In a tearing hurry as I have to go to Guangzhou again for work, but promised to tell someone dear The White Matter Story. It's this:
Someone nameless and who is 45 years old and who works with the elderly in a country I won't name either, got government funding to bring some big brain-scanning machine and an operator up to her, yes, unnamed small country town to screen and assess her clients for Alzheimer's; whether they had it and the extent to which they had it.
Everything was going well to plan, except one 87 year old client forgot to turn up, so our unnamed friend thought "Yippee! A spare spot on the program! Waste not, want not!" and, with the help of the operator, who was a fun person, decided to go through the brain-scanner herself, just for fun and to, you know, see what her brain looked like. Naturally, they left the name and details of the original client on the form.
Two weeks later, the assessments come back and Unnamed Friend grabs the faux results of her 87 year old client, and reads "Affirmative. Advanced white matter in evidence. However, given the patients advanced years, no further treatment is considered necessary."
And that's the very worrying White Matter Story.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Nestorian Christianity!
In the post below, I mention that UHK Museum has a collection of 985 Nestorian crosses donated by a British guy, F. A. Nixon, who lived his entire life in China back in the 19th century and who collected them as a hobby. He actually had exactly 1000 but he kept the best of them for himself, as you do.
If you don't know about Nestorian Christianity, this is the Chinese version of Christianity that goes back to about 400AD when Nestor, Archbishop of Constantinople, was condemned as a heretic and so went into China to do missionary work, spreading his own particular version of the religion. He did very well, and consequently there were a great many parishes across China right up until the 17th century, when an unknown schism ripped the entire fabric apart and had different factions at war with each other. There were a few remnant populations around for another generation or two, but then it vanished forever.
Chinese Christians? From almost the earliest days of Christianity? It was so unexpected and beyond common knowledge, that when I made the discovery it just boggled my mind.
I first came across it at an exhibition at Chinese Heritage Museum in Sha Tin - part of The Silk Road Exhibition that included the mummy of Chechen Man which was what we'd actually come to see, because, as you know, he's got red hair and wears a tartan cloak, so China had proposed that he was actually Scottish, thus, because it was all so off-the-wall that a Scot would have been in China over 3000 years ago, we all wanted to see him for ourselves to see if they were right.
(BTW, if you haven't already heard, it turns out, from DNA tests recorded in a recent documentary on Discovery Channel, Chechen Man wasn't Scottish after all, but was a mixture of five different races, including Chinese, Indian and Scythian - which explained the red hair - and so was pure "Silk Road" in every way, since they've always been a crossroads for different peoples of the world.),
Anyway, this is meant to be about the Nestorians, so let's get back there:
We came across it almost by accident too! The relics were in a room away from all the "Oh, wow! Amazing!" stuff, and, as we were leaving, I noticed we hadn't been in, so briefly stopped at the case nearest the door just to see if there was anything important I would regret not seeing, and ... voila! a whole new world opened up for me.
THERE WAS CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA FROM 400AD! How big is that!
Shocked by the discovery of something so unexpected, as soon as I got got home I googled and found that the WWW is full of websites dedicated to research into this brand of Christianity, so it really isn't either unknown or a secret at all. Go in and look for yourself. Untold heaps of stuff.
Anyway, back to these 985 Nestorian crosses. They are particularly fascinating because they aren't based on our own religious symbols - do wish I'd been allowed to take a photo of them - and I must say they look less like crosses and more like cookie cutters ... and some of them still have clay pressed into the corners so I'm now wondering if they weren't used on bricks; you know, pressed into clay bricks during their construction for some unknown reason. And also considering the possibility that China could be full of buildings that have Nestorian symbols pressed into the hidden sides of the bricks used in their construction!
Strange stuff, huh!
Oh, and before I go, I should tell you a very silly story about how I was so very mean to this poor British historian:
See, six months after the Silk Road Exhibition closed, I was at Jardine House for the Royal Geographic Society's first meeting between Gavin Menzies, after the launch of his book "1421", and various Chinese Historians who wanted to hear about it and look at his research and evidence, so Menzies gave a talk on the subject ... and then all these historians gave talks ... and everyone had heaps to say and so it went on and on and on and I was desperate to go to the loo only the room was too packed so I couldn't get out without creating a huge kerfuffle ... but the minute it was over I raced to the loo, only everyone else was obviously in the same situation because the line was about 100 deep ahead of me.
And immediately in front of me was a very nice British lady jiggling up and down and muttering furiously "I don't have time for this! I don't have time for this!"
"What's up?" I asked her.
"I've just flown from Rome to talk to Chinese historians. It's so important." and then she looked at me hard and said "You don't happen to know any, do you?"
"Not personally. But I may be able to help. What do you want to know?"
The line was moving desperately slowly, so she told me the story: "I'm a historian from Britain. I'm currently writing a biography of Galileo, and, so fortunately, was given unprecedented access to the Vatican archives. And this morning I came across something so amazing I'm still reeling. I have to find out more about it, and so when someone mentioned this meeting tonight I jumped immediately on a plane to find people to talk to."
Vatican archives? Reeling? Are you deeply interested too? Naturally I'm all "What? What?"
"Can you believe it? The meeting immediately before Galileo's first one with the pope after his book was published, Pope XXX (forgotten which one) met with a delegation of Chinese Christians who wanted a ruling on a point of faith that apparently was causing issues back in China. Christians. In China! Can you believe it?"
OK, she was so anticipating my shock and amazement I couldn't resist: I HAD to look nonchalant and indifferent, so I looked away like it was the least interesting subject ever and, shrugging, "They were probably just Nestorians!" I said.
Love it? She was then the one looked all shocked and amazed and going "What, what, what?"
"Nestorian Christianity? I though everyone knew about that! It's everywhere in cyberspace. Instead of flying here in this extravagant fashion, you should have just googled."
She looked chastened, but I was kind and told her everything I knew about Archbishop Nestor and his missionary work and the 7th century stele at Xi-an and the schism which split the church and all the blah, blah, blah! And by then we were at the head of the line, so we parted and the next time I saw her was a glimpse of her struggling through the herd surrounding one of the Chinese historians. I guess he was closer to hand than the Internet.
But, my bitchiness aside, isn't it fascinating to discover that a delegation of Chinese were in Rome in October 1630. Wonder if Gavin Menzies knows.
Much, much later:
Just discovered that the clay in the crosses has nothing whatsoever to do with Nestorian Christianity. Seems these crosses were dug out of Nestorian graves by Mongolian grave-robbers who sold them to families who intended leaving home for several years. What they'd do was seal the front door with mud and press the cross into the mud as a charm to keep their house safe.
How simple things are when they're explained to you!
If you don't know about Nestorian Christianity, this is the Chinese version of Christianity that goes back to about 400AD when Nestor, Archbishop of Constantinople, was condemned as a heretic and so went into China to do missionary work, spreading his own particular version of the religion. He did very well, and consequently there were a great many parishes across China right up until the 17th century, when an unknown schism ripped the entire fabric apart and had different factions at war with each other. There were a few remnant populations around for another generation or two, but then it vanished forever.
Chinese Christians? From almost the earliest days of Christianity? It was so unexpected and beyond common knowledge, that when I made the discovery it just boggled my mind.
I first came across it at an exhibition at Chinese Heritage Museum in Sha Tin - part of The Silk Road Exhibition that included the mummy of Chechen Man which was what we'd actually come to see, because, as you know, he's got red hair and wears a tartan cloak, so China had proposed that he was actually Scottish, thus, because it was all so off-the-wall that a Scot would have been in China over 3000 years ago, we all wanted to see him for ourselves to see if they were right.
(BTW, if you haven't already heard, it turns out, from DNA tests recorded in a recent documentary on Discovery Channel, Chechen Man wasn't Scottish after all, but was a mixture of five different races, including Chinese, Indian and Scythian - which explained the red hair - and so was pure "Silk Road" in every way, since they've always been a crossroads for different peoples of the world.),
Anyway, this is meant to be about the Nestorians, so let's get back there:
We came across it almost by accident too! The relics were in a room away from all the "Oh, wow! Amazing!" stuff, and, as we were leaving, I noticed we hadn't been in, so briefly stopped at the case nearest the door just to see if there was anything important I would regret not seeing, and ... voila! a whole new world opened up for me.
THERE WAS CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA FROM 400AD! How big is that!
Shocked by the discovery of something so unexpected, as soon as I got got home I googled and found that the WWW is full of websites dedicated to research into this brand of Christianity, so it really isn't either unknown or a secret at all. Go in and look for yourself. Untold heaps of stuff.
Anyway, back to these 985 Nestorian crosses. They are particularly fascinating because they aren't based on our own religious symbols - do wish I'd been allowed to take a photo of them - and I must say they look less like crosses and more like cookie cutters ... and some of them still have clay pressed into the corners so I'm now wondering if they weren't used on bricks; you know, pressed into clay bricks during their construction for some unknown reason. And also considering the possibility that China could be full of buildings that have Nestorian symbols pressed into the hidden sides of the bricks used in their construction!
Strange stuff, huh!
Oh, and before I go, I should tell you a very silly story about how I was so very mean to this poor British historian:
See, six months after the Silk Road Exhibition closed, I was at Jardine House for the Royal Geographic Society's first meeting between Gavin Menzies, after the launch of his book "1421", and various Chinese Historians who wanted to hear about it and look at his research and evidence, so Menzies gave a talk on the subject ... and then all these historians gave talks ... and everyone had heaps to say and so it went on and on and on and I was desperate to go to the loo only the room was too packed so I couldn't get out without creating a huge kerfuffle ... but the minute it was over I raced to the loo, only everyone else was obviously in the same situation because the line was about 100 deep ahead of me.
And immediately in front of me was a very nice British lady jiggling up and down and muttering furiously "I don't have time for this! I don't have time for this!"
"What's up?" I asked her.
"I've just flown from Rome to talk to Chinese historians. It's so important." and then she looked at me hard and said "You don't happen to know any, do you?"
"Not personally. But I may be able to help. What do you want to know?"
The line was moving desperately slowly, so she told me the story: "I'm a historian from Britain. I'm currently writing a biography of Galileo, and, so fortunately, was given unprecedented access to the Vatican archives. And this morning I came across something so amazing I'm still reeling. I have to find out more about it, and so when someone mentioned this meeting tonight I jumped immediately on a plane to find people to talk to."
Vatican archives? Reeling? Are you deeply interested too? Naturally I'm all "What? What?"
"Can you believe it? The meeting immediately before Galileo's first one with the pope after his book was published, Pope XXX (forgotten which one) met with a delegation of Chinese Christians who wanted a ruling on a point of faith that apparently was causing issues back in China. Christians. In China! Can you believe it?"
OK, she was so anticipating my shock and amazement I couldn't resist: I HAD to look nonchalant and indifferent, so I looked away like it was the least interesting subject ever and, shrugging, "They were probably just Nestorians!" I said.
Love it? She was then the one looked all shocked and amazed and going "What, what, what?"
"Nestorian Christianity? I though everyone knew about that! It's everywhere in cyberspace. Instead of flying here in this extravagant fashion, you should have just googled."
She looked chastened, but I was kind and told her everything I knew about Archbishop Nestor and his missionary work and the 7th century stele at Xi-an and the schism which split the church and all the blah, blah, blah! And by then we were at the head of the line, so we parted and the next time I saw her was a glimpse of her struggling through the herd surrounding one of the Chinese historians. I guess he was closer to hand than the Internet.
But, my bitchiness aside, isn't it fascinating to discover that a delegation of Chinese were in Rome in October 1630. Wonder if Gavin Menzies knows.
Much, much later:
Just discovered that the clay in the crosses has nothing whatsoever to do with Nestorian Christianity. Seems these crosses were dug out of Nestorian graves by Mongolian grave-robbers who sold them to families who intended leaving home for several years. What they'd do was seal the front door with mud and press the cross into the mud as a charm to keep their house safe.
How simple things are when they're explained to you!
University of HK Museum
Made a discovery yesterday:
Bona Mugabe?
Or is every African student at UHK
suffering the torment of HK's curiosity.
UNIVERSITY OF HK MUSEUM
Bona Mugabe?Or is every African student at UHK
suffering the torment of HK's curiosity.
Gorgeous old granite building just along from the regular part of the campus. And don't you just love the carved panels out the front.
In all our years in HK I had no idea that this was here and that, even better, it was free to the public. It's only a short bus ride - Bus # 23 - from our place too, so how good is that?
Although they are best known - except not to me - for their regularly changed special exhibitions, they have the most stunning standard collections ...
... and their blue and white china collection is so yummmm! Only I couldn't take a photo to show you because I'd already got in trouble for taking the one above.
At the moment, they are having an exhibition of Historic HK Transport Photos and it's most interesting, but the best bit of the day was Maria seeing a photo from 1965 of a "bank run" on Heng Seng Bank and going "Oooh, I was there that day!" and so we all started looking for her in the crowd. No success. She said what happened was "There was a rumour going round that Heng Seng Bank was about to collapse so we all raced to our nearest branch to withdraw all our money. I don't know WHAT I was thinking!", so it looks like HK's tendency to "Ahhhh! THREATDOWN!" goes back a long way.
Maybe back from the earliest days of the city. The Redoubtable Mrs Walker said that, several years ago, she was at an exhibition here of historical photographs of HK's 1843 outbreak of bubonic plague. However, that's not a good example because bubonic plague is a genuine reason for "Ahhhh! THREATDOWN!" Or maybe that's the reason for this constant "Chicken Little-ing" ... a genuine reason for panic back at the birth of the city; so, from then on, everyone thought "If it can happen to us once, it could happen again." and so they stay in a constant state of over-cautious ALERT!
There is something very, very interesting about that plague, and this time I'm not talking about how it stopped at exactly the borderline between the British-built part of the city and the Chinese-built part of the city. I know I've told you all this before; about how the British went in (those were some brave health officers) and discovered that the Chinese had faked the sewerage systems; that they'd dug holes that they'd covered with the standard sewerage covers, but there wasn't really any drains or anything to take the sewerage away. And so they bulldozed the entire areas of Sheung Wan and Kennedy Town - where the plague was - and they were rebuilt under strict British supervision and HK hasn't had a bubonic plague outbreak since.
No, this time I'm talking about something totally different: about how, in Fergus Hume's novel "Mystery of a Hansom Cab" there's a sequence where our hero visits an opium den in Sydney, Australia, and it describes how the place is jam-packed with desperately worried-looking Chinese all listening in horrified silence as someone reads, in Chinese obviously, from a newspaper. The novel assumes that this is what happens everyday in opium dens but we all know that this is just naivity; that Fergus Hume had only once ever been to an opium den and what he actually witnessed and saw as "normal" was an exceptional event ...
... and if you look at when the novel was written and ask yourself "What was occuring somewhere back in China that had these folks so 'knicker-knotted'?" what you find is that it co-incides with this outbreak of bubonic plague in HK.
Works for me! To be in Sydney back in the 1840s, you would have had to have passed through HK, and undoubtedly all these Sydney HK-folk would have left loved ones behind, and so, yes, an outbreak of plague would definitely have them all running to the local opium den to find out what was happening. I imagine that the local opium den would have been the only place in the entire city that imported HK newspapers, and, also, could afford long telegraph messages from home for more immediate updates.
However, once again we've strayed wayyy off topic, so let's rein it in again. University of Hong Kong's Museum! Free! On the #23 bus route! Interesting stuff! Regularly changed special exhibitions! Blue and white china collection! 985 Nestorian crosses. High quality religious stuff. Check it out!
... and their blue and white china collection is so yummmm! Only I couldn't take a photo to show you because I'd already got in trouble for taking the one above.At the moment, they are having an exhibition of Historic HK Transport Photos and it's most interesting, but the best bit of the day was Maria seeing a photo from 1965 of a "bank run" on Heng Seng Bank and going "Oooh, I was there that day!" and so we all started looking for her in the crowd. No success. She said what happened was "There was a rumour going round that Heng Seng Bank was about to collapse so we all raced to our nearest branch to withdraw all our money. I don't know WHAT I was thinking!", so it looks like HK's tendency to "Ahhhh! THREATDOWN!" goes back a long way.
Maybe back from the earliest days of the city. The Redoubtable Mrs Walker said that, several years ago, she was at an exhibition here of historical photographs of HK's 1843 outbreak of bubonic plague. However, that's not a good example because bubonic plague is a genuine reason for "Ahhhh! THREATDOWN!" Or maybe that's the reason for this constant "Chicken Little-ing" ... a genuine reason for panic back at the birth of the city; so, from then on, everyone thought "If it can happen to us once, it could happen again." and so they stay in a constant state of over-cautious ALERT!
There is something very, very interesting about that plague, and this time I'm not talking about how it stopped at exactly the borderline between the British-built part of the city and the Chinese-built part of the city. I know I've told you all this before; about how the British went in (those were some brave health officers) and discovered that the Chinese had faked the sewerage systems; that they'd dug holes that they'd covered with the standard sewerage covers, but there wasn't really any drains or anything to take the sewerage away. And so they bulldozed the entire areas of Sheung Wan and Kennedy Town - where the plague was - and they were rebuilt under strict British supervision and HK hasn't had a bubonic plague outbreak since.
No, this time I'm talking about something totally different: about how, in Fergus Hume's novel "Mystery of a Hansom Cab" there's a sequence where our hero visits an opium den in Sydney, Australia, and it describes how the place is jam-packed with desperately worried-looking Chinese all listening in horrified silence as someone reads, in Chinese obviously, from a newspaper. The novel assumes that this is what happens everyday in opium dens but we all know that this is just naivity; that Fergus Hume had only once ever been to an opium den and what he actually witnessed and saw as "normal" was an exceptional event ...
... and if you look at when the novel was written and ask yourself "What was occuring somewhere back in China that had these folks so 'knicker-knotted'?" what you find is that it co-incides with this outbreak of bubonic plague in HK.
Works for me! To be in Sydney back in the 1840s, you would have had to have passed through HK, and undoubtedly all these Sydney HK-folk would have left loved ones behind, and so, yes, an outbreak of plague would definitely have them all running to the local opium den to find out what was happening. I imagine that the local opium den would have been the only place in the entire city that imported HK newspapers, and, also, could afford long telegraph messages from home for more immediate updates.
However, once again we've strayed wayyy off topic, so let's rein it in again. University of Hong Kong's Museum! Free! On the #23 bus route! Interesting stuff! Regularly changed special exhibitions! Blue and white china collection! 985 Nestorian crosses. High quality religious stuff. Check it out!
Monday, April 27, 2009
What Kills Us This Week!
Hong Kong is doing what it does best - panicking - and we're all now on ultra-alert mode at Lap Kok Airport as we prepare for an onslaught of DEATH, DOOM and DESTRUCTION.
It's the Mexican swine-flu-thing. And you know, don't you, that HK's very own Margaret Chan is global boss of this entire epidemic, so now the entire planet is about to experience a taste of what Hong Kong is all about: over-reaction and "we're all doomed" and preparing-for-the-worst-case-scenario!
Hong Kong's all-time favourite film is "Chicken Little", and we're so good at acting that out.
Of course, if this Mexican swine flu is about to spill out into a universal pandemic, then having a Hong Konger in charge is obviously a best-case-scenario thing because ... well, sometimes our Nerdy Girly-Swot Overcaution is the way to go. So Go Margaret, Go Margaret, Go Margaret!!!
But I must say that what we're relishing in all this is the fact that, this time, Ground Zero for this species viral jump wasn't Peaceful Markets in Gaungzhou as it usually is. In fact, China doesn't have anything to do with it for a change.
And what we're all particularly relishing is that Lap Kok is quarantining-on-arrival anyone who's been in Mexico ... and we all know who's just been there, don't we:
We're all trying to reach her at the moment to let her know what awaits on her return, and, yes, it's all unholy mirth at her anticipated discomfiture ... although naturally we don't want her nor really expect her to have Swine Flu, because that thought is too horrible to be entertained. Discomfort, yes! Serious illness, NO!
So that's our choice for this week:
It's the Mexican swine-flu-thing. And you know, don't you, that HK's very own Margaret Chan is global boss of this entire epidemic, so now the entire planet is about to experience a taste of what Hong Kong is all about: over-reaction and "we're all doomed" and preparing-for-the-worst-case-scenario!
Hong Kong's all-time favourite film is "Chicken Little", and we're so good at acting that out.
Of course, if this Mexican swine flu is about to spill out into a universal pandemic, then having a Hong Konger in charge is obviously a best-case-scenario thing because ... well, sometimes our Nerdy Girly-Swot Overcaution is the way to go. So Go Margaret, Go Margaret, Go Margaret!!!
But I must say that what we're relishing in all this is the fact that, this time, Ground Zero for this species viral jump wasn't Peaceful Markets in Gaungzhou as it usually is. In fact, China doesn't have anything to do with it for a change.
And what we're all particularly relishing is that Lap Kok is quarantining-on-arrival anyone who's been in Mexico ... and we all know who's just been there, don't we:
Aussie Christine!
We're all trying to reach her at the moment to let her know what awaits on her return, and, yes, it's all unholy mirth at her anticipated discomfiture ... although naturally we don't want her nor really expect her to have Swine Flu, because that thought is too horrible to be entertained. Discomfort, yes! Serious illness, NO!
So that's our choice for this week:
THREATDOWN
Hong Kong's "Chicken Little-ing"
Going Global!
Hong Kong's "Chicken Little-ing"
Going Global!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Being Fair-Minded
Yes, I know I always fall about laughing over Keith's Annual Big Day Out, but I have actually organised one of these myself.
It happened last year in Australia when I decided to treat Baby Jane's hardworking WWOOFERS to a "Big Day Out". Since they wanted to see Australian wildlife and were interested in snakes, I took them to a local lizard and snake farm, and here's what happened:
No. Sadly, I didn't think to take photos of the rows and rows of empty cages so I can't show you.
Seems there was some sort of snake and lizard epidemic going around that I hadn't heard about so all this farm's specimens were in quarantine and so ... well, it was ALMOST a trip worthy of a "P&F Big Day Out." except ...
... crocodiles aren't lizards and so were exempt and the snake farmer kindly gave the girls some to play with, and they were immensely thrilled and that made up for everything.
It happened last year in Australia when I decided to treat Baby Jane's hardworking WWOOFERS to a "Big Day Out". Since they wanted to see Australian wildlife and were interested in snakes, I took them to a local lizard and snake farm, and here's what happened:
No. Sadly, I didn't think to take photos of the rows and rows of empty cages so I can't show you.
Seems there was some sort of snake and lizard epidemic going around that I hadn't heard about so all this farm's specimens were in quarantine and so ... well, it was ALMOST a trip worthy of a "P&F Big Day Out." except ...
... crocodiles aren't lizards and so were exempt and the snake farmer kindly gave the girls some to play with, and they were immensely thrilled and that made up for everything.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Parent and Teachers Outing 2009
Yayyyy! Keith's off today on his annual jaunt organised by his school's Parents and Friends Association. And once again it's a surprise what they'll be doing.
You may recall that this annual outing is LEGENDARY. I told you all about it last year, but if you wish to refresh your memory, it's here.
This year, I've loaned him my pretty pink camera and told him to make a movie of it so we can all share in the delights of ... of ... of ... mmmm, I have no idea what!
Also it's raining, cold and miserable so ... bahahahaha!
You'll just have to wait until he returns to find out exactly how the P&F tortured him this year.
Later:
It's good. Man, is it good! Keith doesn't like me to laugh at these well-meaning folk but we have to give credit where it's due because his P&F would have to the world's great unsung comic geniuses.
This year - and it's so funny it leaves me breathless - P&F took the teachers on a coach for one and a half hours north to a processing plant where ... they dry fish. Only, you know, it was raining so they all stood around under tarps while their guide explained to them how fish dried in the sun. And then they were taken to a fish market where the dried fish is sold, and again stood around under tarps while they watched the process of dried fish being sold.
And my absolute favourite part is Keith saying "The light wasn't good so my footage of it hasn't turned out very well." Keith, my love, no one is even remotely interested in seeing a good film about fish drying in the sun. Bad film? Different story! This is all about laughing at you!
So now all we have to do is wait for our desperately bad film about ... the comic stylings of Keith's P&F Association.
You may recall that this annual outing is LEGENDARY. I told you all about it last year, but if you wish to refresh your memory, it's here.
This year, I've loaned him my pretty pink camera and told him to make a movie of it so we can all share in the delights of ... of ... of ... mmmm, I have no idea what!
Also it's raining, cold and miserable so ... bahahahaha!
You'll just have to wait until he returns to find out exactly how the P&F tortured him this year.
Later:
It's good. Man, is it good! Keith doesn't like me to laugh at these well-meaning folk but we have to give credit where it's due because his P&F would have to the world's great unsung comic geniuses.
This year - and it's so funny it leaves me breathless - P&F took the teachers on a coach for one and a half hours north to a processing plant where ... they dry fish. Only, you know, it was raining so they all stood around under tarps while their guide explained to them how fish dried in the sun. And then they were taken to a fish market where the dried fish is sold, and again stood around under tarps while they watched the process of dried fish being sold.
And my absolute favourite part is Keith saying "The light wasn't good so my footage of it hasn't turned out very well." Keith, my love, no one is even remotely interested in seeing a good film about fish drying in the sun. Bad film? Different story! This is all about laughing at you!
So now all we have to do is wait for our desperately bad film about ... the comic stylings of Keith's P&F Association.
A New Cuba-Fiji Mystery!
Aussie Christine will soon be back and I'll be blogging about Cuba so, in anticipation, I've been reading up on Cuban history ...
... and I've just come across something considerably ODD!
Are you aware that the ancient petroglyphs in Cuba carved by the original and now extinct people called The Ciboney are identical in appearance and purpose to the ancient Fijian petroglyphs in Sigatoka Valley? Yup, in both countries they have ancient ceremonial rocks covered with astonishingly identical patterns which, in both cases, were used for ancient rituals involving "Secret Teenage Boy Business". Two countries at the far ends of the earth from each other and they have this HUGE thing in common? Do you find it odd too?
Wracking my brains here and coming up blank for an explanation. I am recalling there is another Cuba-Fiji Mystery Connection, which I answered to my own satisfaction decades back, but it simply doesn't mesh with this in any way.
Do you know about that other one? How Fiji has 14 species of iguanas, 13 of which are descendants of those found in Madagascar (another beat for Madagascar-origins of the Fiji people!), and the 14th which is only found elsewhere in Cuba?
Mind-boggling? They originally thought this was the case just based on the appearance but thought "Can't be" so had them DNA tested and the answer came back "Affirmative"! Yes, one type of Fiji iguana is the same species as the endemic Cuban variety! AND there is no other population anywhere on the planet.
I gave this much thought when I first heard about it nearly 30 years ago and decided the 13 Madagascan species were descended from escaped pets. But the 14th? Cubans with pet iguanas in Fiji in ancient times? Mmmm? Nah! Still can't visualise it! It isn't just that I doubt the Ciboney had the technology for such a journey but also because the Cuban iguana is so little, toad-like-warty and ugly and completely lacking in any sort of charisma - which the Madagascan sort have in abundance - that I can't see anyone wanting one as a pet.
But then I heard there was a species of red-leafed mangrove also found only in Cuba and a single small island in Fiji - and, yes, it's the same island this iguana is found - and that's when I thought "Bingo!"
Can you see it too? A mangrove bush wrenched off Cuban mudflats by a storm and floating off to sea. On it, simply by chance, a pregnant iguana? - a couple of iguanas?, a small colony of iguanas? And there it is, being pulled by currents and pushed by winds for untold numbers of years until finally it came to rest on an island in the Fiji group.
"Aha!" you are undoubtedly now saying "But the Panama Canal wasn't built then! How did they get through Meso-America without leaving specimens behind?"
That stumped me too, because there's no way they or the mangrove bush could have survived that dangerous and freezing journey around the Southern Cape. But that's when I realised there is another explanation!
Fiji is the oldest island group in the Pacific (apart from New Caledonia that is, which broke off from the continental shelf and so is millions of years old). Our beloved islands started rising out of the sea between 80,000 and 90,000 years ago. At that time, North and South America hadn't yet connected. So voila! No problem whatsoever. Storm! Ripped out red-leafed mangrove bush! Floating iguanas! Winds! Currents! Years pass! Fiji! Got it! Direct connection! Mystery solved!!!
However, you can see that this doesn't explain the matched sets of petroglyphs! Unless, mmmm!, those Cuban iguanas carved the rocks! Nah! Doesn't work for me either!
OK, how's this for an explanation: these rocks were carved for "Secret Teenage Boy Business" ... and boys will be boys! As a former high school teacher, I know better than most that teenage boys are endlessly vile, ghastly, hormone-driven and achingly stupid, and that could well be the reason for this strange similarity: that these patterns and ceremonies were created by teenage boys, and all over the world these unspeakably hideous creatures think exactly - like exactly! - alike!
Voila! Mystery solved! NEXT???
... and I've just come across something considerably ODD!
Are you aware that the ancient petroglyphs in Cuba carved by the original and now extinct people called The Ciboney are identical in appearance and purpose to the ancient Fijian petroglyphs in Sigatoka Valley? Yup, in both countries they have ancient ceremonial rocks covered with astonishingly identical patterns which, in both cases, were used for ancient rituals involving "Secret Teenage Boy Business". Two countries at the far ends of the earth from each other and they have this HUGE thing in common? Do you find it odd too?
Wracking my brains here and coming up blank for an explanation. I am recalling there is another Cuba-Fiji Mystery Connection, which I answered to my own satisfaction decades back, but it simply doesn't mesh with this in any way.
Do you know about that other one? How Fiji has 14 species of iguanas, 13 of which are descendants of those found in Madagascar (another beat for Madagascar-origins of the Fiji people!), and the 14th which is only found elsewhere in Cuba?
Mind-boggling? They originally thought this was the case just based on the appearance but thought "Can't be" so had them DNA tested and the answer came back "Affirmative"! Yes, one type of Fiji iguana is the same species as the endemic Cuban variety! AND there is no other population anywhere on the planet.
I gave this much thought when I first heard about it nearly 30 years ago and decided the 13 Madagascan species were descended from escaped pets. But the 14th? Cubans with pet iguanas in Fiji in ancient times? Mmmm? Nah! Still can't visualise it! It isn't just that I doubt the Ciboney had the technology for such a journey but also because the Cuban iguana is so little, toad-like-warty and ugly and completely lacking in any sort of charisma - which the Madagascan sort have in abundance - that I can't see anyone wanting one as a pet.
But then I heard there was a species of red-leafed mangrove also found only in Cuba and a single small island in Fiji - and, yes, it's the same island this iguana is found - and that's when I thought "Bingo!"
Can you see it too? A mangrove bush wrenched off Cuban mudflats by a storm and floating off to sea. On it, simply by chance, a pregnant iguana? - a couple of iguanas?, a small colony of iguanas? And there it is, being pulled by currents and pushed by winds for untold numbers of years until finally it came to rest on an island in the Fiji group.
"Aha!" you are undoubtedly now saying "But the Panama Canal wasn't built then! How did they get through Meso-America without leaving specimens behind?"
That stumped me too, because there's no way they or the mangrove bush could have survived that dangerous and freezing journey around the Southern Cape. But that's when I realised there is another explanation!
Fiji is the oldest island group in the Pacific (apart from New Caledonia that is, which broke off from the continental shelf and so is millions of years old). Our beloved islands started rising out of the sea between 80,000 and 90,000 years ago. At that time, North and South America hadn't yet connected. So voila! No problem whatsoever. Storm! Ripped out red-leafed mangrove bush! Floating iguanas! Winds! Currents! Years pass! Fiji! Got it! Direct connection! Mystery solved!!!
However, you can see that this doesn't explain the matched sets of petroglyphs! Unless, mmmm!, those Cuban iguanas carved the rocks! Nah! Doesn't work for me either!
OK, how's this for an explanation: these rocks were carved for "Secret Teenage Boy Business" ... and boys will be boys! As a former high school teacher, I know better than most that teenage boys are endlessly vile, ghastly, hormone-driven and achingly stupid, and that could well be the reason for this strange similarity: that these patterns and ceremonies were created by teenage boys, and all over the world these unspeakably hideous creatures think exactly - like exactly! - alike!
Voila! Mystery solved! NEXT???
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Kwan Yin, Goddess of Mercy.
The more I discover about China's Goddess of Mercy, Kwan Yin, the more impressed I am. You will probably recall, from my post "Buddha Works in Mysterious Ways", how quickly Kwan Yin answered Halley's prayers. Three hours! Now that's some going for miracles.
And I have another story too, equally impressive, that I should tell you, about another miracle she wrought that I witnessed with my own eyes and was even caught up in. But later!
In the meantime, however, let me tell you what I know about this Goddess:
Nothing! Although her name literally translates to "She Who Sees the Tears of the World", I can't even find out what religion she belongs to. Like, here she is in a Hindu temple in Saigon:
Keith and Kwan Yin.
And I have another story too, equally impressive, that I should tell you, about another miracle she wrought that I witnessed with my own eyes and was even caught up in. But later!
In the meantime, however, let me tell you what I know about this Goddess:
Nothing! Although her name literally translates to "She Who Sees the Tears of the World", I can't even find out what religion she belongs to. Like, here she is in a Hindu temple in Saigon:
Keith and Kwan Yin.And here she is in a Buddhist temple in Guangzhou:
Halley and Kwan Yin.
And she's known as Ah Ma (Beloved Mother) in Macau and is considered their very own Guardian Deity since, thousands of years ago, villagers' prayed to Kwan Yin and she saved everyone, although I haven't discovered from what. But it must have been something very big because even the name Ma-cau has some connection with her, although again I don't know what.
Ah-Ma, Saviour of Macau,
We also saw her in a Taoist temple in Singapore where she's known as Kwan Yip, however I don't have a photo.
So it's like she's this free-floating Deity figure everyone simply prays to, no matter what religion they belong to.
Since the world is usually so desperate and grasping about their deities - ours and only ours! - don't you find this rather odd?
I wonder if it's something like in that fabulous film "Elizabeth"; the bit where Mary Tudor is dying and she frantically grabs at Elizabeth and rasps "Please do not deprive the people of the Consolations of The Virgin.", meaning, I thought, 'Don't make England Protestant', and then, right at the end, Elizabeth shaves off her hair and paints herself white and says "I am become a virgin." which I took to mean that she would indeed turn England Protestant but was remaking herself so she would take the place of Catholicism's Virgin Mary therein sacrificing herself for her subjects' Consolation.
Because we all need a Goddess of Mercy, right? And that, for we Christians, the semiological space is held by Mary? And for those religions that don't have one ... well, they simply adopt Kwan Yin?
And let me tell you the strange story about the first time Kwan Yin crossed my path:
In 2000, I was on holiday in Sydney, Australia. Night, and I'm walking back to the hotel on the harbour-front. Keith was busy so I was on my own, and it was roughly 10pm when, on the main drag in Darlinghurst, I passed a bakery full of the most amazing cakes, wafting these amazing smells. It was very tempting but I resisted and walked on but not before noticing the young girl behind the counter and my mind, without conscious thought, went "Fiji Chinese!"
Several steps and I stopped and "Why did I think that? Is it possible that, in the 150 years Chinese have been in Fiji, they've developed their own distinct face?" and that was a mystery I couldn't resist so walked back into the cake shop.
"You look familiar." I said to the young shopgirl. "Where are you from?"
"Fiji."
Turns out that she was a student at Fiji's University of the South Pacific, currently on a working holiday, and because it turned out that I knew her family, we chatted for nearly an hour, with her filling me in on who was doing what and where - but then she noticed the time: "I have to close up now." she said.
And then she fumed: "Can you imagine it?, I now have to take all these amazing cakes and throw them in the dumpster out the back. It's disgusting the amount of waste in this country!" I too found it outrageous, and we both built up a huge head of steam, fulminating and ranting, both deciding that, coming from a third world country, where no one really has anything, the only thing we hated more than seeing waste was seeing beautiful things casually and cavalierly tossed away. "Don't toss them." I ranted, furious and determined. "Give them to me and I'll do something with them."
I had no idea what, but she shut the shop as I waited and then she met me outside and piled me high with boxes. Lots of boxes. Boxes piled so high I could only balance them with my nose. Certainly couldn't see much over the top and only a little bit to the side and definitely nothing below. She suggested she take a couple away but, no, I was determined nothing would be tossed and all these cakes would find a home.
However, it wasn't easy walking in high heels carrying the load, not being able to see properly, and when I came to the zebra crossing I realised another problem: I couldn't press the button.
I was trying to push it with my elbow when an elderly Chinese gentleman raced up and pushed it for me. And then he stood there until the lights changed and then he said "Small shuffle. Stop. Step down." and he walked with me across the road then said "Stop. Step up." and he'd got me safely across.
I then realised that I wasn't going to make it back to the hotel unaided without ditching the top box so "I want to thank you. Please take a box." I said, and he did. But when he opened it and saw the exquisite cake, all chocolate and covered with decorative marzipan bits, he unexpectedly burst into tears. Like, serious serious tears!
Consternation! "What's the matter?" I asked.
"Today's my birthday." he spluttered.
"Happy Birthday." I said.
"Thank you. Thank you." he wept. And then he told me the story:
"For forty years I've lived in this country. I'm alone. My family is all back in China. And for forty years, no one has said "Happy Birthday" to me. In the past, I didn't mind, but today I turned 75, and today it mattered. All day I've been praying to Kwan Yin, asking her "Please let someone know it's my birthday. Please let someone acknowledge me. Please let someone say "Happy Birthday" to me. But no one did. All day I waited, but no one even looked at me. And then I couldn't sleep and was asking Kwan Yin why she had not heard my prayers, and then, ten minutes ago, I thought "I will give Kwan Yin another chance. I will get dressed and go out and maybe then someone will say "Happy Birthday."
By that time I was crying myself. "I am proud that your Goddess Kwan Yin chose me to answer your prayers." I told him and I meant it from the bottom of my heart.
He invited me to return to his place to have a slice of his birthday cake, but I had to move on, and by then, inspired, I knew what to do with the rest of the cakes. There were backpacker hostels I'd noticed on my journey out, so I stopped off at each of them, dropped by the communal areas and shouted "Who's the person having the birthday?" and at each place someone said "That's me!" so I gave him/her a box saying "Someone back home's gone to a lot of trouble to get this to you. You are very loved." and they always cried.
Back at my hotel, I only had one box left and when I looked inside it was the most amazing cheesecake and I decided that, since cheesecake is my other vice of choice, I'd earned it!
So that's how I first met Kwan Yin. And, yes, I was so impressed with how she moved in mysterious and miraculous ways, and although kinda it's against everything I more normally believe, I always see that entire episode above as Kwan Yin's machinations; her way of getting a birthday cake to a very sweet old man who just wanted to finally be acknowledged.
So, yes, she's indeed a wonderful Deity and more and more I'm thinking I need to buy a statue of her, maybe in white marble, and with a soft and beautiful face, because I'm increasingly concerned that I don't have enough "God" in my life; an increasingly powerful spiritual vacuum that I need to fill some way that is unconnected with any organised religion.
And Kwan Yin could indeed be the answer. Yes? All God and No Guff!
Halley and Kwan Yin.
Ah-Ma, Saviour of Macau,on the waterfront
watching over her city.
watching over her city.
We also saw her in a Taoist temple in Singapore where she's known as Kwan Yip, however I don't have a photo.
So it's like she's this free-floating Deity figure everyone simply prays to, no matter what religion they belong to.
Since the world is usually so desperate and grasping about their deities - ours and only ours! - don't you find this rather odd?
I wonder if it's something like in that fabulous film "Elizabeth"; the bit where Mary Tudor is dying and she frantically grabs at Elizabeth and rasps "Please do not deprive the people of the Consolations of The Virgin.", meaning, I thought, 'Don't make England Protestant', and then, right at the end, Elizabeth shaves off her hair and paints herself white and says "I am become a virgin." which I took to mean that she would indeed turn England Protestant but was remaking herself so she would take the place of Catholicism's Virgin Mary therein sacrificing herself for her subjects' Consolation.
Because we all need a Goddess of Mercy, right? And that, for we Christians, the semiological space is held by Mary? And for those religions that don't have one ... well, they simply adopt Kwan Yin?
And let me tell you the strange story about the first time Kwan Yin crossed my path:
In 2000, I was on holiday in Sydney, Australia. Night, and I'm walking back to the hotel on the harbour-front. Keith was busy so I was on my own, and it was roughly 10pm when, on the main drag in Darlinghurst, I passed a bakery full of the most amazing cakes, wafting these amazing smells. It was very tempting but I resisted and walked on but not before noticing the young girl behind the counter and my mind, without conscious thought, went "Fiji Chinese!"
Several steps and I stopped and "Why did I think that? Is it possible that, in the 150 years Chinese have been in Fiji, they've developed their own distinct face?" and that was a mystery I couldn't resist so walked back into the cake shop.
"You look familiar." I said to the young shopgirl. "Where are you from?"
"Fiji."
Turns out that she was a student at Fiji's University of the South Pacific, currently on a working holiday, and because it turned out that I knew her family, we chatted for nearly an hour, with her filling me in on who was doing what and where - but then she noticed the time: "I have to close up now." she said.
And then she fumed: "Can you imagine it?, I now have to take all these amazing cakes and throw them in the dumpster out the back. It's disgusting the amount of waste in this country!" I too found it outrageous, and we both built up a huge head of steam, fulminating and ranting, both deciding that, coming from a third world country, where no one really has anything, the only thing we hated more than seeing waste was seeing beautiful things casually and cavalierly tossed away. "Don't toss them." I ranted, furious and determined. "Give them to me and I'll do something with them."
I had no idea what, but she shut the shop as I waited and then she met me outside and piled me high with boxes. Lots of boxes. Boxes piled so high I could only balance them with my nose. Certainly couldn't see much over the top and only a little bit to the side and definitely nothing below. She suggested she take a couple away but, no, I was determined nothing would be tossed and all these cakes would find a home.
However, it wasn't easy walking in high heels carrying the load, not being able to see properly, and when I came to the zebra crossing I realised another problem: I couldn't press the button.
I was trying to push it with my elbow when an elderly Chinese gentleman raced up and pushed it for me. And then he stood there until the lights changed and then he said "Small shuffle. Stop. Step down." and he walked with me across the road then said "Stop. Step up." and he'd got me safely across.
I then realised that I wasn't going to make it back to the hotel unaided without ditching the top box so "I want to thank you. Please take a box." I said, and he did. But when he opened it and saw the exquisite cake, all chocolate and covered with decorative marzipan bits, he unexpectedly burst into tears. Like, serious serious tears!
Consternation! "What's the matter?" I asked.
"Today's my birthday." he spluttered.
"Happy Birthday." I said.
"Thank you. Thank you." he wept. And then he told me the story:
"For forty years I've lived in this country. I'm alone. My family is all back in China. And for forty years, no one has said "Happy Birthday" to me. In the past, I didn't mind, but today I turned 75, and today it mattered. All day I've been praying to Kwan Yin, asking her "Please let someone know it's my birthday. Please let someone acknowledge me. Please let someone say "Happy Birthday" to me. But no one did. All day I waited, but no one even looked at me. And then I couldn't sleep and was asking Kwan Yin why she had not heard my prayers, and then, ten minutes ago, I thought "I will give Kwan Yin another chance. I will get dressed and go out and maybe then someone will say "Happy Birthday."
By that time I was crying myself. "I am proud that your Goddess Kwan Yin chose me to answer your prayers." I told him and I meant it from the bottom of my heart.
He invited me to return to his place to have a slice of his birthday cake, but I had to move on, and by then, inspired, I knew what to do with the rest of the cakes. There were backpacker hostels I'd noticed on my journey out, so I stopped off at each of them, dropped by the communal areas and shouted "Who's the person having the birthday?" and at each place someone said "That's me!" so I gave him/her a box saying "Someone back home's gone to a lot of trouble to get this to you. You are very loved." and they always cried.
Back at my hotel, I only had one box left and when I looked inside it was the most amazing cheesecake and I decided that, since cheesecake is my other vice of choice, I'd earned it!
So that's how I first met Kwan Yin. And, yes, I was so impressed with how she moved in mysterious and miraculous ways, and although kinda it's against everything I more normally believe, I always see that entire episode above as Kwan Yin's machinations; her way of getting a birthday cake to a very sweet old man who just wanted to finally be acknowledged.
So, yes, she's indeed a wonderful Deity and more and more I'm thinking I need to buy a statue of her, maybe in white marble, and with a soft and beautiful face, because I'm increasingly concerned that I don't have enough "God" in my life; an increasingly powerful spiritual vacuum that I need to fill some way that is unconnected with any organised religion.
And Kwan Yin could indeed be the answer. Yes? All God and No Guff!
"Danny" with Jackie Chan
Following on from the previous post, I wanted to discover why "Danny" is so frequently left off Jackie Chan filmographies so went around the various specialist kung-fu film outlets and kung-fu film memorabilia shops and any other place I could think of that are into that kind of stuff, trying to find out if someone knew.
The owner of "Rock Galleria" in Yau Tai Mall around the corner from us in Wan Chai did. He said that when "Danny" flopped so badly, Golden Harvest realised that no one would pay to see Jackie Chan in a movie with no kung-fu and, worse, where he loses, so they pulled the film, shot a great many new scenes with lots of kung-fu action, changed the storyline to make it that Danny is kidnapped by the triads and has to be rescued, which is something Jackie does and with lots of kung-fu action too, and then they re-released it under the name "Heart of Dragon" and it did very well indeed.
Of course, "Heart of Dragon" is not in the same level of powerful as "Danny" but who cares since, yayyy, Jackie kicks butt!
I was also told that if I have a copy of "Danny", the original and unacknowledged version, to treasure it because ... dah dah! ... it's worth a great deal of money! Go Keith, Go Keith, Go Keith!!!
The owner of "Rock Galleria" in Yau Tai Mall around the corner from us in Wan Chai did. He said that when "Danny" flopped so badly, Golden Harvest realised that no one would pay to see Jackie Chan in a movie with no kung-fu and, worse, where he loses, so they pulled the film, shot a great many new scenes with lots of kung-fu action, changed the storyline to make it that Danny is kidnapped by the triads and has to be rescued, which is something Jackie does and with lots of kung-fu action too, and then they re-released it under the name "Heart of Dragon" and it did very well indeed.
Of course, "Heart of Dragon" is not in the same level of powerful as "Danny" but who cares since, yayyy, Jackie kicks butt!
I was also told that if I have a copy of "Danny", the original and unacknowledged version, to treasure it because ... dah dah! ... it's worth a great deal of money! Go Keith, Go Keith, Go Keith!!!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
What Kills Us This Week!
The sad bad news is that our Threatdown for this week is none other than Hong Kong's Own Icon: Our Very Own Jackie Chan. I know I had him down as 'reason for panic' two week's ago, but that was a joke. This time, well, I'm sorry to tell you it's for real.
It wasn't unexpected. Three years ago, folk deep in the heart of the HK film industry told me Jackie Chan had lost the plot; like Mohammed Ali had been hit in the head too often and was decidedly brain-damaged and consequently exercising truly poor judgment. They were saying also that he really wasn't up to making any more films but was going ahead anyway and they were dreading the results.
I found it all desperately sad and not just because I've been a fan since the earliest days, back when Jackie was still chasing chickens in all his films; back when he still was surrounded by "The Orphan Boys"; back when he was in the thrall of Golden Harvest; back when he was still an open-faced teenager.
I can't claim credit for discovering him so early. Keith was big into his films and I simply got sucked in. He first noticed him and became a fan after spotting Jackie's debut performance in "Enter the Dragon" where he plays a thug who registers pain when he gets kung-fued by Bruce Lee, and actually went to the trouble of finding out his name and was thrilled when he started making his own films and so, because they were never shown in Kiwi cinemas, went to considerable trouble hunting down and buying his own copies of every single film Jackie made.
And then Baby Jane saw those copies, got sucked in too and so also bought his films; good films, bad films, made no difference; as long as they were Jackie Chan films, she has them. She said what she found so attractive about them was that they all came from a position of love.
Mmmm, wonder if they buy "The Shinjuku Incident"?
And sliding completely off the topic to hand, I'm almost totally convinced that it was Jackie Chan's film "Danny" that, today, has us here in Hong Kong, with Keith teaching mentally handicapped children.
You most likely haven't seen "Danny" because this isn't the usual light-hearted J.C. fare and so failed at the box office and subsequently is very rarely copied and usually left off his filmography, but I highly recommend it because this is one hell'va powerful film. In it, Jackie wants to be a sailor so tries to find a school in Hong Kong to take in his mentally handicapped adult brother, Danny, hoping to save him from the triads. No regular school will have him and there simply aren't enough specialist schools in the entire city and the ones that do exist are full with achingly long waiting lists ... and so, yes, Jackie fails and the triads get their hands on Danny and he gets sucked into a life of crime and is killed. Heartbreaking stuff!
Knowing how much this film affected Keith, do you too find it rather "mmmm!" that when Keith had his huge mid-life crisis and decided he wanted to do something more meaningful with the rest of his life than teach English and Drama to increasingly hideous Australian teenagers, that he chose to come to Hong Kong to teach mentally-handicapped children? Definitely sus, right?
And, yes, "Danny" is very close to the truth because, in Hong Kong, with a population of nearly 7 million, there are only four specialist schools: one here in Wan Chai for the profoundly brain-damaged; Chi Lin Nunnery, which takes in 900; Keith's school which has 300 places; and one in Discovery Bay, which is for English speakers, with 5 students. And, yes, the triads hover around these schools recruiting for new members, and, yes, they get plenty: Keith says the moment a boy turns up with an expensive blond-tipped haircut, they know they've lost him. And they do indeed lose lots because the triads love them for their ability to do what they're told without asking questions, and the only other jobs, in all honestly, that these kids can get are dishwashers in restaurants and things of that ilk.
And if you want to know the the reason I was talking about J.C. with folks in the HK film industry is that I had written a film script about a mentally handicapped child in HK, set in the beautiful Chi Lin Nunnery, and, because of "Danny", knew J.C. was interested in the subject, and so was trying to discover if he'd like to executive produce it ... and that's how I got the insider whisper that I shouldn't even try.
All this is very sad, yes, but off the subject because you want to know what's happened to make Our Own Beloved Jackie into this week's Threatdown?
It was last weekend's tirade in Taiwan! Have you heard about that? How he gave a speech as Hong Kong's representative at some China Trade Fair?
If you haven't, boy, is it bad! Unbelievably, he told China that it gives Hong Kong and Taiwan too much freedom and that it should clamp down and exert more "control". Then he upped the offensiveness factor by saying Chinese needed "control" because they can't cope with freedom.
Like, say what?
Hong Kong is furious and there's much talk about axing him from his role on the HK Tourism Board, taking away his "Hong Kong Icon" status and shutting him down and other things of that ilk. Kinder folk are asking "What did they do to you in America, Jackie, to make you hate freedom?" Less kind folk are saying "We don't need someone of J.C.'s status undermining our Basic Law, our Rule of Law, and our Constitutional Freedoms."
I'm siding with the meaner folk. You have no idea how frightening China is to us here in HK. Folks say "We are a mouse in the paws of a tiger!" and fret that all we have will any moment be swept away. And, yes, things are hard. China does do mean things to us to try to exert its control and the struggle to maintain our Constitutional Freedoms is on-going and strenuous. And now Macau has instituted Article 23 it's on the brink of becoming worse.
So, now this? Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, how could you!!!
Although warned it was coming, I was still shocked and didn't want to believe it, hoping it was something taken out of context, so I found and read the speech and, yes, a lot of it is truly frightening, given the extent to which Heroic Hong Kong already is fighting off China's controlling machinations. So we desperately don't need Our Own Icon doing this to us.
He also said lots of good stuff about how China needs to develop greater moral authority, and to stop producing toxic food, and he cried when he talked about the melamine found in baby formula, but nonetheless it wasn't enough to mitigate for the rest of it.
So, for this week's ...
It wasn't unexpected. Three years ago, folk deep in the heart of the HK film industry told me Jackie Chan had lost the plot; like Mohammed Ali had been hit in the head too often and was decidedly brain-damaged and consequently exercising truly poor judgment. They were saying also that he really wasn't up to making any more films but was going ahead anyway and they were dreading the results.
I found it all desperately sad and not just because I've been a fan since the earliest days, back when Jackie was still chasing chickens in all his films; back when he still was surrounded by "The Orphan Boys"; back when he was in the thrall of Golden Harvest; back when he was still an open-faced teenager.
I can't claim credit for discovering him so early. Keith was big into his films and I simply got sucked in. He first noticed him and became a fan after spotting Jackie's debut performance in "Enter the Dragon" where he plays a thug who registers pain when he gets kung-fued by Bruce Lee, and actually went to the trouble of finding out his name and was thrilled when he started making his own films and so, because they were never shown in Kiwi cinemas, went to considerable trouble hunting down and buying his own copies of every single film Jackie made.
And then Baby Jane saw those copies, got sucked in too and so also bought his films; good films, bad films, made no difference; as long as they were Jackie Chan films, she has them. She said what she found so attractive about them was that they all came from a position of love.
Mmmm, wonder if they buy "The Shinjuku Incident"?
And sliding completely off the topic to hand, I'm almost totally convinced that it was Jackie Chan's film "Danny" that, today, has us here in Hong Kong, with Keith teaching mentally handicapped children.
You most likely haven't seen "Danny" because this isn't the usual light-hearted J.C. fare and so failed at the box office and subsequently is very rarely copied and usually left off his filmography, but I highly recommend it because this is one hell'va powerful film. In it, Jackie wants to be a sailor so tries to find a school in Hong Kong to take in his mentally handicapped adult brother, Danny, hoping to save him from the triads. No regular school will have him and there simply aren't enough specialist schools in the entire city and the ones that do exist are full with achingly long waiting lists ... and so, yes, Jackie fails and the triads get their hands on Danny and he gets sucked into a life of crime and is killed. Heartbreaking stuff!
Knowing how much this film affected Keith, do you too find it rather "mmmm!" that when Keith had his huge mid-life crisis and decided he wanted to do something more meaningful with the rest of his life than teach English and Drama to increasingly hideous Australian teenagers, that he chose to come to Hong Kong to teach mentally-handicapped children? Definitely sus, right?
And, yes, "Danny" is very close to the truth because, in Hong Kong, with a population of nearly 7 million, there are only four specialist schools: one here in Wan Chai for the profoundly brain-damaged; Chi Lin Nunnery, which takes in 900; Keith's school which has 300 places; and one in Discovery Bay, which is for English speakers, with 5 students. And, yes, the triads hover around these schools recruiting for new members, and, yes, they get plenty: Keith says the moment a boy turns up with an expensive blond-tipped haircut, they know they've lost him. And they do indeed lose lots because the triads love them for their ability to do what they're told without asking questions, and the only other jobs, in all honestly, that these kids can get are dishwashers in restaurants and things of that ilk.
And if you want to know the the reason I was talking about J.C. with folks in the HK film industry is that I had written a film script about a mentally handicapped child in HK, set in the beautiful Chi Lin Nunnery, and, because of "Danny", knew J.C. was interested in the subject, and so was trying to discover if he'd like to executive produce it ... and that's how I got the insider whisper that I shouldn't even try.
All this is very sad, yes, but off the subject because you want to know what's happened to make Our Own Beloved Jackie into this week's Threatdown?
It was last weekend's tirade in Taiwan! Have you heard about that? How he gave a speech as Hong Kong's representative at some China Trade Fair?
If you haven't, boy, is it bad! Unbelievably, he told China that it gives Hong Kong and Taiwan too much freedom and that it should clamp down and exert more "control". Then he upped the offensiveness factor by saying Chinese needed "control" because they can't cope with freedom.
Like, say what?
Hong Kong is furious and there's much talk about axing him from his role on the HK Tourism Board, taking away his "Hong Kong Icon" status and shutting him down and other things of that ilk. Kinder folk are asking "What did they do to you in America, Jackie, to make you hate freedom?" Less kind folk are saying "We don't need someone of J.C.'s status undermining our Basic Law, our Rule of Law, and our Constitutional Freedoms."
I'm siding with the meaner folk. You have no idea how frightening China is to us here in HK. Folks say "We are a mouse in the paws of a tiger!" and fret that all we have will any moment be swept away. And, yes, things are hard. China does do mean things to us to try to exert its control and the struggle to maintain our Constitutional Freedoms is on-going and strenuous. And now Macau has instituted Article 23 it's on the brink of becoming worse.
So, now this? Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, how could you!!!
Although warned it was coming, I was still shocked and didn't want to believe it, hoping it was something taken out of context, so I found and read the speech and, yes, a lot of it is truly frightening, given the extent to which Heroic Hong Kong already is fighting off China's controlling machinations. So we desperately don't need Our Own Icon doing this to us.
He also said lots of good stuff about how China needs to develop greater moral authority, and to stop producing toxic food, and he cried when he talked about the melamine found in baby formula, but nonetheless it wasn't enough to mitigate for the rest of it.
So, for this week's ...
THREATDOWN
What can only be called Treachery
by Our Beloved HK Icon!
by Our Beloved HK Icon!
Please, please, please, Jackie, from a longtime fan, and from a city that loves you, PLEASE take it back!
Monday, April 20, 2009
A Silly Hong Kong Dream
I love very few things better than finding old stuff and restoring it and I do it whenever and wherever I can, and I get so thrilled when people notice that I'm good at it and ask me to, say, suggest ways to do up something they own or even their own houses, or even, like Baby Jane did last year, to do the whole thing myself. And I have long had a dream of finding a derelict building and turning it into something spectacular.
It's in the grounds now of the Government Supplies Department and if it wasn't totally out of bounds and locked behind a wall and ugly gates, to reach it you have to find it behind this mess!
This sort of thing goes around in my head constantly; seeing things and figuring out ways to make them perfect. And, totally, I cannot pass this particular building without stopping for a while, often in the cafe over the way, and planning what I'd do with it if it were mine:
Totally, this would have to be
my favourite derelict building
in the whole of Hong Kong.
It's the old bachelor's quarters for the unmarried Colonial Officers from back in the days of The Raj.
Do you love it? I mean, just look at that roof line:
Have you ever seen
anything so sublime?
Gorgeous place, huh! And look what they've done with it:
And if you ignore the signs and sneak in through those gates and don't get caught by the guards ...
There in the background.
Can you see it?
Love? Do you too want to save it? I think, in a perfect world, someone nice would simply say "It's yours. Do what you want with it!" And if they were to add "And here's a blank cheque so you can aim for uncompromised wonderfulness." ?
Mmmmm, now there's a dream!
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Problem of Books in Hong Kong
As you know, Keith and I are both avaricious readers, so it is a huge problem to us that here in Hong Kong books are so expensive you practically have to remortgage your house to buy the latest best seller.
However, we've discovered several solutions to this problem:
First off, HK is chokka with Libraries. Every suburb has a little one somewhere, and there's always our spectacular ...
... in Amoy Lane, off Johnston Road. As you can see, it's called The Book Attic and it's part of eco-friendly Jennifer's plan to save the planet.
Central Library ...
... in Causeway Bay next to Victoria Park.
Inside.
The glass lift to the top floor.
I'm always shocked at just how full all these libraries always are, and by people reading such strange books too, like old Chinese gentlemen reading up on Latin names for New Zealand trees (like WHY???).
Secondly, if you are like us and want to actually own the books you love, you can buy secondhand books very cheaply since the various Oxfam's outlets have shelves of them for sale.
And there is always "Flow":
The downstairs entrance.
"Flow" is in Soho, just off the escalators, and if you are having trouble finding it, the door is right next to the big dummy of ...
Ivan the Kozak
"Flow" is the place where ex-pats dump their books when they leave our fair city, which means, consequently, the shop is literally packed to the rafters with cheap books.
And, finally, we are blessed that, exactly one year ago yesterday, Jennifer Li opened her book club just across the road from us ...
And, finally, we are blessed that, exactly one year ago yesterday, Jennifer Li opened her book club just across the road from us ...
... in Amoy Lane, off Johnston Road. As you can see, it's called The Book Attic and it's part of eco-friendly Jennifer's plan to save the planet.
The mission statement.
How Jennifer's book club works is that you donate unwanted books to the shop in order to earn points and you get those points taken off the price of any books you subsequently buy.
But there's more: It's also a reading club where folks with special interests lend their specialist library for a month. You aren't able to buy these ones, obviously, however you are welcome to drop by and browse through them to your heart's content.
Currently, there is an amazing specialist library on loan from ...
Cooloo the Magician.
... who has a fabulous collection of books on Magic on loan to Jennifer.
In fact, this is only a small sample of his magic library, so there's more there to be seen. Most magicians don't like you knowing how things are done, but Cooloo is different and will be thrilled if you come by to check it all out.
So there you go. If you're interested in Magic, now is the time to drop by The Book Attic.
However anytime is a good time to drop by if you're just interested in BOOKS!
But there's more: It's also a reading club where folks with special interests lend their specialist library for a month. You aren't able to buy these ones, obviously, however you are welcome to drop by and browse through them to your heart's content.
Currently, there is an amazing specialist library on loan from ...
Cooloo the Magician.(Phone 91505472)
... who has a fabulous collection of books on Magic on loan to Jennifer.
In fact, this is only a small sample of his magic library, so there's more there to be seen. Most magicians don't like you knowing how things are done, but Cooloo is different and will be thrilled if you come by to check it all out.So there you go. If you're interested in Magic, now is the time to drop by The Book Attic.
However anytime is a good time to drop by if you're just interested in BOOKS!
Saturday, April 18, 2009
"Cry Me A River"
Yes, I'm jumping on the bandwagon here but I can't help myself. Cathlene sent the link and said she couldn't stop crying and that I had to listen and so I did and, boy, it got me right in the throat and I bawled my eyes out, and, yes, sent the link around to everyone, and have received so many replies saying receiver heard and couldn't stop crying either.
Naturally, I'm talking here about Susan Boyle's stunning performance on "Britain's Got Talent" and I would have placed it here only they've disabled the "embed" so I'm posting this one instead.
This is the song Susan Boyle recorded ten years ago. It astonishes me because no one picked her up. I cannot believe that we've all been denied a decade of hearing her sing. Honestly, record jerks are such stupid shallow jerks, aren't they!
Mind you, we've also got Te Vaka out there for twenty years with the most exquisite songs and the most incredible musical talent, unable to get a record deal ... and it wasn't until the late great George Harrison heard them and swept aside the record company TOSH that they finally had the chance to make it.
Or Keith's little brother Paul, who is such a talented musician and songwriter (his latest song is the next post) who can't get a hearing from anyone in the industry. Or Paul's son Reuben who is an absolutely extraordinary musician and who can't get a break so works as a sound engineer instead. Oh, and he's gifted at that too, but it's not what he truly wants.
And then there's me ... but let's not go there.
Susan Boyle! Amazing! I think she'll become an icon and role model for all of us who've ... well, spent so many years getting screwed over and rejected and dumped on by those TOSH-BAGS in our industry of choice and yet still have the audacity to dream!
Later:
Was sent an e-mail on this topic so wise and wonderful that I really must share it:
I think you're confusing sentiment and emotion with talent, Denise!
We ALL give up our dreams to some degree. We all know people like Susan, who've "put aside" her or his own life to pursue something else like looking after her or his ill mother or father. We all know people to whom life has dealt an "unfair" hand, whether physically, emotionally, mentally or geographically. There is no great difference between a bullied, quiet, mildly brain-damaged unemployed little girl like Susan who pushes aside her dreams and hopes and fantasies to follow one path at the expense of others so she can look after her mum and do a bit of Meals-on-Wheels volunteer work, and the dozens of beautiful, brilliant, talented, extroverted artists/musicians/performers/actresses I know who've shut the door on their own artistic dreams and ambitions to study hard, work hard in unrewarding jobs they hate but do so to keep bringing home the bacon to their families because they need the money.
Life is about selfless sacrifice, on a continual basis. One of the issues I've always had with Feminism as a generality is the fact that the world is, and always has been, full of men who suffer the same fate of being held back from realising their true potentials because of prejudices and labels and restrictions and obligations and legalities. Do you think that gentle, creative, inventive, artistic, musical men like my father, conscripted against his will into World War II and sent to the war in New Guinea only to come back completely broken and spend the rest of his life a shaken shell of his former self, working five and a half days a week to support a family -- his own wife and children AND his mum and younger sisters -- before dying relatively young from war-related cancer got a fair go? My father wanted to be an inventor. He was amazingly good at it, too. But real life got in the way, unfortunately -- as it does for all of us.
Sometimes we make our choices, but most of the time our choices are made for us. For ALL of us.
And the fact the Susan is being marketed as a virgin is just about the most offensive thing I have ever heard. "Of course she's a virgin," people say. "Look how ugly she is!" Like that isn't the most insulting exploitation thrust on any woman. The choice of song, I would happily place money on, was Simon Cowell's alone -- chosen for MAXIMUM emotional effect on television. If she'd sung something NOT Andrew Lloyd-Webber-esque and less anthem-like and more poppy, like, say, a nondescript Shania Twain song, would anyone have listened? Did anyone listen when she recorded "Cry Me a River" nine years ago?
Susan's performance of the Dream song tears at my heart, but interestingly it's the line about the hell she's living that irritates me the most. We as an audience are interpreting HER interpretation of the song far too literally. By all accounts Susan is a happy middle-aged woman who lives in a village in the same four-bedroom house she grew up in. She has family, and friends, and a cat, and a social life. She goes out to local bars and sings karaoke. She's made a record. She does volunteer work. She is not some sad lonely isolate who deserves our pity. She is NOT living a hell. She's a woman who suffered mild brain damage when she was born (old mother, oxygen deprivation) and was bullied as a child because she was "quiet". So far, she sounds no different from many people I know. She does not deserve to be labelled a virgin (whether true or not) any more than any other female performer on the show deserves to be labelled a slut.
We don't know the first thing about her, other than those few things. We are simply projecting our own values and choices and judgements and pity on her, which is offensive enough. We are assuming from her song that she bemoans her lot in life, and her unmarried status, and her unemployment, and her role as a carer to her late mother. We call her "noble" and we infer that life has passed her by. We have put her in a box labelled "Scottish virgin, lives with cat." She is a mythic archetype. We have labelled her with the crudest and most reductionist labels we know.
And, long before I read the article, I thought, "She sings as well as plenty of people I've seen perform in the Charters Towers Players, or the Cloncurry Amateur Theatre Society, or the Ipswich Little Theatre Group over the years. And she looks exactly as unattractive as most of them."
Hell, she sings as well as my sister.
As I've said before, I am not condemning Susan Boyle in any way. Presumably she wanted a chance to chase away the tigers, and it looks like she got it. But she was clearly manipulated by the entire reality television system. Marketing any performer has NEVER been just about the voice -- it's always been about their whole package. And, overwhelmingly, an audience prefers its performers to be attractive. The only difference between Susan Boyle and someone like Shania Twain is that one looks good and the other doesn't. It distresses me that the biggest part of Susan's appeal for marketers is that she IS unattractive, and that unconventional point alone then becomes the "hook". Yes, we can pretend that all the dowdy middle-aged menopausal women everywhere finally have a voice, when in fact it's fuck-all to do with empowerment and claiming their rightful places up their with the gorgeous goddesses finally, and all about just more manipulation by producers and marketers and manufacturers to put an ugly girl out there for public consumption. She's Janis Joplin or Amy Winehouse without the heroin addiction.
So, Denise, I remain cynical.
Love
P.S. Hey, on that subject, do you remember that bit in "The Andy Warhol Diaries" where he says "I don't know why Lisa Minelli imagines she's a singer. She's so ugly."
Naturally, I'm talking here about Susan Boyle's stunning performance on "Britain's Got Talent" and I would have placed it here only they've disabled the "embed" so I'm posting this one instead.
This is the song Susan Boyle recorded ten years ago. It astonishes me because no one picked her up. I cannot believe that we've all been denied a decade of hearing her sing. Honestly, record jerks are such stupid shallow jerks, aren't they!
Mind you, we've also got Te Vaka out there for twenty years with the most exquisite songs and the most incredible musical talent, unable to get a record deal ... and it wasn't until the late great George Harrison heard them and swept aside the record company TOSH that they finally had the chance to make it.
Or Keith's little brother Paul, who is such a talented musician and songwriter (his latest song is the next post) who can't get a hearing from anyone in the industry. Or Paul's son Reuben who is an absolutely extraordinary musician and who can't get a break so works as a sound engineer instead. Oh, and he's gifted at that too, but it's not what he truly wants.
And then there's me ... but let's not go there.
Susan Boyle! Amazing! I think she'll become an icon and role model for all of us who've ... well, spent so many years getting screwed over and rejected and dumped on by those TOSH-BAGS in our industry of choice and yet still have the audacity to dream!
Later:
Was sent an e-mail on this topic so wise and wonderful that I really must share it:
I think you're confusing sentiment and emotion with talent, Denise!
We ALL give up our dreams to some degree. We all know people like Susan, who've "put aside" her or his own life to pursue something else like looking after her or his ill mother or father. We all know people to whom life has dealt an "unfair" hand, whether physically, emotionally, mentally or geographically. There is no great difference between a bullied, quiet, mildly brain-damaged unemployed little girl like Susan who pushes aside her dreams and hopes and fantasies to follow one path at the expense of others so she can look after her mum and do a bit of Meals-on-Wheels volunteer work, and the dozens of beautiful, brilliant, talented, extroverted artists/musicians/performers/actresses I know who've shut the door on their own artistic dreams and ambitions to study hard, work hard in unrewarding jobs they hate but do so to keep bringing home the bacon to their families because they need the money.
Life is about selfless sacrifice, on a continual basis. One of the issues I've always had with Feminism as a generality is the fact that the world is, and always has been, full of men who suffer the same fate of being held back from realising their true potentials because of prejudices and labels and restrictions and obligations and legalities. Do you think that gentle, creative, inventive, artistic, musical men like my father, conscripted against his will into World War II and sent to the war in New Guinea only to come back completely broken and spend the rest of his life a shaken shell of his former self, working five and a half days a week to support a family -- his own wife and children AND his mum and younger sisters -- before dying relatively young from war-related cancer got a fair go? My father wanted to be an inventor. He was amazingly good at it, too. But real life got in the way, unfortunately -- as it does for all of us.
Sometimes we make our choices, but most of the time our choices are made for us. For ALL of us.
And the fact the Susan is being marketed as a virgin is just about the most offensive thing I have ever heard. "Of course she's a virgin," people say. "Look how ugly she is!" Like that isn't the most insulting exploitation thrust on any woman. The choice of song, I would happily place money on, was Simon Cowell's alone -- chosen for MAXIMUM emotional effect on television. If she'd sung something NOT Andrew Lloyd-Webber-esque and less anthem-like and more poppy, like, say, a nondescript Shania Twain song, would anyone have listened? Did anyone listen when she recorded "Cry Me a River" nine years ago?
Susan's performance of the Dream song tears at my heart, but interestingly it's the line about the hell she's living that irritates me the most. We as an audience are interpreting HER interpretation of the song far too literally. By all accounts Susan is a happy middle-aged woman who lives in a village in the same four-bedroom house she grew up in. She has family, and friends, and a cat, and a social life. She goes out to local bars and sings karaoke. She's made a record. She does volunteer work. She is not some sad lonely isolate who deserves our pity. She is NOT living a hell. She's a woman who suffered mild brain damage when she was born (old mother, oxygen deprivation) and was bullied as a child because she was "quiet". So far, she sounds no different from many people I know. She does not deserve to be labelled a virgin (whether true or not) any more than any other female performer on the show deserves to be labelled a slut.
We don't know the first thing about her, other than those few things. We are simply projecting our own values and choices and judgements and pity on her, which is offensive enough. We are assuming from her song that she bemoans her lot in life, and her unmarried status, and her unemployment, and her role as a carer to her late mother. We call her "noble" and we infer that life has passed her by. We have put her in a box labelled "Scottish virgin, lives with cat." She is a mythic archetype. We have labelled her with the crudest and most reductionist labels we know.
And, long before I read the article, I thought, "She sings as well as plenty of people I've seen perform in the Charters Towers Players, or the Cloncurry Amateur Theatre Society, or the Ipswich Little Theatre Group over the years. And she looks exactly as unattractive as most of them."
Hell, she sings as well as my sister.
As I've said before, I am not condemning Susan Boyle in any way. Presumably she wanted a chance to chase away the tigers, and it looks like she got it. But she was clearly manipulated by the entire reality television system. Marketing any performer has NEVER been just about the voice -- it's always been about their whole package. And, overwhelmingly, an audience prefers its performers to be attractive. The only difference between Susan Boyle and someone like Shania Twain is that one looks good and the other doesn't. It distresses me that the biggest part of Susan's appeal for marketers is that she IS unattractive, and that unconventional point alone then becomes the "hook". Yes, we can pretend that all the dowdy middle-aged menopausal women everywhere finally have a voice, when in fact it's fuck-all to do with empowerment and claiming their rightful places up their with the gorgeous goddesses finally, and all about just more manipulation by producers and marketers and manufacturers to put an ugly girl out there for public consumption. She's Janis Joplin or Amy Winehouse without the heroin addiction.
So, Denise, I remain cynical.
Love
P.S. Hey, on that subject, do you remember that bit in "The Andy Warhol Diaries" where he says "I don't know why Lisa Minelli imagines she's a singer. She's so ugly."
Thursday, April 16, 2009
The Many Faces
How cool is this! Keith's younger brother has just written a song. It's about the war in Gaza.
Check it out:
Fabulous, huh! And aren't you proud to know the composer/singer/arranger/etc?
Check it out:
Fabulous, huh! And aren't you proud to know the composer/singer/arranger/etc?
An Article on Fiji
This is my position on what's happening in Fiji. Please read it before making any pronouncements to me on what you think is happening because ... well, I'm sick of having to justify my position:
Article from: The Australian
LIKE many military leaders before him, Frank Bainimarama can be autocratic, stubborn, wilful, obstinate and disdainful of the traditional nuances of civilian politics.
He may also be the best hope, albeit in five years' time, of a democratic Fiji for all its citizens and not just the amply endowed indigenous majority.
If that seems a ludicrous proposition when constitutions are being abrogated and the media proscribed, it's time to consider some basic truths that seem to have been overlooked in the "good guy, bad guy" narrative that invariably passes for analysis in much of the Australian media.
The bad guys, of course, are held to be Bainimarama and his patron, Fiji's octogenarian President, Josefa Iloilo, who have defied the courts by ruling out any popular vote until they can change the electoral system.
The good guys are those calling for an immediate election: a coalition of lawyers, human-rights activists and elements of the local media, plus the man Bainimarama deposed at gunpoint in 2006, former prime minister Laisenia Qarase.
It's time to dispense with this simplistic premise because a compelling argument can be made that, in fact, the reverse is true; that Bainimarama and Iloilo, for all their flaws, are embarked on the more worthy crusade. Or certainly more worthy than they're being given credit for by their burgeoning number of foreign opponents.
The Fiji saga, by its very nature, defies simplicity, yet stripped to its bare essentials presents the international community with a stark choice between upholding the principle of democracy now and sacrificing racial equality in the process. Wait five years - maybe less if some international agreement could be brokered - and we might get both.
Bainimarama and Iloilo have decided that the brand of democracy Qarase champions makes second-class citizens of the 40 per cent of Fiji's population who aren't indigenous, and is not conducive to the development of a thriving, modern state. Qarase and his ilk, they've determined, can only be kept at bay if the electoral system is changed from one that favours indigenous Fijians to one that gives every vote equal weight.
So that is what they intend to do before the country goes to the polls again in 2014, and no amount of hectoring or sanctions is likely to deter them.
In the meantime, the regime needs to embark on that electoral reform, behave less erratically, cease harassing the media, expelling publishers, hounding its opponents and put its case far more cogently than it has.
Australia, in turn, needs to listen, assist in the electoral reform process and do all it can to prevent the collapse of the Fiji economy, which will hurt everyone but the elite and bolster our immigration queues when we can least afford it.
Why is Australia and the rest of the international community insisting on an immediate expression of the public will when Fiji's electoral playing field is yet to be levelled? That's the question that not only frustrates and angers Bainimarama, and fuels his increasing petulance, but perplexes many Fiji-born Australians such as myself.
For all the voluble calls by Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith for "a return to democracy in Fiji", they seem oblivious to the fact that there's never been real democracy in Fiji. That's right, never.
Certainly not the brand of democracy taken for granted in Australia, New Zealand, the US and in the European Union, those now casting themselves as righteous crusaders against Bainimarama's supposedly despotic rule.
There's no one-man, one-vote in Fiji but a contorted, distorted electoral system along racial lines that was always designed, in practice, to ensure indigenous supremacy.
This was a parting gesture of the British at independence in 1970 to their loyal Fijian subjects, along with guaranteed indigenous ownership of more than 80 per cent of Fiji's land area. It's certainly in stark contrast with the colonial dispossession of the native populations of Australia and NZ, and may account for the fact that many homes in republican Fiji still sport photos of the Queen.
No non-indigenous Fiji citizen can become the country's president, and just one,
Mahendra Chaudhry, made it to the prime minister's office before he was removed at gunpoint in 2000.
Nor is the president elected. He is chosen by an unelected hereditary body called the Great Council of Chiefs, the apex of a social order that insists indigenous rights are paramount.
Fiji citizens of Indian, European, mixed race or other island heritage are disadvantaged comparatively in everything from land rights to "positive discrimination" programs in employment and education that solely benefit the indigenous majority. They even have to suffer the apartheid-style humiliation of listing their race on immigration arrival documents.
Would Australians and New Zealanders accept this? Not on your nelly.
So why the chorus of regional disapproval when an indigenous Fijian, Bainimarama, finally decides enough is enough?
Forty per cent of the population not only lives daily with this disparity of rights but, in the main, accepts it.
Why? Partly in the spirit of acknowledging the importance to indigenous Fijians of their vanua (land and traditional ties) but mainly as the price of ensuring racial harmony. It's this largely unspoken consensus that's underpinned whatever success Fiji has had as a functioning multiracial nation to date.
Yet it also depends on indigenous Fijians displaying their own generosity of spirit or, more pertinently, not being too greedy in sequestering all the spoils for themselves.
What Qarase, Bainimarama's chief political opponent, did before he was overthrown in the 2006 coup was to cross an important line.
By insisting that indigenous Fijians gain coastal rights as well as land rights, and be paid cash by other citizens to swim in, fish in and even cross their seas, he demanded more from the other races than many regarded as equitable and fair.
By doing so, he recklessly jeopardised the delicate consensus on which Fiji's future as a viable independent entity depends.
Just as bad, in Bainimarama's eyes, Qarase's coastal bill raised the spectre of envy and conflict between Fijians themselves, for those living in remote areas would never be able to glean the riches available, for instance, to those holding the tourist industry to ransom.
For all their comparative advantages, many ordinary indigenous Fijians still maintain a barely disguised sense of grievance against other races, perpetuating the myth of a threat to their way of life.
This was the big lie of Fiji's first coup in 1987, the preposterous spectre of then military strongman Sitiveni Rabuka claiming indigenous interests were threatened because an indigenous Fijian, Timoci Bavadra, was surrounded by a brace of Indian cabinet members.
Ordinary Fijians should be asking their own leaders why they're still disadvantaged, because if they are being fleeced, it must be by their own elite who have been in control since independence. The political instability of recent years is all part of a crude tug of war between competing Fijian chiefs, career politicians and (mostly) wannabe business types for the spoils that come with government: patronage, leverage, the dispensing of contracts and the accumulation of wealth.
The apotheosis of this was the 2000 coup led by the strutting George Speight, who was merely a puppet for a gaggle of opportunistic chiefs and commoners who used the Indians as scapegoats in a sordid lunge for power.
In an obscene echo of their atavistic past, the Speight clique trashed the supposed citadel of local democracy, the parliament, took hostage then prime minister Chaudhry, and proceeded to engage in an eight-week orgy of drunkenness and sex.
Enter the hero of that hour, but the man Rudd and much of the international community now casts as a villain nine years on.
Bainimarama, as military chief, tricked Speight into surrendering, and turned him over to the courts to be dealt with for treason. He also had to contend with a bloody mutiny in his own ranks in which he barely escaped with his life. Yet no one seems to ask a simple question. If he really wanted to be Fiji's dictator, why didn't Bainimarama impose his will then, when a grateful nation would have strewn garlands at his feet?
Instead, history tells us, he handed over power to Qarase, a one-time merchant banker whom he trusted to stabilise the country, lay to rest the racial bogey once and for all and return Fiji to a semblance of democracy.
What did Qarase do? Not just extend indigenous supremacy but bring some of the key players in the 2000 coup, who Bainimarama wanted punished, into the heart of government. Qarase got plenty of warnings to back off but didn't. It was only a matter of time before Bainimarama's fiery temper snapped.
Qarase never believed one of his own would oppose him, but it was a grave miscalculation based on his own ignorance of Bainimarama's background and attitudes.
Most of the Fijian elite come from exclusively Fijian schools but Bainimarama grew up with other races at Suva's Marist Brothers College, where the emphasis was on multiracial tolerance and nation building. His friends say the relationships he forged there are real and enduring.
He's said to be gripped with a sense of destiny yet has some glaring blind spots, such as a tendency to shoot his mouth off when theoccasion calls for at least a modicum of diplo-speak.
More serious for even Bainimarama's staunchest supporters are some appalling lapses of judgment, including the latest, muzzling the local media and expelling foreign journalists such as the ABC's Sean Dorney.
The most glaring was when he reinstated his brother-in-law, Francis Kean, as head of the navy after Kean spent nearly two months in jail for killing an uncle of the groom at the wedding of Bainimarama's daughter.
"What's wrong with that?", Bainimarama has testily asked interlocutors. Plenty.
Yet for many Fijian citizens, the military chief remains their best hope for a meaningful stake in the future, and if he can deliver on his promise of equal rights, all will be forgiven.
It's certainly a striking paradox that having forged vibrant, multicultural nations from their own monocultural origins, Australia and NZ should be condemning Bainimarama for trying to do the same in Fiji.
Graham Davis is a Fiji-born journalist who reported successive coups for the Nine Network's Sunday program and is now a principal of Grubstreet Media.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Handbag Heaven, Guangzhou
One of the little stories I mentioned in an earlier post is this one, although I probably shouldn't be telling you it in here:
In one of my earlier jaunts up to Guangzhou, Halley took me to this off-the-beaten-track serious shopping mall: don't know the real name but I immediately christened it Handbag Heaven and that's even before I discovered the secret at the heart.
The first visit, well, I was so impressed. Many storeys tall, it was all labyrinthine with winding aisles and all these little shops all selling the widest and most beautiful range of every type of accessory - shoes, sunglasses, handbags and purses - imaginable. We had only an hour for lunch so couldn't see much, but what I did see I totally enjoyed, and I especially loved the unexpected sight of all these "traditionally built", traditionally clothed African women shopping in there, all swapping their plain rubber flip flops for very fancy leather flipflops. Like, serious upgrading of image stuff!
And what I totally loved was ... well, during our last visit to New Zealand, Baby Jane's kids fell in love with these gorgeous jewelled purses and were pleading with me to buy them each one, but ... pshaw! ... they were NZ$130.00 each so ... hey, I can do mean!
Yet here I was, in Guangzhou's Handbag Heaven when I came across a shop selling them ... at 30 yuan a piece. That's less than A$5.00 ... so I instantly fauxed-up my "Best Auntie on Earth" and selected three. And yes indeed, they were thrilled to bits but instantly put them into their "too good to use" drawer, which wasn't the idea at all.
Although I must say I do understand the "too good to use" drawer. Here's something I have in mine:
My ostrich-skin Hermes Birkin to-die-for!
It's HK dollars, OK!
HONG KONG dollars!
You have to divide by six. And I didn't pay that much anyway. As you can see from the calculator I'm haggling like crazy.
Anyway, this trip, Halley said she'd gone back to Handbag Heaven when she'd had more time and she'd explored for a whole day and made a mighty discovery that she had to share with me ... so we dashed over there instead of doing lunch.
Anyway, I started to film the adventure, but almost instantly I was told to switch off and we were followed by security so I wasn't game to film anymore ... except for a single shot when we finally got where we were going because the irony was so overwhelming:
I cannot tell you where this miracle discovery is situated because, like you can see, the place is a labyrinth, but I do know that we walked up stairs and down stairs and through narrow, dark doorways, and along many dim corridors ... and we did ask people some of whom pointed and some of whom said they didn't know what we were talking about ... but eventually we passed through a narrow doorway and came across an entire section that consisted of a series of shops ... all selling Triple AAA Superplus of every brand imaginable, of every style imaginable, of every single thing your heart has ever yearned for.
And in there we saw many Italian businessmen dealing, negotiating, arguing with various shop-keepers, wanting to place large orders for Italian luxury goods, and the sellers all saying they already had deals with various Florentine businesses and couldn't break their exclusivity clauses ... which lets us know something very interesting.
It also lets us know that, well, you know how people are always saying that the reason those fake luxury goods you see in Florentine markets always look so real is that ... whisper, whisper ... back of a truck! From what I witnessed is this is a very nice rumour that doesn't have a winsy bit of truth behind it. What it does have behind it is knowledge of the labyrinthine Handbag Heaven of Guangzhou.
In one of my earlier jaunts up to Guangzhou, Halley took me to this off-the-beaten-track serious shopping mall: don't know the real name but I immediately christened it Handbag Heaven and that's even before I discovered the secret at the heart.
The first visit, well, I was so impressed. Many storeys tall, it was all labyrinthine with winding aisles and all these little shops all selling the widest and most beautiful range of every type of accessory - shoes, sunglasses, handbags and purses - imaginable. We had only an hour for lunch so couldn't see much, but what I did see I totally enjoyed, and I especially loved the unexpected sight of all these "traditionally built", traditionally clothed African women shopping in there, all swapping their plain rubber flip flops for very fancy leather flipflops. Like, serious upgrading of image stuff!
And what I totally loved was ... well, during our last visit to New Zealand, Baby Jane's kids fell in love with these gorgeous jewelled purses and were pleading with me to buy them each one, but ... pshaw! ... they were NZ$130.00 each so ... hey, I can do mean!
Yet here I was, in Guangzhou's Handbag Heaven when I came across a shop selling them ... at 30 yuan a piece. That's less than A$5.00 ... so I instantly fauxed-up my "Best Auntie on Earth" and selected three. And yes indeed, they were thrilled to bits but instantly put them into their "too good to use" drawer, which wasn't the idea at all.
Although I must say I do understand the "too good to use" drawer. Here's something I have in mine:
My ostrich-skin Hermes Birkin to-die-for!And please never ever tell Keith this, but double-click to check it out:
It's HK dollars, OK!HONG KONG dollars!
You have to divide by six. And I didn't pay that much anyway. As you can see from the calculator I'm haggling like crazy.
Anyway, this trip, Halley said she'd gone back to Handbag Heaven when she'd had more time and she'd explored for a whole day and made a mighty discovery that she had to share with me ... so we dashed over there instead of doing lunch.
Anyway, I started to film the adventure, but almost instantly I was told to switch off and we were followed by security so I wasn't game to film anymore ... except for a single shot when we finally got where we were going because the irony was so overwhelming:
I cannot tell you where this miracle discovery is situated because, like you can see, the place is a labyrinth, but I do know that we walked up stairs and down stairs and through narrow, dark doorways, and along many dim corridors ... and we did ask people some of whom pointed and some of whom said they didn't know what we were talking about ... but eventually we passed through a narrow doorway and came across an entire section that consisted of a series of shops ... all selling Triple AAA Superplus of every brand imaginable, of every style imaginable, of every single thing your heart has ever yearned for.
And in there we saw many Italian businessmen dealing, negotiating, arguing with various shop-keepers, wanting to place large orders for Italian luxury goods, and the sellers all saying they already had deals with various Florentine businesses and couldn't break their exclusivity clauses ... which lets us know something very interesting.
It also lets us know that, well, you know how people are always saying that the reason those fake luxury goods you see in Florentine markets always look so real is that ... whisper, whisper ... back of a truck! From what I witnessed is this is a very nice rumour that doesn't have a winsy bit of truth behind it. What it does have behind it is knowledge of the labyrinthine Handbag Heaven of Guangzhou.
One Night In Guangzhou
My very clever Keith has just made the first of what I hope will be many nano-films of my footage of my last trip up to Guangzhou. Here it is:
Yes, I know. I'm shocking ... but isn't Keith very, very clever.
Yes, I know. I'm shocking ... but isn't Keith very, very clever.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
What Kills Us This Week!
I've been away so I'm not up on The Vibe for this week, however the papers are reporting much anger that HK people are in Thailand for these holidays despite the Travel Warnings. Everyone's saying "We said not to go!" and "It's all your own fault if you get in trouble!" but, because this is HK and we're endlessly nice, Legco's still saying that they'll send planes for our citizens if the violence escalates and they can't get regular flights to come home.
However the real Threatdown is a long way from here: Fiji! Fiji! Fiji! Isa! Isa! Isa!
Actually, have you noticed that trouble in Fiji always occurs simultaneously with trouble in Thailand? Check it out! It's almost becoming a joke how they're aways there, the two matching stories, side-by-side, in newspapers, and, seriously, the stories are usually so similiar. And I must say, the very best coverage I read of this last Fiji coup was in the Bangkok newspapers. We were in Thailand at the time and it was hard getting news of what was happening around us, however, wow!, there wasn't a problem finding out what was happening in Fiji. It was like, because they were being censored reporting their own coup, they were doing Fiji's instead ... and it was so thorough and indepth, I kept the article.
So that's this week's choice for:
However the real Threatdown is a long way from here: Fiji! Fiji! Fiji! Isa! Isa! Isa!
Actually, have you noticed that trouble in Fiji always occurs simultaneously with trouble in Thailand? Check it out! It's almost becoming a joke how they're aways there, the two matching stories, side-by-side, in newspapers, and, seriously, the stories are usually so similiar. And I must say, the very best coverage I read of this last Fiji coup was in the Bangkok newspapers. We were in Thailand at the time and it was hard getting news of what was happening around us, however, wow!, there wasn't a problem finding out what was happening in Fiji. It was like, because they were being censored reporting their own coup, they were doing Fiji's instead ... and it was so thorough and indepth, I kept the article.
So that's this week's choice for:
THREATDOWN
The CIA running
Dirty Tricks for Thailand and Fiji
out of the same office ...
and they do duplicates of everything to save money!
Dirty Tricks for Thailand and Fiji
out of the same office ...
and they do duplicates of everything to save money!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Back from China!
Got back late last night after a really great time. I'm liking Guangzhou more every time I go up there. I love the greenery and all the trees and I especially love those amazing roof trees which, you'll recall, I wrote lots about in my first post on this enormous city because they astonished me so much. In fact, why don't I just find that post and link it in here to save having to write about this all again. (Gosh, I've written 20 posts on this city.)
As for the rest, I've been there so often now I'm not sure I'm noticing anything new and different; at least nothing worth writing about. I now have a routine and each visit do the usual things; when I'm not working I drop by beautiful Shamian Dao because I love it and then Li Wan Square to monitor the creeping Ginzo-ness ... and then a wander around the financial district and maybe a trip or two around markets.
However, what is new is that Keith got me a gorgeous new pressie ...
Can you tell what it is?
As for the rest, I've been there so often now I'm not sure I'm noticing anything new and different; at least nothing worth writing about. I now have a routine and each visit do the usual things; when I'm not working I drop by beautiful Shamian Dao because I love it and then Li Wan Square to monitor the creeping Ginzo-ness ... and then a wander around the financial district and maybe a trip or two around markets.
However, what is new is that Keith got me a gorgeous new pressie ...
Can you tell what it is?No, it's not an electric shaver, although I did hear someone ask that of the person beside them. They were speaking Chinese, but "electric shaver" is the same in both languages so, just guessing, I think what she said "Why is that foreign devil pointing that electric shaver at me?"
How it works!
How it works!Can you see what it is? It's a movie camera! Isn't it gorgeous! I love it although it has so little weight it's hard to keep steady. And, well, apparently there's some war between Sanyo and Apple and Apple doesn't allow you to download your Sanyo-film into their whateveritscalled ... however I have a very smart husband who realised that all you had to do was put the memory card into our big camera and voila!, the war between Mr Apple and Mr Sanyo is no longer our problem.
But isn't it fabulous! Needless to say, I ran off heaps of film, so you will be seeing my nano-films the moment they are edited. Don't expect much. If you've seen any of the previous films I've made of my travels, you'll know that I'm the most incompetent film-maker ever ...
Remember this one?
However, I've asked Keith to edit my latest footage for me so at least that part of it will be competent!
I do have lots of stories ... actually, no, only a couple ... about this trip, but Hubby is hassling me to get off the computer because he has some new idea about how he wants to do these transititions, so I'd better be off.
But isn't it fabulous! Needless to say, I ran off heaps of film, so you will be seeing my nano-films the moment they are edited. Don't expect much. If you've seen any of the previous films I've made of my travels, you'll know that I'm the most incompetent film-maker ever ...
Remember this one?
However, I've asked Keith to edit my latest footage for me so at least that part of it will be competent!
I do have lots of stories ... actually, no, only a couple ... about this trip, but Hubby is hassling me to get off the computer because he has some new idea about how he wants to do these transititions, so I'd better be off.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Very Happy Easter to you all!
Am off to China for several days for work and so won't be blogging until I get back. Thus, in the interim ...
Wrong one! I meant to post this one:
I wish a very Happy Easter to you all.
Wrong one! I meant to post this one:
I wish a very Happy Easter to you all.
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