So it’s that time of year again – the end of it.

My body’s in decline as we inch toward the shank of the party season and the rejuvenation that January promises. Just one more day, just one more day. This December has been particularly taxing. After spending last December in the sunny clime of an Australian summer, I’m back in Europe, and the cold, dark top of it to boot.

The shortest day of the year (December 21st-ish) in Helsinki has just passed – a day when the sun poked it’s head up at about 10.30, lazily arced across the horizon for a few hours and disappeared sometime just before 3. It’s playing havoc with my sleep patterns. Some nights I’m still racking up eleven hours. I’m yet to determine whether it’s a good or bad thing. I’m just praying that come June, there’s not some sort of weird calender-based compensation which sees me having to get by on 3 hours a night!

So on a personal note 2008 was a bit of a hoot – it started off with a mad, visa-renewing dash with Heidi to China, Hong Kong and Macau and ended with a freighter trip from Australia to Italy (past our friendly machine-gun totting, tanker stealing, Somalian friends in the Gulf of Aden – I slept pretty well in the Red Sea after that little episode, just let me tell ya) and an overland jaunt via Eastern Europe to Finland. All good fun, though I think on the travel side things have got to slow down a touch in ‘09. Just like Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, I’m getting too old for this shit.

So, 2009 huh. We should be brimming with optimism right? I was optimistic this time last year and now look what’s happened! World markets in free-fall, big business bailouts (I’m crap at business too, where’s my billions?), violence on the streets of Lhasa, Mumbai in flames, cyclones in Burma and earthquakes in Sichuan. As I type, Gaza is being bombed back to the Stone Age and over in Iraq, the war that ended back in ‘03 mysteriously rolls on.

But there’s been some positives – our man Obama heading for the big house (yes he can), that li’l prick Johny Howard finally ousted from power down under (ok, technically that was December 2006 but for the sake of flow) and small indications that, following some minor hiccups, David and Victoria Beckham have finally settled into the LA lifestyle. You little ripper!

So on to 2009. Well for starters, it’s going to be shorter than 2008 by a whole second – a leap-second – but that’s about as far as I’m willing to take it on the prophecy front. As for brash predictions on a world scale, I’m steering well clear. Based on years past, I got no idea. But it can’t be a step backwards from ‘08, can it? I’ll start with a touch of optimism again and we can take it from there.

Whatever happens, I wish you all a happy new year for 2009 and hope you’ll drop by from time to time, sign up to my feed, leave a comment or 2 and help me get this Astray Buffet thing off the ground.

Remember, party hard but respect the fish!

Cartwright P. Moocjheenie

The Mooc has the breath of an angel and can move sideways quicker than you. He is at once talkative and shy, with a razor wit and bayonet smile. Men are known to contemplate gayness upon catching  his scent – a sort of wasabi infused honey. His skin glows like a commercial. Neither tall nor short (4 foot 23 on the old scale) he’s both chiseled and supple in equal measures. As an interesting side note, Scott Baio once commented on his feet.

A youthful Mooc battled Bill Cosby – though Bill was young and impressive then – and would have had him too if the law of the day had allowed his tactic.

At a not-so-recent ceremony he employed a tuxedo so powerful and ingratiating that he received an on-the-spot lifetime achievement award. All this at the age of 26 and with little or no achievement to speak of. That was, that is, the Mooc. Enigmatic, sure, phlegmatic, yeah why not, passionate, without doubt, egotistic, fuck off!

The tux aside, clothes and the Mooc have enjoyed an on again, off again relationship. He wears them with aplomb when he does and swings majestically when he does not.

Pleasantries are not required in his presence. He’ll force you down if you persist and drag you if he feels the need. Once at a rally for those in need he gave a speech so inspiring, 17 died and 12 were injured. On another occasion he argued that colour didn’t exist. He won that! He wins most.

1. she’s coming up, so you better get the party started.
2. she’s a rock star, she’s got her rock moves.
3. she can fit your whole house in her swimming pool.
4. she can’t stay on your morphine, ’cause it’s making her itch.

I don’t know what it is about meetings but if you contribute to their setting up and provide one or two insightful comments, middle management offers generally tend to flood in. Meetings and producing reports.

I produced a report on the frequency of meetings, which concluded that, “meetings are good”. This report was then discussed at an executive management meeting and the findings relayed through our director at our section meeting. It appears Management agreed with my findings adding the word “very”. “Very meetings are good”.

Another meeting was held to look at the placement of the word “very” in my initial statement and it was decided by a majority (eight votes to five) that the statement should read “Meetings are very good”.

I now have a car space in the buildings basement, my gross annual salary has increased by $12,000 and the Chief Executive Officer chatted about the intricacies of Thai cooking with me at the urinal on Tuesday afternoon – I stood there nodding intelligently, offering timely remarks and praying for my stream to begin – all due to that single report.

I’m currently working on another.

Every once in a while I get an overwhelming desire to get my life in order. At most, these phases last a week and generally they’re very productive periods that set me up for the protracted lazy periods in between.

I begin with lists. Plenty of lists. I’ll resurrect my backpack account, I’ll update online calendars, spreadsheets sprout like newly sown lawn, bills get paid and I’ll start writing letters and emails with an almost evangelical zeal.

This last week has been just such a week. It was while writing a particularly lengthy letter to my friends (don’t slip on the sarcasm) at Paypal that I recalled a favourite book that I haven’t come across in a while.

I beg you all to read, “The Timewaster Letters” by Robin Cooper (aka Robert Popper) who corresponds with all manner of organisations requesting or suggesting the bizarre, the obscure and the downright dubious.

The comedic genius lies not only in Robert’s letters but in the replies he receives. It’s a simple idea, executed brilliantly and something only a Brit could ever hope to get away with.

Take a peek at a letter or two online and then go on over to Amazon and grab yourself a copy. I got a list to get back to.

So I’m back in Helsinki. What can I say, I like the place. Christmas always seems more natural when you’re inadvertently gliding on black ice or dodging slabs of melting snow that had grown bored of life on the rooftops. Glögi is a fine, fine thing and if you believe the rumours, even Santa Claus hails from these parts. If it’s good enough for the fat man, its good enough for me.

So Saturday just gone was Finnish Independence Day, in itself no bad thing. But instead of being celebrated like any of the other 2,500+ national Finnish celebrations – where you might light three candles and spin twice, balance a slew of berries on one shoulder or answer the door to a torrent of song from young girls in pinafores – Finnish Independence Day sets aside a very special form of torture.

Yes, at 7pm sharp on the 6th December, life as we know it – in Helsinki at least – takes a drastic turn for the worse. For the next three hours any Finn of any note ever forms a black tie line-up to meet and greet the President. And I’m talking any Finn, of any note, ever! Weather girls, lowly politicos, pop idol contestants, Eurovision also-rans, the list is long and nauseating. The action repetitive and self-indulgent.

And far from presenting itself as a sound reason to leave the house or at the very least, change the channel, the majority of Finns I know sit glued to this spectacle. They actually look forward to it and plan little events around it.

Still, you can leave the room, I hear you cry! Normally, without question, but on this occasion I was at one of these little events – a house-warming – where all the action took place in a tight-knit semi-circle around the tele. I was doomed to one hundred and eighty minutes of hellish teev, that is, until I was introduced to the Criminally Bad Elf.

The Criminally Bad Elf was a not a kleptomaniacal escapee from Santa’s Grotto as the name implies, but rather a British barleywine weighing in a hefty 10.5% alcoholic volume. And after a pint of it’s berry flavoured loveliness I could have been the President for all I knew.

So my advice to you when next you’re confronted with a night of local customs that you’d rather flee than endure, invite the Elf and get updates from a friend the following day. It worked for me.

This from The Melbourne Age odd spot, Saturday November 22nd 2008:

“Opinion is split over artistic merit in a Wolverhampton gallery in England after 14 tonnes of coal was piled up as an exhibit by artists Matthew Cornford and David Cross to highlight fuel costs and climate change. Paying customer Lee Rue, 31, said: ‘That’s not art, it’s a pile of coal.’”

Touché Lee.

The day is hellish. Its as muggy as Hades with a hulking swell and a vertical driving rain that’s kept everyone off deck. I’m told – perhaps presumptuously – that we’ll probably be barging the bilge through the thwacker before any respite from the starboard for neigh on six. Whatever the fuck that means. By my reckoning we’re still making decent time though, pushing on through open water aided by a 45 knot sou-wester toward Sulat Sunda – the passage of sea that separates the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra.

The third officer in charge – a Filipino by the name of Raul – is at the wheel on the bridge keeping an eye on the huge radar screen that plots the course of our vessel – the 65,000 ton freighter, Alejandro Rickmars out of Liberia. He talks fondly of his girl back in Cebu, Marie, a four foot seven chiropodist with bucked teeth. Beaming, he hands me a tattered photo from his wallet. I recoil in fright at the sight of her, but disguise it as a swell-induced side step. Singapore is the last stop on his current contract. From there its a night in a cheap hotel and double prop jump across the Strait and back to her loving arms. Part of me envies the little fucker.

“That’s not right” says Raul with a troubled tone. I’m thinking the exact same thing. She’s got some big ass teeth, but wisely I keep this observation to myself. With a few clicks of a mouse he zooms in on an area of the radar to the stern of our vessel, before turning a ghostly pale. “P..P..Pirates” he stutters, then at once grabs for the phone.

Without warning it begins. With a gigantic crack from above, a rocket propelled grenade takes out our communications tower and with it, any chance of rescue. A secondary blast destroys the port side of the bridge as a chunk of searing, hardened steel rips a crater in Raul’s chest the size of an eighties mobile phone. Lying in a lake of his own blood he seems more confused than in pain. With his last breath he looks up at me almost pleadingly before gently placing the photo of Marie into the hole in his chest. Its touching but gross. I do a little sick in my mouth. There’s nothing I can do for him now. The ship’s cat Mrs. Twinkles has already taken off with the remains of his heart. That crazy little kitten.

For a moment everything swims before my eyes, a dizziness consumes me and there’s a ringing in my ears. Then, like a light being switched on, my training kicks in. Its as quick as that. I steady myself on the chart table and take four deep breaths. Already I’m formulating a plan and part one is to find some mouthwash.

Part of me knew this day would come. I’d spent the last 20 years running. Occasionally even now I’d wake smeared in makeup, naked but for a pair of ladies cotton briefs tied around my head, gibbering in Hindi, holding a carving knife to the neighbours cat’s throat. Things had to change. This will end today. This must end today.

I make like a panther for the cook’s pantry on B deck. There really is no need to be on all fours and it slows me down – a lot – but this is who I must be now. Now until this is over. A panther or perhaps a leopard. No, let’s go with a panther. I like panthers.

To the untrained eye the cook’s pantry is a cornucopia of foreign fare and kitchenware but to me its so much more! I mentally begin to take stock of my assets before making out whispered voices in the hallway, then kitchen. At once I recognise the language, Bhasa. “Indonesians”, I scrawl in raspberry jam with a toothpick on the wall followed by the number “III”.

I already know their modus operandi. They’d have been tipped off by dock workers, probably in Jakarta as to which of our containers held the most costly yet compact booty. They’d be selective and make a beeline straight for the three or four containers out of the three thousand we were toting. The numbers ruled out coincidence. The cache? Probably New Zealand housewife porn or the finest Fijian whisky. The victim? Doubtless a big multinational insurance company. And that’s what broke my heart, what tore me up inside. Why God, why? Well it wasn’t going to happen, no sirrreee, not today, not on my watch!

I begin to nibble – a handful of chilly peanuts from Peru, some rollmops from the Netherlands, something brown from New Zealand – in preparation for a fight to the death that may last for minutes, yet may last for days. After 30 minutes of nibbling I’m slightly over-preapared and feel like taking a nap. A shot of buck fifty Ukrainian Vodka snaps me back from my reverie. I finalise my plan. A plan that prays on our most basic desire! Its so devilishly simple yet appetising it may just work. I smear great swathes of Nutella across my near naked body. This has nothing to do with the plan.

The microwave is an aging Samsung but is going to have to do. I’d found a caterers tin of little German hot-dogs (Winklehoffer brand) and although it pains me to me use them, I set about puncturing the top of the tin with a dozen small holes. Across it on one side I sprinkle a liberal quantity of baking soda, the other, chilly powder and just a pinch of paprika. I set the Samsung’s dial to defrost and power it up. The hook was set, the bait was the tastiest food known to man, here fishy, fishy, fishy.

I didn’t have long to wait as the leader of the pirates (let’s call him wispy goatee because he’s got a wispy goatee) catches the scent of the delicious little medleys of miscellaneous meat and leads his two men across the mess to the microwave. Cautiously, as if in slow motion he opens the door. I take cover. Lunch is served.

With the sudden change in pressure a scalding stream of brine, chilly and paprika spews forth from the microwave. Wispy goatee takes the brunt of the boiling jet directly to the face. He screams and goes down in a sizzling heap. Confusion reigns for what seems like an eternity before the baking soda has a chance to mix with the remaining brine in the tin and do its thing – BOOM – and the officer’s mess explodes in a mix of microwave, hot-dogs and pirates.

As the smoke clears and I take in the carnage all around me I allow myself the smallest of grins, for I know my demons, at least for now, can again rest.

“What the shit is to be fuck happening here?” demands the Captain, surveying the scene whilst struggling to swear in a second language. “What am I to be telling bloody to the authorities shit?” he adds, turning a sheet-like shade of pale.
“Relax Cap’n”, I reply and offer him vodka with a tilt of the bottle, “tell them nothing”, I shrug.
“And bloody hell how do we get rid of mess?” he replies, his voice cracking as he borders on hysteria. Almost on queue Mrs. Twinkles saunters through the door and begins chewing, ripping and licking at the blood, sinew, organs and muscle that wallpapers the officer’s mess. The Captain does a little sick.
“I think Mrs. Twinkles has got that taken care of Captain, don’t you?” I laugh heartily and slap him on the back.
“No you fuck dickhead, I think we are all go to jail!”