different dialects spoken in Thailand, plus thousands of Pigeon English languages, specific to each Farang/Thai couple and where they are from.

Nada and I have yet to develop our own 'speak', but I'm having a lot of fun hearing her version of English. There are certain letters she has trouble pronouncing. The letter L, for instance, is almost impossible for her to say, and comes out as an R. I will quote her directly here. "What you want for runch (my PC is going haywire here)...and the R rolls off her tongue many times. When Nada refers to a colour, it goes like this..."Colour yellow." Or, "Colour black (and there's no point explaining to her that black is not a colour). More of her words crack me up than I can remember, and if you've ever seen Team America: World Police, imagine their version of Kim Jong Un (only way cuter) and that's my girlfriend.

At night, before Nada takes her shower (usually number three for the day), is my favourite time of day because it's time for her exercises. She knows all too well about my underwear fetish, and is so eager to please that she strips down to her girly whites, I assume a strategic position just behind her and watch as she goes through her paces. Squats and lunges are some of her best movements...and to finish off her session, she has one of those old rollers with handles attached that were a thing back in the 80s.

Music is another favourite subject because of the fact that Nada has never heard of any bands from the West. Tonight, I played the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Pink Floyd, and she was clueless. But then, to my surprise, she pretended to have a microphone in her hand and without accompaniment, sang a pretty good rendition of Credence Clearwater Revival's hit song, Have You Ever Seen the Rain...which she tells me were the first words of English she learned as a child.

So to celebrate finding some music we both knew, I played the song and we did a duet...imaginary mics in hand. Nada wiggled her hips in time with the music, and still wearing that gorgeous little denim mini (that I insisted she keep wearing all day) we had one of the best nights of our lives.

Did I mention how happy I am?