Transcript of AE 1099 - Interview: Gastro, the Spice Trade, & the History of Swearing with Kyrin Down

G'day, you mob. How's it going? Pete here, from Aussie English. Welcome to this episode of the Aussie English podcast. Today, I have the pleasure of chatting to Kyrin Down, who is one of the two hosts of the Mere Mortals podcast, the other host being Juan Granados. So, guys, we sat down and had a pretty lengthy chat. It was sort of just a free chat, and it ended up going for about two hours.

So, I decided to chop this up into five different episodes, and I'm going to release them over the coming weeks. Okay, so today's episode is number one. In this episode, we talk about COVID in Queensland versus Victoria because Kyrin's up in Queensland. We trade gastro stories and talk about street food in foreign countries and how we've been food poisoned before, so Kyrin talks about Central and South America.

I chat a little bit about Indonesia. We talk about the Spice trade and the Dutch East India Company from the 1600s to 1800s and the miserable lives of sailors. We also talk about what they used to eat, preventing scurvy, that sort of stuff. We talk about the lives of people in the past. You know, what was it like to live in Rome?

What did people think when they saw an elephant for the first time that had been, you know, brought to Italy from sub-Saharan Africa? We chat about the Black Death and why 10% of Europeans are now immune to HIV aids and how those two diseases are linked. And then lastly, we chat a little bit about swearing in foreign languages and the importance of learning slang so that you can fit in.

So, I think you're going to enjoy this episode, guys. Let's get into it. G'day, you mob. What's going on? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I have Kyrin back again, he is the host of the Mere Mortals podcast, and we thought we would just shoot the breeze and have a chat. How are you going Kyrin?

I'm great. Thanks, man. Yeah, definitely shooting the breeze, I'm always up for some of that. So, yeah, just perfect timing, man. Just loving the new year, loving life. Everything's good.

How are you surviving up in Queensland now that the deluge of COVID cases is upon you, like zombies that have just entered the town, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, because we were pretty COVID free for or like, you know, as much as you can be for a long while.

Comparatively. Victoria, now and New South Wales, were the sort of diseased more southern states that you were like... *uneasy*.

Yeah, stay away, stay away.

You will not come in.

Yeah, yeah. Look, man, it's hard to gauge because you hear things and you see videos of like, oh, this is the COVID queue to like, get your testing done. And it's just this massive, long line as someone's dash cam, and it's just, you know, the line goes for minutes of driving, and you're like, Jesus Christ.

...Sick people.

Yeah, yeah.

Most of whom probably have COVID, right?

Yeah, yeah. And then now it's- I guess it's weird because everyone's starting to think like, get mysterious illnesses. And it's like, okay, is this just us being weirdos and being paranoid? My co-host, for example, Juan. He's been convinced, like three times in the last year that he's got COVID. And I'm like, probably not, but maybe one of them, you know, maybe one of those times.

It's tough. I keep wondering where I'm going to get it because it's just a matter of time, right. Like, it'd be like trying to avoid getting the flu or a cold. In the end, I think it's just going to be everywhere. But I keep thinking, is it going to be me that'll be the first in my family?

Am I going to get it from day-care? Because someone, you know, that's- Where are the points in my life where I have the most direct or indirect contact with other human beings? And can I be more diligent there than I would otherwise be? So, like when I go to drop my son off at day-care, I think I'd probably alcohol sanitise my hands about five times...

Yeah, gotcha.

...After touching all the doors and everything. And that's mainly just to avoid diseases anyway. Because- I remember, did I tell you I got gastro the night that my wife went into labour with our second child?

No, no, didn't know that.

Fuck me, man. So, we're like, just- It was weird, too, because- Have you had gastro before?

Define it for me or like...

You know, extreme diarrhoea, vomiting.

I've had food poisoning in Colombia once, and that was sort of like a night of very intense unpleasantness, but.

Yeah. I guess for anyone who doesn't know, gastro is our slang term for gastroenteritis, and I think the "-itis" means- You know, doctors and nurses will be listening to me here, but it's like an inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. It's effectively a virus you get that attacks the cells that line your stomach and your intestines, and it kills them all.

And so, that's why you end up vomiting and having really bad diarrhoea because your body's like, I can't digest the food that's in my system, so I'm just getting everything out of me so that it obviously doesn't, you know, turn bad whilst it's inside you because you can't use it.

And you're trying to get rid of the virus. So, I had- I felt fine that day. And then in the evening, I'm just like, yeah, starting to feel a bit nauseous. Where'd that come from? And it's so funny how it just like turns. Within I think an hour I was just shitting myself and vomiting on the toilet at the same time and just- Just wishing I wasn't alive.

It's like the worst kind of sicknesses that I've had, at least, is when you get gastro because you're just like, this is so miserable. And whilst I was like between one of my bouts of going to the bathroom, I was lying in my bed effectively, just watching the fan just being like, come on, body, just deal with this. Come on immune system. And my wife's like, I just had a really strong kick.

And then was like, oh no, my waters broken, or I just peed myself really bad. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. Because at that time as well, I'm like, there's no way they're going to let anyone who's ill into the hospital because of COVID.

...No way. Yeah.

So, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. So, I had to ring up my parents and be like, can you guys come over? I need one of you to take care of my son and the other one to go to the hospital with my wife to give birth.

I was going to say, like, you need a third parent, one of them to care after you as well.

Well, yeah, you hit the back of the line, I think. Once you've got kids, your grandparents are like, pfft.

Yeah, yeah.

...The grandparents, I'll take care of the kids first. But yeah, so that was the sickest I've been in a long time, but it came from day-care.

So, that've just been- That've been going around to all the different day-cares in Geelong, and I remember Googling it after I was sick and being like, fuck me, there's 13 day-cares that have gastro in the Bellarine Peninsula here. So, no wonder. But I had no idea about it at the time until it was too late.

That sucks, man. I'll recite my story quickly...

Go for it. Go for it.

I'd been, you know, yo- Before travelling for the first time, so when I went travelling for the first time properly, I did as much research as I could.

And basically the general consensus was don't drink, shower, water, you know, drink water that you know comes from a good source or, you know, you can- Some countries you can go to and it's like, definitely don't drink the water from the tap there and make sure you boil it or get bottled water. And then others it's like, you know, it's- You'll probably be safe.

So, I'm pretty sure Argentina was pretty good. Chile was pretty good. Even like large parts of Mexico, they were, like, yeah, yeah, it's fine to drink. But I was always relatively careful. And then the other one was, if you're eating food, you know, either from a restaurant, go to a restaurant. And if it's street food and you sort of just see it sitting there, unless it's cooked right in front of you, right at that moment...

Don't eat it.

Yeah.

It's been there all week. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I followed those two pretty well. I did one risky thing in Mexico where I was- Where I ate a- It was sort of like a hole in the wall restaurant type thing, like really small. You know, it's sort of one of those ones where it's almost as if you're walking into someone's house and they just have the kitchen at the front door and a couple of seats around.

And so, one of those. It was a little bit dodgy, but I got away with it. But then when I was in Colombia, I went to- It was a chain brand restaurant. I'm struggling to remember the name. It was something that was like crepes and waffles or something like that. So, I'm going to do with crepes. And I'd been there once before, it was totally fine.

And I got a- It was like a chicken crepe, chicken curry crepe or something like that. And yeah, that evening, man, I just- My- Same thing like, started to feel a tiny bit nauseous and then you're up from 10pm until like 4am, alternating between the bed and the shower and the toilet. And then, you know, forming that triangle.

So, you had that, too. Like, it was funny, I remember when I had gastro, one of the most calming and soothing things was to just have a hot shower. Like in-between bouts of shivers and fever. It would just be like, I'm so sweaty and gross now after getting really hot that I'm just going to have another shower. And I remember, I think I probably had like 5 showers in 24 hours. It was just like, oh, fuck it.

Yeah. Same here. Same here, man. Like you're just- Your towel is like sodden and wet. Now, the thing I got lucky was I was in an apartment in- I'd rented like an Airbnb in Laureles in Medellin in Colombia, and I was just thinking, man, like, this is so lucky.

Because probably nine out of ten nights whilst I was travelling, I was in a hostel, and going through that experience in a hostel just would have been the worst, man. That would have been hell.

Shared bathrooms, shared bedrooms.

Yeah, yeah. Cos I was essentially just, you know, I like- I was essentially just naked, just wandering around being like, you know, what's the point of putting on clothes? I'm going to have to go to the shower or the bathroom or whatnot soon enough, so, yeah. Sharing our gastro stories there.

Well, it is funny, though. We take that for granted, I think in Australia just how sanitary and clean things are. And the water is so, you know, you can just go anywhere, and you can pretty much just drink tap water like, I mean, you know. Unless you're in the outback and you're drinking bowl water or something that's been sucked up out of the ground and not filtered.

It's pretty uncommon to go somewhere and not have just tap water that you can drink. It's so funny, even my wife, she'll see me drinking water out of the tap or in the shower or something, and she just be like, you psycho, you'll get sick. And I'm like, mate, it's not Brazil. You know, because they all have this culture, too, there where I think a lot of the time in some places, at least, it is fine to drink out of the tap.

But they have this culture of using this kind of cylindrical filter system next to their sink in the kitchen. And so, they just put water through that, and it uses carbon and other things to clean it, I believe. And then that's what they drink, or they'll drink bottled water. But yeah, in Australia- I mean, what do you like? Are you someone who just drinks water out of the tap if you...?

Yeah, yeah, for sure... (both talking) ...Yeah, definitely. Like even just in the park or...

Yeah, exactly.

...Yeah.

Oh man, yeah, that's it. Even out of the bowl at the bottom of the tap where the dogs drink out of, you're like, oh, fuck it, it's fine.

Yeah, yeah. Just get down.

Yeah, exactly. Don't want to waste it. So, I remember going to Indonesia when we were there doing fieldwork in Sulawesi, and it was so interesting because, yeah, we had that street food thing, right, of when we were in Bogor. So, this is a town outside of, I'm trying to think, Jakarta, right. So, I think- Is that Java? It's on Java, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I think they- I'm actually just reading a book called Nathaniel's Nutmeg and it's about the Spice Wars. And yeah, I'll keep this short, so I don't interrupt your story. But basically, yeah, Java and Jakarta, I think Jakarta used to be called Java, and then it sort of switched its name in that time period.

Or maybe it's like- It's sort of like Bombay and Mumbai, they're sort of, you know, they're kind of interchangeable in a way like, if you say it I'll know it's the same thing. But I think technically it's one or the other, I can't actually remember which one now.

Yeah. So, Java, I think, is the big city, right. And then there's, I think it's also the island. I don't know. You guys who are Indonesians, you'll probably be laughing your arses off listening to this.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. So, Java is the Big Island, Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia. And then I think it's Sumatra is the other big island, and then you've got Borneo and Sulawesi and everything as part of it, too, and New Guinea. But yeah, so we were- We flew into Jakarta and then went to Bogor, which is where the geology museum was.

And I remember just walking around. And, you know, it was beautiful. I couldn't believe the trees, I think we had, like the botanical gardens across from the hotel we were at and there was just these huge trees. I've forgotten what they're called. You know those trees you find up in northern Queensland that have the roots that come out of the tree, and they go straight into the ground and they just have these huge...

Oh, yeah.

I've forgotten the name of them.

I know them, mate. Yeah.

Yeah, loads of those. But we were walking down the street and there were loads of people selling food and I'm like, oh man, we're going to try some of this. And my supervisor is just like, are you fucking crazy? Like, it's fine for the locals. You will die. You will die.

So, yeah, we had that. And then when we went to Sulawesi, the K-shaped island in the middle of Indonesia, and we drove 10 hours north to get to Mamasa, which is in the mountains. We were going into the jungle to collect animals, rats and bats and lizards and snakes and stuff.

And each time we would get to different villages, you would just have to try and find the restaurant that you wanted to go to. And they would pretty much always have the same thing, which was like rice and chicken, and that was almost always a safe bet.

But I remember there were a few places where you walk in and it's just like one woman and a few children that work there and the food would just be lying out, you know? So, it would be like this dead chicken that's been chopped up raw and is sitting there with flies on it. And you would just be like, I don't know if I'm going to roll the dice on this one.

Yeah.

Like, I think she's going to be, you know, cooking it fine. It should be all good, but I don't know. I have a feeling again this will put me in hospital.

Yeah, it's- Yeah, it's funny, yeah, once again, how sheltered we are and even that is nothing compared to the same book I was reading. These people who are going on these boat trips, it would take two and a half years for one boat trip to go from, they would start in England, sort of work their way down across Africa, basically the western side of Africa, then come around like the Cape, go to Indonesia and it would take two and a half years.

So, this would have been like the 1600s-1700s, right?

Yeah, 1600-1700...

With the Dutch East India company and the British one too, taking on each other. And yeah, they were all throughout Southeast Asia trying to get spices, as you say.

Pretty much, yeah. So, it was like nutmeg, cloves, I think maybe ginger as well, but particularly nutmeg was one of the big ones. And it could only be gotten in a couple of islands right near Indonesia. I'm not even sure if that's correct nowadays or something.

I think from memory reading about this, the Dutch East India Company was worth more than the equivalent of Amazon today...

Yeah, yeah.

...At the height of its time.

And that's just because nutmeg and stuff was- It was so valuable at the time because it was one, it helped with the food. So, these sailors, when they were travelling, they would be eating essentially rancid meat for months at a time, and it would sort of be meat that was just salted and then put in a barrel. So, you know...

And then went off. Yeah.

Yeah. It was probably- They'd be like, oh my God, like, how fresh is this? You know, flies still want to eat it. But- And of course, they'd like refill and get supplies along the way. But a lot of the time they were just eating the nastiest stuff.

It would have been such a miserable existence, I think. It's funny, we look back and sort of romanticise what it would have been like to have been a sailor or something... (phone ringing) Hold on, getting a call. It's funny, I put my phone on aeroplane mode and the call still comes through on my computer.

Oh, really?

It's so annoying. Sorry, guys. Yeah, so we romanticise how good it would be, you know, to have been a sailor or a captain or something back then. And you're just like, oh my God, it would have been atrocious. Like...

They all had scurvy...

Yeah, exactly.

...Of them. I think some of the stats, though, say in the book was- Things along like, one out of every three ships that left wouldn't come back...

Yeah.

...Of the ones that did go, you know, at least a third of the crew would die just from the tropical diseases along the way.

And scurvy, right? That was just a given. You were going to run out of vitamin C, they didn't know at the time. And I think it was Captain Cook who worked it out and was like, I'm taking pickled cabbage, you know, and other vegetables with me because I have a feeling that this is what is curing, you know, scurvy, which was the biggest issue. I think it killed millions of people in the end.

There was actually a guy 100- or 200-years prior who forced his crew to drink limes...

Yeah.

...And he had limes, and they sort of were starting to notice that his crew would survive a lot better. But, you know, that was just one of those like incidents of history that almost made it. And then it's like, nup, 200 years of ignorance again, until Captain Cook figures it out. Damn, man.

Well, it would have been so hard for information to really get through back then, too, right. What are you going to use, you know? Pigeons?

Yeah. Oh no. And even then, it's all just word of mouth. So, some of the stories that they were telling would be of these Africans who had bed-like disembowel an animal, and they'd put like the tripe around their neck and sort of wear it as necklaces and just eat it and stuff. And people back home would hear it and be like, fuck off, you're full of shit. Like no way.

Like wearing devil horns and masks and stuff and painting themselves in green. And even guys who would travel and then see some of these things for themselves and be like, oh, that dude, I thought was full of shit.

He was telling the truth, like they were doing some wacky-arse stuff in Africa and like, you go to Jakarta and people are living so much differently. But yeah, there's no way of proving it. You can't just get out your phone and take a photo or anything.

Well, I used to wonder about like the Roman period, that always blew my mind. I would love to go back there and be able to see what day-to-day life was actually like, and to go to the Colosseum and watch some gladiatorial fights...

Yeah.

...And just the celebrations and everything else that went on with it. What did they eat? You know, what did they do as jobs? You don't really think about it. What was the mundane job the average person had? What was it like to be a restaurant owner who worked somewhere that didn't have electricity or refrigeration or any of that sort of stuff?

But I always wondered, too, what it was like when they started getting animals from like sub-Saharan Africa and bringing them through into Rome and using them in the colosseums and everything? Like, what was it like when they brought the first elephant up into Italy or something? And people were just like, what is this monstrosity of an animal?

For sure, man. I go to Australia Zoo, and I'm blown away by, you know, you just see a zebra or a giraffe or something...

Yeah.

...50 metres away from you and you're still just going, holy crap, like that's- These things are real, like- Like, you actually see them. And it's just- It's got a different impression upon you when it's right in front of your face, right there.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's nuts. So...

One of the other things I was going to say was, the reason the spices were so valuable and why the Dutch East India Company became so, you know, had so many assets and was so valuable was the spices they thought would cure the plague. And so, it was called like the sweating disease or something. And...

Yeah.

...It was partly that, so it was, you know, medicinal purposes. And then also even the kings and queens were eating rancid meat, and they would just use cloves and spices to make, like, mask the taste of it...

Yeah.

...So, yeah. It's one of those ones, I always find it funny when people will try and argue like things were back better in the day. And even if it was, you know...

Cherry picking. Cherry picking.

Yeah, yeah. It's just like, no, no, no way. There's like, there's no argument you could make.

Yeah, well, there are so many interesting things to talk about at this point. I think one thing is, yeah, when the plague went through Eastern Europe, and I think it sort of had these explosions a few times throughout our history.

But when the big one went through, it killed a third of the entire population, I think of Europe, right? Like with just one in three and a bit, which is insane to think about. Like Covid's killing, what, one- Less than one in a hundred, maybe one in a thousand at the moment...

Yeah.

...Around the world after vaccination. But I can't imagine thinking that that was the- Your chances, right, it's like... *uneasy* ...33% chance, and I'm goner, you know, and everyone's getting it. But the interesting thing is- I'll have to look this up. There's something really interesting that happened with the plague and Europeans that led to the population being- Having a higher proportion of people immune to AIDS. Because...

...I've never heard that.

Yeah, so I think it's about 10%. So, here we go, biologists at the University of Liverpool have discovered how the plague of the Middle Ages have made around 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV. Biologists at the University of Liverpool, blah blah blah... Yeah. So, effectively, I think what happened is that the area in your body, the part of the immune system that's susceptible to the plague is also the same as the one that AIDS attacks.

And so, because those people, so many people were taken out of the population who were susceptible to the plague, to catching it, you ended up with a higher proportion of people who were immune to it naturally. And that happens to also, by coincidence, be the same for HIV, for AIDS.

Yeah. Damn. Oh, that's wack, that's crazy. Yeah...

Another crazy thing was the fact that back in the day we- During this period, we were really religious, right. So, that would have been like the 1600s, and all the insults that were used in the English language tended to be around God.

So, saying things like, bloody hell and, you know, God's oath and all that sort of stuff was way more offensive than actually saying words like shit, fuck, piss, you know, all that sort of stuff. And I think, too, when I was reading, there was a book I read called Holy Crap, which is about the history of swearing.

And she was saying that people also just pooed and pissed and had sex in front of one another, it was just a common day thing, like farting and, you know, or sneezing where it wasn't seen as offensive.

And so, you wouldn't tell someone to go fuck themselves because you're like, well, people are fucking everywhere. Like- You know, like, it would be like saying to someone, go and sneeze, you know, or something like that. You'd just be like, what? If you were getting that insult.

Yes. Well, the world's so weird, man. I can't remember if we talked about this last time, we might have where I was saying, like, you become more offensive in another language if you start swearing in that language because you don't know...

The context. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's like...

And the subtleties of when to use it and when not to, like I can swear with you in this context, but if I was interviewing an academic, I'm probably not going to be like saying, you know, how the fuck are you? Or, you know, just dropping the S-bomb or the S- The C-bomb or anything like that. But it is tough.

...For sure.

Cos you should learn it still, guys, you should learn to swear. It is important. You're going to hear it a lot.

Yeah, yeah. I've been trying to pick up like the- I always when I start a new language, I'm like, do I want to learn these words? Because will I abuse them? Will I become...?

Will I use these for my special powers? Am I going to use them for good or for bad?

...I use it for good or not? I think for me, I try and tend to stay away from them, like learn them so that I know what they mean. And so, if someone's saying something, I can sort of get the context. But not- Try and not use them myself, but use funny ones.

Yeah.

I used to- My first boss, Camilo, was from Colombia, and when I was working in the mines with him, he would every now and then just say something like, fair dinkum. But the way he said it was just so like, the pronunciation wasn't correct, like completely, like it was more like, "fair dinkum".

And it was like the showstopper man, he'd say that, and everyone would just piss themselves laughing. It was so- Like such an Aussie thing to say, but in such a weird way of saying it...

But it's funny when that happens because you wonder if they keep doing it then because he gets a good reaction from people, and you kind of end up with these jovial kind of interactions.

Definitely. Definitely. So, I prefer to learn things which they might not expect, which is sort of, you know, you can- So, one thing in Mexico was they instead of verdad, which is like the normal word for truth, they use neta. And they like to say, there's like a phrase where you can say, la neta del planeta. So, it's like...

Cos it rhymes. Yeah.

...Because it rhymes. And I'd whip that out every now and then instead of saying, claro, or whatever. And yeah, the reactions you get are brilliant because they're just not expecting it. It's like, where'd you learn that?

That's a huge thing, though, right? With trying to develop connections with the culture and with the people, it's not just learning the language they speak in terms of, say, the international version of it, right, the standard version of that language.

It's getting into the nooks and crannies of the dialect that you're surrounded by and picking up those smaller things that are kind of unique to that area that you can use to then show you're a part, you know, you're diving in. You may not have been born there, you may not be a native speaker, but you're putting in an effort to embrace the linguistic culture of that area. And I love doing that with Portuguese, too.

There's a whole bunch that I've gotten from my wife that are regional from the North, and I- I use them, and I don't really have a good understanding, though, of- What would you say that the-? Context, though, because like- I mean, I'm explaining this poorly. I've never been to Brazil, so I don't really get the regional differences yet.

And sort of if I'm around someone who's speaking with a paulistano or carioca accent, right, someone from Sao Paulo or from Rio. I don't intuitively know what I'm going to say, they're not going to understand. So, like if I say something like, oh, eguas, which is a phrase that they would use in the North for like, wow, you know, oh wow, crazy eguas. They'll just instantly be like, what the fuck was that?

Like, I don't even know that word. It's so funny how many listeners and carioca's that you'll meet, and you'll say these things and they'll be like, I've never even heard that. And I'm like, it's from your country, you know, like...

And then you're trying to explain it to them, like trying to explain their own language to them.

Exactly, like, it's from the North. It's very specific to a certain area, a certain region. I'm sorry. But I hear it so often, I think it's normal because my wife's always obviously speaking to me with a north-eastern dialect from Maranao.

And so, I just hear it all the time and I'm like, okay, I guess this is just Brazilian. But yeah, and then you meet Brazilians, and they'll say things and you'll be like, what the fuck was that? Like I- You know, just insults, too, that some of them would use and you'll be like, pffft. No one says that.

Yeah, yeah.