guthrie's stars

- April, 2006 Some cultural trade-offs are harder to accept than others. Take squat toilets for instance, which I used to hate with a passion. I loathed them as I do snakes. “How dare you pass yourself off as worthy of my sanctified toosh and it’s business!,” I might have sneered, if I hadn’t been so concerned with steering so far clear of them. Those two white tiles for traction, and that miserable little hole in place of where I expected not only a bowl, but also a comfortable seat and a cover to boot. During one particular trip home to my mother’s town of Sri Lalang, I reacted as any stubborn eight-year-old might: I just refused to use them. Full stop. Now that only gets you so far. Before long, my parents tired of taking me out on exclusive journeys to the local shopping centre and its modern plumbing facilities. Thus began the famous conflict between Mark’s will and his lower intestine. An epic battle of attrition that lasted well into the fourth day -- most likely pushed over the...

- April, 2006 I recently purchased a book from the Sabah State Museum entitled With the Wild Men of Borneo by a missionary named Elizabeth Mershon. It begins thusly: "Borneo! What does the name suggest in your minds? The first thing probably is the 'wild man from Borneo.'...All I knew about the country was that it was where the wild men lived, and I always imagined that they spent most of their time running around the island cutting off people's heads. Before you finish reading what I am going to tell you about distant Borneo and its people, I hope you will have learned that the 'wild man from Borneo' is not such a bad fellow after all." That was written in 1922. I have just gotten back from a helter skelter two-day trek through the island's northern interior from west coast to east coast, Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan. And I can gladly report back that, 84 years on, and with a world which remains largely oblivious to its existence, the people of Borneo a...

- April 2006 I am the son of a Malaysian Hakka metallurgist who stepped through the cracks of a bipolar world, from the humble poverty of his kampong home and into the opportunity and upward mobility afforded by the progressive politics and anti-colonial sentiment of 1970s Australasia. In turn, he is the son of a fatherless farmer, who escaped the abject poverty of early 20th Century China and—as a teenager—entered into a binding three-year term as an indentured laborer for the British, tapping rubber at a plantation in North Borneo in exchange for a boat ride to a better life. I knew this man as “Gong-gong,” or grandfather, in my occasional face-to-face encounters with him as a child. Taking month-long breaks from the school holiday centres my working parents would drop me off at during those dry, hot Australian summers, my brother and I would whinge and whine our way through the grime and humidity of the Third World, my parents winning brief respite by shoving KFC or Cornetto ice cre...

-March 2006 Dear friends, Tomorrow I depart for a three-week break from work, traveling around my parents' original haunts of Malaysia and Singapore with my father. I was there last in 2000, on transit while emigrating from Australia to the United States, where I've since acquired a college degree and less patience on the road. Upon explaining my planned absence to a colleague, she admitted that when I mentioned Malaysia, all she could think of was the evil President character from “Zoolander.” I told her that’s fine, because when she dyed her hair blonde, all I could think was: STUPID-ASS BIMBO. Actually, I didn’t. She’s a lovely girl, and besides, I’m far too polite. Following a 17 hour jaunt across the Pacific, we’ll land in Narita and Singapore in transit, before reaching the state of Sabah in Borneo Island just in time for Qingming. I’ll spend about 10 days catching up with family and no doubt impressing them with the six or so phrases of Mandarin I can remember. Then I’ll...

First published March 17, 2006. I: REPRESENTATION: I throw my hockey bag into the boot, then climb into the front passenger seat of Mum’s Holden Commodore. We drive out of the leafy grounds of Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School, past bushland coloured by eucalyptus trees and kangaroo paw plants and out onto Old Coast Road. In its entirety, the highway extends from Perth all the way south to Walpole, near the bottom of Western Australia. On this occasion, it’s use will be limited to the quiet 20 minute drive from high school back to my home town of Australind. Originally a failed English colony designed to combine qualities of both Australia and India, it was in my time a place of smaller adventure and scope. It is here that Dad had first taken the tricycle wheels off of my bike, here where I would hunt down tennis balls struck over the backyard fence in father-son cricket tussles which employed gumboots for wickets and firewood for bats. As Mum chats loosely in my direction about my brot...

Written in January, 2006. My last visit to L.A. was part of a month-long Southwestern road trip, during which time I passed through the city a handful of times without ever really getting a handle on it. I was overwhelmed and unimpressed. L.A. struck me as a series of endless strip malls; a “produce and consume” society in which hurried lawyer’s wives chugged about, shoving nutrient-deficient drive-thru food down their gullets as their middle schoolers gossiped over which Hollywood flash-in-the-pan was at their mall after class. At the time, I had pigeonholed the city into a box exemplifying all that was wrong with American society and post-industrial capitalism. Poorly laid out, superficial and alienating, Los Angeles was like the set of cancerous lungs I had viewed in a cadaver exhibit at the city’s Natural History Museum: though the Marlboro Man zeitgeist of Hollywood culture had comprehensively intoxicated the world’s inundated mind, nowhere did I find the disease most advanced tha...

Written in January, 2006. It seems counterintuitive, but I received some of my juiciest background on Los Angeles from a farm boy who grew up in the Midwest. “They’ve seen the Valley. They’ve seen Beverly Hills. They’ve been through Hollywood and they think they know L.A.” Daniel pauses briefly, his jet-black non-coiffed ‘hawk falling over dark eyebrows, thin arms crossed across the table. “…So he puts a picture of a fucken’ dollar store and a tiny taco truck up on his blog! Cos that’s what most of this city is made up of. And that’s what I fucken’ love about it!” But later on in the conversation, talking to a fellow L.A. transplant originally from Chicago, he expresses consternation over the future of his adopted city: “But now Silverlake just equals Williamsburg equals Silverlake…” he calculated, referring to the newly gentrified yuppie havens of L.A. and New York respectively, decrying the rapid homogenization of what once was fresh, what once may have been—dare I utter the phrase? ...

Written in January, 2006. Los Angeles to me has always been a fascinatingly conflicted place. As the starting point for my exploration of this nation, I remember my first glimpse of the sprawling urban maelstrom from the window of our plane. I had just turned 15, for the second time in two days, thanks to the wonders of 15-hour time differences and 12-hour flights. The anniversary of my birth happens to coincide with that of the (non-Native) United States, and as a bratty teen unleashed upon the consumer frenzy that the Phil Knight’s of the world whirl up so successfully through ingenious marketing campaigns, I had my eyes set on one birthday gift only: A pair of brand spankin’ new Air Jordan XIVs, at the delightful price of $150, U.S. (Then, in the harrowing pre-boom days of Australian mini-recession: roughly $230). So, after settling into our room at the Westin Bonaventure, I dragged my family out to find the nearest shoe store in which to procure a pair of these sweet, holy foot-she...

January 13, 2006. I sat here, beneath still palm trees and bathed in sunlight. Rufus Wainwright’s lazy swoon filled my ears and a travel writer’s scattershot ramblings on Hong Kong held my gaze. A short way across from me, a group of men and women played cards at a worn wooden table, occasionally singing or laughing merrily. At that moment, the splendor of this small green space in roaring Los Angeles, on a warm winter’s afternoon, felt like a new spring against my skin. Even more so when compared to the fierce cold of Washington from which I was taking temporary leave. To my right, three young men in athletic-wear were kicking around a soccer ball as pretty women strolled by in low-slung jeans, laughing sweetly amongst themselves. Across from the small pathway in front of me, a middle-aged woman sat carefully, ankles closed together, fully engaged by the man whom she had sat down next to. He appeared to be either telling an epic life story or propounding upon his eternal love for her,...

First posted January 3rd, 2006. The timer on Channel 1 had dipped below three minutes, both bartenders were occupied fixing drinks for other patrons, and my small party and I were entirely, frighteningly champagne-less. Save the solemn resolutions for another day (or year), all this particular reveler wanted for New Year’s Eve was to bring in the new millennium’s seventh anniversary by downing a glass of cheap bubbly. My fears, naturally, were unfounded. Well before the midnight buzzer and our shoddy verbal countdown, I was sipping on champagne, so much so that by the time the ball dropped, I was already practically through my glass. But how sweet that beverage was, consumed as it was in East Village, lower Manhattan, New York City, surely the most magnificent example of modern man’s accomplishments, on this, my 21st New Year’s. Like many others, my conception of NYE in NYC has been heavily derived from the screen more so than any other medium. In particular, by a famous scene involvin...

First posted August 23rd, 2005. I’ve just returned from (practically) climbing a mountain and my back hasn’t let me forget about it. What a walking cliché I had become: the soft-bellied “adventure-seeking” Westerner trying to drag a loaded 65L rucksack up a mountain, then needing to be dragged up by an old (but incredibly strong) local and his chattering, Makasae-translating nephew. And it wasn’t just once that I felt like Indiana Jones-lite or some other mainstream 80s movie character during my three day retreat from Dili, out east to the charming town of Baucau then inland to Mount Matebian, a guerrilla stronghold during the independence struggle. As soon as we’d left Dili behind in our colourful mikrolet, I felt ready to take on almost anything. Sure the sacks of rice and various market-bound goods I found myself sandwiched between made physical comfort an impossibility, but that was “part of the adventure,” I told myself. If this is how the Timorese travel, then so shall I. That wa...

First posted August 22nd, 2005. Hi team, I wanted to let you know that I am safe and on track to return to the States on time, after a minor/major scare which had me imagining nightmare situations, namely: being stranded in East Timor with not enough money to get back to Australia! It all revolves around a number. That number is 9, as in 9 o'clock this morning, when a small plane left Dili heading for Darwin, minus one passenger. The problem for me is its misinformed replacement: 12. I, and for the life of me I don't know where this came from, believed that I was flying back at 12pm today. I was so convinced of this that I didn't even take the thirty seconds it would have taken to check last night after returning to Dili to make sure of my flight time. In fact, I only checked my itinerary at 9:20 this morning, just before I was about to leave my host family home behind for Nicholas Lobotau airport. It was only then that I read the small black digit on the print-out e-ticket...

First posted August 16, 2005. "Well momma, I know I act a fool/But I'll be gone 'til November I got packs to move" -K. West It struck me yesterday as I watched Filipe’s brother carefully hammering away at the transistor of his old truck that I will never be a tradesman. My hands, from a tender age, have always been lithe against piano keys or picking a set of guitar strings but staggeringly play-doh-like when turned toward anything involving repair work or construction. It then struck me that this is pure bullshit. Take Filipe’s brother: he’s a small businessman, selling designs for school uniforms to make ends meet. He’s also very poor, a condition which affects almost every Timorese family I see. He’s repairing his car with his own hands because he has no choice, jus as I undoubtedly would be if I was from Timor, instead of Australia, a mere hour and a half plane’s journey away. And even that is only the case because my parents happened to be more industrious and fo...

First posted August 4, 2005. The Yarra river is not all that wide. In comparison to the Thames, Seine or Hudson, it would probably more suitably be deemed a stream, or better yet, a puddle. Similar to many of the world’s finest metropolises, it cuts right through the heart of the local inhabitants’ city, splitting Melbourne into north and south. And Melbourne—the first destination in my return journey home after four years—much like its primary waterway, also pales in size when compared to the Londons and New York Cities of the world. But it is this very compactness and small-town charm which provides Melbourne with her own distinct personality, offering visitors a microcosm through which to understand the enigma of Australia. Melbourne, like all of Australia’s major cities, features a small, pedestrian-centric city centre (referred to as the Central Business District, or “CBD”) couched in a number of close surrounding suburbs. While there is a reasonably interesting mix of high street...

You are cordially invited to follow the journeys of 21 year-old fledgling travel writer, cultural taste tester, indier-than-thou music criti-snob and renowned animator of average stories, Mark Hiew, as he returns to his motherland of Australia on a four-week journey of forgotten self-discovery, existential post-Foucaltian whinging and cheap beer sampling as only Aussie-Chinese Malays with mutt British-American accents know how. And yes, I threw myself out on a limb with that last qualifier. You'd be surprised how many of us "bananas," "twinkies," or "I could just settle and go with Asian-American but that's too simple...gimme some identity issues!" are floating around in your troposphere. Next time you're out, just look for the Asian kid in the abercrombie checkered shorts fiddling with his mini ipod, switching from Kanye to Guster...or the Korean-based army of timberland/ralph lauren mix-ups who combine mom's kimchi with b-boy contests. (a...

Written in January, 2005. There isn’t really a particular time that I truly enjoy flying. However, 7:00 am in the morning must rank particularly low. Case in point: Irwan and I had pulled a truffle-fueled all-nighter through to the early hours of Christmas Day, and then flew across the great plains of North America to the most treasured of holiday tourist traps, Sin City Las Vegas (baby!). I’ve never been one to snap out of sleeping too well, and so falling asleep on level ground and awaking to the roar of our plane, thousands of feet higher than where my conscious world had previously been, was disorientation of the highest order. I yawned my way through the airport shuttle ride to our hostel, a colorful converted motel in a charming neighborhood populated by drug dealers and the sad and confused. Once settled, Irwan and I did what any self-respecting student traveler would do to revive himself and plunged into the icy waters of the hostel jacuzzi. Irwan said he’d reached a level of c...