Green Island, North Queensland

Currently on Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef:

Jetty at Green Island.

It's a ferry-ride away from Cairns ...

Ferry berthed in Cairns!

Cairns under an ominous sky!

... to a little island ...... that's officially a nature reserve but which has a resort in the centre ...

Entrance to the resort!

The Rooms
The verandas!

... and surrounded by endless miles of coral reefs. Sounds yummy, right? Lucky us, right?

Would you believe it's freezing cold with endless brutal squalls and rainstorms ...

... yet another rainstorm comes in!

... and the light jumper and "a little cardigan for nights", all I thought I'd need, are hardly adquate so I can't stop shivering. And the winds!

Heron sheltering from the wind.

Jane and Talei
sheltering from the wind.

We've just come back from a hike around the island and, honest!, the wind ripped the sunglasses from off my face and flew them right down the length of the beach, and every time I tried to have a smoke the wind whizzed the cigarette out of my hand and down the sleeve of my jumper. Not fun!

Gave up 3/4 of the way round
and hiked back through the jungle instead!

However, from the photos, you can see for yourselves just how pretty the place could be if the skies weren't so grey and the sea not so ominous.

Pretty, yes?

Would love to go scuba diving but the thought of getting wet when it's this cold is so yuck I won't even swim. Baby Jane keeps talking about grabbing a couple of sun loungers and staking ourselves out on the beach for a few hours ... but she's either barking mad or spent too long in New Zealand so has lost her sense of perspective ...



... as has everybody from the Northern-most bits of the Northern Hemisphere:
Can you believe it, all the folk from Europe are running around in bikinis and little sunsuits, so they're all obviously barking mad as well.

Still, it's lovely to be doing this and it's so wonderful of Jane to take us here ...

Saint Jane!

... to her own special place where she spent her own honeymoon more than 20 years ago and has nothing but glorious memories about, so I really should stop all this "dissing" and go down to join her on the sun loungers and ...

... "Hey, are we having fun yet?!"

Kate Talks About Swine Flu!

How many folk do you know who've actually had swine flu for real? Kate now has. She's been sick since last Saturday and was diagnosed on Monday and is still sniffling and coughing now although she's no longer quarantined.

So what's it like: Kate says "Imagine being the sickest sick you can imagine where your whole body hurts so much that even moving a finger makes you want to cry, and you vomit even water and, on top of that, you have a really vicious migraine that squeezes your head like nothing you've ever imagined before and no amount of panadol will alleviate the pain. And that lasts for three whole days and nights that seem to last for years ... and then it settles down and you get the regular type of flu with all the coughing and sore throat and painful chest and the only difference is that you have rivers of green snot that gradually settles down to regular-looking snot, and that lasts for two days but you feel so happy that you aren't as sick as you were for the three days that it feels like it's all nothing and you want to go out and do stuff."

So there you go. Your very own first-hand account of swine flu!

Still in Townsville!

Finding it virtually impossible to post updates since 1) we're so busy 2) rarely have access to computers.

News? Surprisingly little, except that Keith is now cursing that he booked his ticket back so early. He's meant to leave early next week and now realises he doesn't have enough time to see everyone he wants to see, and blitz out to the desert for three or four days. He's cursing his lack of foresight, but like I warned him, it's almost impossible to change his flight from Australia because it's impossible to speak to a human on Cathay Pacific's ticket-changing phone line. Three times I've rung it and have been kept waiting on hold for 20 minutes, 30 minutes and 48 minutes respectively, and have, as you'd expect, given up before speaking to anyone. Usually I just ring Paul in HK and ask him to do it from there, but Paul has moved up and on and we don't have any terrific relationship with any other HK travel agent. Got to remedy that!

So that's what's happening. We go up to Cairns tomorrow for two days and then flit over to Green Island on the Barrier Reef for several days and then he flies out ... and I get the singular joy of going into the Outback to visit Lady R. and co. even though I haven't arranged anything yet.

Hint! Hint! Hint!

Much, much later: How annoying is this? Keith got a very pleasant Cathay Pacific human on the third ring and managed to change his tickets in less than four minutes. Wasn't even put on hold once!

Hate! Hate! Hate!

Crocodiles and Me

I hate crocodiles. In fact, in the list of things I hate most in the world, crocodiles would be in pole position.

I hate how calculating they are, I hate how they watch you, I hate how they always let you do something once so you get a false sense of security, I hate that they're implacable and cold and don't even begin to understand the concept of pity, but mostly I hate how they think of me simply as "food chain".

The ONLY good crocodile!

No, mostly I hate how, in Australia, you aren't allowed to fight back.

Yup, in Australia, crocodiles are protected by law and you are fined $250,000.00 if you kill one! And only slightly less if you injure one or even if you attempt to kill one! Yup! That's the law!

Let me tell you the story of Australian crocodiles, just so you know how WRONG it is that folks in the cities make the rules that folk in the country have to live by.

Back in about 1966, endemic local crocodiles - Freshwater, South Johnstone, and Saltwater varieties - were nearly extinct, so city politicians made it illegal to hunt and kill them. It's now over 40 years later, and there are more crocodiles around today than there ever were and they are getting real size on them; like they're now seriously, seriously huge. And they have no fear of humans so, these days, people are simply seen as part of their food chain and so get killed all the time ... but it is still illegal to kill crocodiles, except when, you know, an identified one actually kills someone, but then, mostly, you can only hunt them in order to remove them from that particular spot ...

Removing crocodiles! Not my photos!

... and release them into specially designed tourist-y habitats ...

... or onto lakes in Aboriginal Reserves - but, since they're territorial, it's usually only a matter of days until they find their way back again, but usually not until after they've killed a batch of aboriginal children on the reserve.

I hate it. I hate how, on the very stretch of path next to Chinaman's Creek in Cairns where, back in the late 80s, I taught my nephew Jamie how to ride his bike, these days regularly has crocodiles coming up to snatch little kiddies off their trikes or off the swings and seesaws in the playground! Well, not so much these days since no one ever goes there any more.

Yup, crocodiles are everywhere and they are huge and they are dangerous, but still it's illegal to kill them!

One story: a few years ago, around here, at Suicide Creek, a camper wakes up to find he's been dragged in his sleeping bag out of his tent and into the water by a massive 20 foot crocodile. He screams madly, as you do, and someone in another tent comes out with a bow and arrow and shoots the bugger through the head! Police investigate and the kindly shooter is fined A$250,000.00. It made everyone in North Queensland very, very cross, because, really, if you're being dragged by the leg by a giant crocodile, don't you too hope there's somebody standing nearby with a bow and arrow or, even better, a semi-automatic machine gun?

So, very shortly afterwards, on the very path along South Johnstone River where my sister used to walk her dog every morning, they found a dead crocodile - one rifle shot through the head - with half a little silky terrier in its mouth. The dog, dead naturally, was still wearing its lead. And the collar still had its tag so the police took it so they could identify the dog's owner in order to fine them the obligatory A$250,000.00 ... except, oops!, the old policeman accidentally dropped the tag into the river and that instantly put a stop to the investigation!

On that occasion, sanity prevailed ... but that simply doesn't happen here very often.

These days they're even eating tourists and since North Queensland relies on tourism this is killing off more than just people. Even beautiful Port Douglas has to place up warning signs not to get too close to the side of boats because they leap out of the water to grab you off ... and isn't being on the side of boats the whole point of going to The Great Barrier Reef?

Locals up North plead and beg with politicians in the cities to allow them to shoot the dangerous ones, but they all say "You just have to be more careful, don't you!" and so this insanity continues!

Talei has just said "How come the politicians in Canberra are forever ordering the culling kangaroos because they're chomping on the grass at Canberra golf courses, yet we're not allowed to cull the crocodiles that are chomping on US?!" She may be young, but she makes a very good point, doesn't she!

Tonight we're going on a boat cruise up the South Johnstone River. Hopefully, I'll be able to get photos so you can see how bad it is, so you can learn to hate them too.

SOUTH JOHNSTON RIVER

What Kills Us This Week!

Yes, I know, this column is something I do merely to get a laugh at Hong Kong's propensity for panic and, since I'm not in HK at the moment, I shouldn't be doing it ... but this HAS to be said!

Queensland Health Department is proving itself to be so stupid and inept it can only be seen as dangerous!

Baby Jane, as you know, just spent many days in the company of a lady whose "bad cold" tested positive for swine flu. Jane really doesn't mind getting it early, because, like me, she's aware that this early strain most likely will simply set you up with an immunity against the up-coming killer strain, so it shouldn't be a problem ...

... except ...

... she runs an Old Folks' Home - sorry, sorry, "An Aged Care Facility" - and she simply CANNOT introduce this potential killer disease into their environment. I mean, her old folk don't have the general health to cope and it simply isn't nice to wipe out all your clients in one fell swoop, is it!

But what to do? How many days does she have to quarantine herself? When can she go back to work? What protocols is she to follow?

Rose, the town's normally amazingly efficient Health Officer can't help, sorry, because she has yet to be given the Swine Flu Advisory and Protocols because, as far as she can discover, Queensland hasn't yet developed any.

Baby Jane's been trying to find out for herself and so is making enormous numbers of long distance phone calls down to Brisbane simply to find she's being given the run-around: turns out there is no chain of command in place, no flow of information, no one is being told anything, NOTHING IS BEING DONE!

So, yes, I know I laugh at Hong Kong's constant over-caution and over-rigid planning ... but to find yourself in the exact opposite situation I now discover is so very much worse!

Honestly, this is just wrong, isn't it! I mean, here in Australia they charge nearly A$20.00 for a single packet of cigarettes because they say SMOKING IS THE CAUSE OF ALL DISEASES - a lie, as we all know, but, for them, a convenient one because it justifies how they make smokers pay for the entire package of Australian Health Services - and yet, despite having all this money, and being two months in, Queensland Health is so inefficient and ineffective that they can't even BEGIN the process to set themselves up for a possible pandemic.

So that's my choice for this week:

THREATDOWN

The frighteningly stupid people who run this State!

Hello from Cooktown!

OK, we're not in Cooktown. None of us are. Baby Jane is back. Yes, they left early!

I really should download some of her photos in here, and I will once I figure out how to use her photo program, which - since I'm such a computer ninny - could take a while.

Meanwhile, why is she back early?

No, it wasn't the crocodiles although ...

"It was rather disconcerting having so many of them around all the time and you can see them looking at you everywhere. And they're just so big and so many people have already been killed. And there are all these little ones everyplace and when you come close to take a photo they all go "peep, peep, peep" and you know they're calling for help from Some Great Mother nearby. Oh, and have you ever had one of them come at you? No? Apparently they can get on their hind legs and run at you, but I only saw how they stretch up their legs and run very fast. And it's really something when they swim straight for you, and it's really weird how they swim, with really rigid upper bodies and bottom half wiggling and the tails looking like a snake.

And they've become so numerous and so huge even the locals who are used to them are getting rattled. Like, the house where we were staying had a track from the veranda down into the Endeavour River and, well, it was just so pretty and since it was so hot I found it really hard not to go in for a swim but I saw the crocodile slide right there and decided not to go near the water because, well, that man was taken last week, and they still haven't found the crocodile although they're still hunting for it, and it's very disconcerting, especially since we could see his fingermarks from where he tried to get away and you could see where he'd been dragged and it was all very sad. And our boat was only a 14 footer and this croc is supposed to be over 18 feet long and massive, but we only saw a 7 footer but it was right behind our friend's boat when he was pulling out his crab pots."

"Is that why you decided to leave Cooktown?"

"Oh no. We left because our hostess came down with swine flu!"

Hello from Innisfail!

Currently in Innisfail, in Far North Queensland. We're staying at Baby Jane's place, despite her being in Cooktown, even further north, for the duration. It's a new and exciting way to treat houseguests, yes ... and we get to water the garden and feed the chickens and life doesn't get much better than that.

Since my last testy post, I've regained my equilibrium and am loving everything, although Keith is very annoyed that he was carrying a bag of grapefruit in Cairns and it broke and grapefruit rolled everywhere, and folks around grabbed them ... but only two were given back. The others were simply dropped in folks' bags and taken off. Shocking, huh! Remember how, in Hong Kong, my pearl necklace broke on the street and it was pearls everywhere and everyone at the bus stop scrambling for them, and then the shopkeeper in the store opposite raced out with a paper bag and everyone dropped their handfuls into it ... and when I got it home only one of the hundreds of pearls was unaccounted for, and that most likely rolled into a storm drain or something.

And yet, here in Cairns, Keith only gets back two grapefruit. Says something, huh!

Caught up with Old Fiji Friend Lynnette R. and it was just lovely. Very wise indeed we've all grown in the last decades ... and Lynn and I both agreed that we wished we'd realised at the time just how very special our shared Fiji childhood was.

Don't you wish you could go back in time and just tell your young self a lot of truth about the life you/they have and simply aren't valuing enough?

Will be here for several days before setting off down the coast. Will update whenever and wherever I can!

Hello from Cairns!

Well, got here this morning after a quite horrid flight. Cathay Pacific's cut back on the number of flights so are packing them in like sardines, AND their seats get smaller and narrower each time we fly AND the air hostesses are increasingly learning lots of passive-aggressive techniques and it's genuinely very NOT NICE. But we got here without incident and Big Brother's recent airline adventures teach us that we should be grateful for that alone!

AND then our hotel turns out to be quite unlike what it was in the brochure and we discover that they have several hotels with the same name in roughly the same area and lure you in with photos of their most up-market one and, once you're here, land you with considerably less than what you think you've paid for.

AND then the considerable lack of public transport and the expensiveness of taxis got all sorts of bothersome. HK's sublime public transport spoils us for the rest of the world, doesn't it!

AND then, can you believe it?, we're finding it surprisingly cold. Tropical North Queensland? Shock, huh! Guess it's because we're coming directly from HK's recent appalling heat. You'd think our bodies would be welcoming this reprieve but instead we're shivering. Most odd.

But, looking for a silver lining here, at least neither Keith nor I got stopped at Customs coming in this time. Remember how, our last holiday here, Keith got arrested for possessing a small quantity of ginseng? Very silly indeed but it meant we were really quite anxious this trip, and Keith even tossed his chewing gum convinced they'd call it "food" and he'd be accused of smuggling.

So that's us! Keith's now suggesting that we go have massages at the nightmarkets ... and that sounds exactly what the doctor ordered!

Hope you're having a great holiday too!

Letter From Big Brother

Yes, I know, I'm meant to be catching a plane but I'm all organised, kinda, and so have time to kill. This is why it's so wonderful living in HK where they can organise you down to the nth degree - you can do check-in in town - AND the trains run on time! Hitler really should have just moved himself off to Hong Kong instead of doing all that nonsense in Germany.

Anyway, just got a gorgeous letter from Big Brother and have to share it. Yes, I know he hates me doing this but it's really all his fault for having such great adventures and sharing them in such entertaining ways:

Ah, yes, Rex, our local airline.  I usually only travel with
Rex as the only thing regular with Qantas is the delays,
"Time to spare? Get Qantas there", should be their mantra.

Now Rex has really earned its spurs.

We were due to leave Melbourne at 3pm last Sunday.  We were
told there was a mechanical problem with the Saab aircraft and
we would board at five.  Then at five they announced that they
couldn't fix it the problem so Rex would have to get another
plane flown down from Wagga.  This duly arrived and we boarded
at 6.30.  Then we sat on the tarmac with the engine running
for 20 minutes while security drove out and shot a dog or fox,
illegal immigrant or something, that was loose on the runway.

Then the pilot said, "Thank you for all your patience,
you would think nothing else could go wrong, but it has.
We have a mechanical problem with this aircraft, and we are
now on our way to Wagga... ", and as an afterthought, "but don't
panic, the aircraft is safe".

Don't panic?  Don't panic! I don't watch "Aircraft Crash
Investigator"just for fun you know.

We arrived in Wagga and waited 90 minutes before reloading
for an uneventful flight to Mildura arriving at 10.45 pm.
No illegal immigrants in Wagga.

Uneventful that is, but for a magnificent shooting star that
lit up the whole western sky.  It was green, so I suspect
was a bolide, exactly as in the image attached.



Hey, Big Brother ... not really trying to one-upmanship
on you or anything, but that's exactly what I once saw
in the Oz Outback, only that time there were about twenty
of them!

What Kills Us This Week!

Wasn't going to write again before we left because I really don't have time but have to tell you what I overheard:

Yank fellow was talking to a bunch of young folk at the coffee shop just now and said "The AMA (presumably American Medical Association) is currently working at getting rid of the notion that everything usually goes away by itself so people in future will believe that you have to visit your doctor immediately at the first sign of anything amiss ... so there has never been a better time to be a G.P. It's going to make us all very, very rich." and then he snickered, assuming the others would snicker along with him, but our guys all looked a bit shocked.

I'm guessing that young HK doctors - and I'm assuming they were - aren't big into medicine for the money as are almost all Yank doctors!

So that's my choice for the week:

THREATDOWN

Americans encouraging the whole world to
GO THREATDOWN at every opportunity!

I actually saw a program on TV called "The Fragile Human Body" and the ads were running that "humans have immensely fragile bodies that need constant medical attention." It made me so cross.

WE HAVE IMMUNE SYSTEMS, PEOPLE!!

... although ... I have a friend, no names, whose three now-adult children have recently discovered they have no immune systems. Their mother - and you know who you are - never allowed them to play outside and took them to the doctor at the first sign of anything and almost perpetually had them on antibiotics ... and it turns out that she effectively gave her kids AIDS and they will now die the first time anything goes wrong. And there are so very many mothers out there doing the same thing.

Who needs the AIDS virus to wipe out your immune system when you have perfectly good mothers to do it for you!

My mother used to always say "Children need to get sick, get dirty and fall out of trees." and now, according to recent medical discoveries - and isn't it strange how two of these scientists who made this breakthrough used to know my mother? ...
1) getting sick as a child (taking an illness through from start to finish without intervention by antibiotics) means the body is able to create T-cells, which are the Rambos of the immune system
2) spending lots of time romping around and getting dirty when you're young gives you an immunity to auto-immune diseases
3) jarring your bones when you're young keeps away all the oesteo-type problems.

So I guess, what with playstations, hours spent watching TV and on home computers - the mainstays of fussy over-protective on-the-leash parenting - people growing up now won't develop healthy rambunctious immune systems and maybe the AMA has a point and people will indeed have to visit their doctors the first sign of something wrong, since they have indeed given themselves "Fragile Human Bodies".

My father was a doctor and, as an old man, used to say "After practising medicine for 50 years I came to the realisation that we are the real problem. The simple fact is WE DON'T NEED DOCTORS!"

Am off again!

Finally off on holiday and so escaping this awful, awful heat. We'll be away for a month. Our plans are flexible although they'll be sure to include Cairns, Townsville and the Outback - hopefully - in Australia and then Bangkok for a week, and I'm still hanging out to take one of those tramp steamers up the coast of North Queensland, accompanying the mail run to the outlying coastal stations and aboriginal reserves. Baby Jane did it last year and said it's an amazing experience and really very cheap. So, fingers crossed ...

Apologies that I most likely won't be dropping by to update very often. Difficult to access a computer.

So, until I see you again, have a great holiday everyone and see you when the weather finally cools off again.

Richard's friend Rachael!

Old Friend Richard de Chazel is raving-up his friend Rachael's voice and says we have to check her out on youtube. I have and, yes, yes, yes, so worth raving about. Here it is so you can see for yourself:



Gorgeous, huh! Richard, honeybunch, you always had an eye for real talent.

My Urghar Stories

With the Urghars featuring so large in the news, what with the riots up there in China and all, it means I'm finally able to spell the name. Also, while feeling great sympathy for all those involved, am greatly enjoying reading the various accounts in all the different newspapers, especially the ones in "China Daily" - the Chinese Communist Party English-language newspaper - where the Urghars feature large as "dingbats"; savages who are destroying the Harmony of China!

I refuse to take sides, besides saying that Han always make truly awful colonists, and instead will tell you my Urghar stories since one is cute and the other is interesting.

1) Here in Hong Kong, you're forever coming across Mongolians in shoe stores. They never buy, but simply examine pair after pair, twisting and bending them, and have huddled conversations between themselves about various features. And you'll notice they're always wearing home-made shoes ... but amazing ones. Gosh, Mongolian footwear really rocks! You should see the colours, and the quality of leather, and the clever little features and other things they do to them, like embossing and stamping and really clever things like that! And they are thrilled when you notice and, if you indicate you love them, they're always so happy to show them off to you.

OK, that's just the backstory. Here's the story: Several years ago, I walk into a shoe store here to see two young men "going Mongolian" on a pair of shoes and stop dead in total astonishment! They are Chinese, definitely, but they both have red hair and green eyes. Not kidding! Vivid red hair and shockingly green eyes! They notice my face and both burst out laughing. They don't speak English so I say "China?" and they say "Mongolia!", I say "Chinese?" and they say "Yolger!"

That's the story. I would have loved to have talked to them more but we'd definitely reached the limit. However they intrigued me so much I immediately went to the library - the little one on Electric Road - and rummaged through to find something on who the Yolgers were. (Spelling it "Yolger" and indeed finding stuff on them under that name.)

And that's how I came across the wonderful book "Ancestors" which gives the history of all the tribes of Europe. This book is so good I've already taken it out half a dozen times and plan to eventually buy it ... so I really should record the details, shouldn't I! Sorry, don't have them. I will however, get them for anyone interested.

The Yolger (aka Volga, Bulga, Urghar, and other names amply demonstrating consonantal shift) story is that, 6000 years ago, they were a tribe of horse breeders up in Mongolia when the Han moved in, stole their land and drove them off by force.

This next part of their story is so like my own history - the Milesian Irish history - it kinda creeps me out because it goes: for nearly 800 years they lived in a swamp until they finally said "Enough of this crap" and sent out their warriors to find them a new homeland. That's also what happened to us, so our ancestral history says ... which kinda makes me wonder if we Milesians too aren't descended from this band of exploring warriors because it's part of the Yolger story that the warriors split up and each group searched far and wide. Maybe we Milesians are descended from warriors who said "stuff the rest of 'em" and settled down with their horses in the rich green lands of Ireland.

But the Yolger story goes that they searched until they finally came across a peaceful race of people who felt for them and gave them one of their own richly fertile valleys ... so they went back to get the others ... except on the way back they met up with another tribe and stupidly told them their exciting news ... and that tribe immediately raced across Europe and rocked up to the peaceful tribe and said "We're the Yolgers!" and thus claimed the land for themselves ... but these were a nasty parasitic tribe and thus, over the next few centuries, killed off the kindly peaceful tribe around them ... and bred themselves up until they eventually became the nation of Bulgaria ...

... which meant that when, finally, the Yolgers arrived to claim their new homeland they were driven off by the nasty Faux-Yolgers and so, broken hearted, they spread themselves out among other peoples in other lands. For a thousand years, believing they'd eventually again have a unified homeland, they tried to stay "100% Yolger" by marrying within themselves, but eventually gave up and blended themselves into their local populations which means that, over the past 3000 years, you're forever finding tribes who throw up red-haired, green-eyed youngsters: Turkey, Afghanistan, Poland, Pakistan, China ... those Yolgers indeed spread far and wide.

But my lovely Yolger boys who lead me to begin this search show that there are still Yolgers up in Mongolia. Isn't that interesting?

Which leads to my second Yolger story:

2) During one of the recent jewelry expos, I came across the Turkish stalls and, at one of them, in among the dark skinned, dark haired, very pretty Turkish girls, there was one ... I said to her "You've got red hair and green eyes!" and she says "I know. It's really odd, isn't it! My family often wonder how it happened!" so I say "It just means you're descended from the Yolgers." and she's all instantly wide-eyed and going "What? What?" ...

... and, right at that moment, the man who runs the stall and who's been standing by and listening to all this, explodes in anger and says lots of angry things to her in Turkish and the girl sheepishly apologises and turns away.

Interesting, huh? I wonder what it was that he didn't want her to know. But, after that, whenever I was in that area, she kept glancing at me, tracking me, like she was desperate to defy her boss and find out what I knew about who she was, but didn't have the nerve.

So, that's my story about the Urghar story. Obviously these guys up there in China are a tribe of Yolgers who still are in dire need of finding their very own Homeland.

Hate Technology!

Took all these photographs of the fabulous deep blue sky out the window just now, to show you how beautiful Hong Kong can be on those rare occasions - 40 days a year they're now telling us - when the pollution blows away ... but now they won't download. Don't have any idea what's going on and it's making me so cross!

Still using the movie camera as a photo camera because Keith hasn't had time to "go-libra" on all the cameras on earth to choose one to replace the one that was stolen. As you know, Keith is the most annoying comparison shopper and it takes days, weeks even, to buy anything ... but I learned to thank him for this heinous trait during My Guangzhou Ordeal because my bag, against all the odds and under the very worst conditions, held together so beautifully.

But the upshot of this awful habit is that ... you don't get to see today's beautiful skies.

Hong Kong is currently in the grip of a heatwave. Temperatures day after day of 31 centigrade/88 fahrenheit . Yes, I know, I know, you're like me and have known real heatwaves with temperatures of 55 centigrade/131 fahrenheit and so you're already laughing ... but let me tell you that ... it's not the heat: it's the humidity. Oh boy, is it sticky and unpleasant and totally feels like 'prickly heat' on your skin! Not nice at all ...

... but luckily Keith's on holiday next week and so we're getting away. Yayyy!

Dog Days!

Too hot to think!  Horrid muggy awful days, although the sky is the sharpest
and most beautiful blue.

Apparently last year we had 40 of these clear blue days, where the usual pollution just vanishes,
so I really should be out there enjoying it.

Sorry I've been remiss about blogging this past week, but it's desperately humid
and so unpleasant in this room, and nothing is happening that makes it seem worth
putting up with all this just so I can tell you about it.

Today is no different, so let's choose an old letter at random and post that instead: 

This one is from 2006.

1) Yesterday they had the police bravery medal presentations
down at Southorn Park, and to entertain at the ceremony they
had dragon dancers accompanied by a play-off between the
police pipe band and the army pipeband. When I saw that the
guys in kilts playing the bagpipes were all Chinese, I
raced down with my camera to take lots of photographs ... but
when I got down there discovered my battery was flat and knew
my sparewas also flat ... so I stood there simply watching as
the most amazing shots passed me by: all  Sino-Scottish pipers
marching between a long red dragon, a long green dragon and a
long gold dragon.

Curses!  Can you think of anything more quintessentially
Hong Kong?

2) The HK riot squad are now all saying that, thanks to the
WTO Riots, they've got millions of dollars worth of all this
"really cool equipment" and since they had so much fun with
the riots, they now want to instigate weekend war games over
in New Territories.

Don't you just love it?

What Killed Us Last Week!

I didn't post on HK's usual weekly panic last week because there didn't seem to be any. Odd, huh? Maybe having the Rally Wars meant that everyone made their feelings known and that dissipated all the "threatdown" energy.

News? Well, the big talk is still the Nina Wang court case. As you may have heard, Nina, the richest woman in Asia - who recently died of womb cancer because she was taking fertility treatment to keep herself young - left all her money to her own charity as she wanted it to be used to start a Nobel Prize thing for China, but now her Feng Shui Master, Tony Chan, is claiming Nina's "Feng Shui Will" is the real one. Naturally, this "Feng Shui Will" - which is meant to be burned so nothing bad happens as a result of the real will - left all the money to him.

Huge expensive courtcase! See what happens when you don't burn your Feng Shui Will!

I can't bear Tony Chan. What a sleazebag! And so clearly "masked"! And have you also noticed how much he looks like a Yue Minjun painting?

If you haven't, let me convince you. See this painting, right?

Now look at this photo of Tony Chan found here.

You tell me if they aren't "seperated-at-birth identical twins"?

Anyway, for weeks now HK has been agog with reading all about what Nina "Little Sweetie" Wang got up to on the Feng Shui front, all encouraged by Tony "Yue Minjun-Mask" Chan. (By the way, all the REAL Feng Shui Masters have been denouncing him as a fraud for years, especially since he opened his own Feng Shui School without himself having a single moment of formal training.) There's so much in there that's weird and sleazy and truly icky that it makes for a really fun read ... and I strongly suggest that, if you want a good laugh, you follow the story for yourself.

Me, I want to talk about something else! Something really odd! Do you remember back in the 1990s in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, how that very rich "Crazy Cat Lady" who lived in that gorgeous house on the hill in the Grange was murdered by her Feng Shui Master? I remember when that happened it rang a bell with me because I recalled that another rich old lady was also killed by her Feng Shui Master ... but I can't recall that other case now! Just that there was one!

Honestly, my memory is soooo going!

But I think what it shows is that there is something going down with Rich Old Ladies and Sleazy- Con-Men-who-call-themselves-Feng-Shui-Masters. And that it usually ends in tears!

Wait a second! Was it Doris Duke? Poor Little Rich Girl herself? Wasn't there a Feng Shui Master involved somehow in her death? Or am I thinking about some other Poor Little Rich Girl!

Anyway, that's going to be my choice for last week:

THREATDOWN

Having money and a Feng Shui Master!

Wan Chai Public Swimming Pool. For Lisa.

Lisa wants to know how to find the public swimming pool in Wan Chai:

Morrison Hill Swimming Pool.

It's too hard to explain in words so, since a picture paints a thousand of them ...


Lisa, you walk down Hennessy Road towards Causeway Bay, until you come to Nathan's place:


You know Nathan's, right? Of course you do! Has those amazing boneless stuffed chicken wings!

Well, see the basketball courts opposite:

On the left of the court is a set of stairs:

Go up them, and at the top of those stairs you see:

Go straight down that street. Cross the road towards those trees. Immediately behind that building is this one:

They are so fussy about no photos,
I got in trouble for taking this one.

If you're not Lisa and are looking for a swimming pool in Wan Chai to escape this awful humidity, here are the facts:

It costs HK$19.00 to get in and they prefer you pay by Octopus Card.

You also need a HK$5.00 coin for the slot to get yourself a locker.

Oh, and they disinfect you with an antiseptic shower and wading pool before you're allowed into the water, so hope you're not allergic. And there's too much chlorine in the pools so make sure you bring goggles.

The "Donald Tsang" Wars!

I'm loving this:

You know the "Donald Tsang" song that went up on youtube the very day after Our Head Honcho made the stupid remark that "No one in Hong Kong cares about what happened in Tiannaman Square."?

If you don't know it, here it is:



Well, it's been a few weeks now and Other People have started playing with the song, mainly because everyone feels so strongly that they want to be able to dance to it. Here's one example:




Of course, no one really wants Our Donald to die. We all think he's a good guy, kinda!, only that really was a stupid remark and, well, he deserves a goodly amount of flak for it, doesn't he!

So let's hope we see a lot more of this!

And if you're interested in the lyrics:

Donald Tsang, please die
我哋實上街 (translation: we will definitely take on the street to protest)
Donald Tsang, please die
When will you be fired?

假設donald今日你俾人斬左隻手
二十年後嗰個人發咗達又做埋特首
你會否因為佢嘅成就
然後叫自己不要追究？

Imagine today Donald your hand was chopped off by somebody
Twenty years later that somebody has become the Chief Executive
Will you stop seeking justice because of his achievement?
And ask yourself give up pursuing for justice?

Donald Tsang, please die
我哋實上街 (translation: we will definitely take on the street to protest)
Donald Tsang, please die
We’re all poor guys

董建華雖然做野係渣
但係良心都唔會好似你咁差
你任內最驕人既成就
就係強化市民對民主嘅要求

Tung Chee Hwa (Former Chief Executive) was poor in his performance
But his conscience is better than yours.
What you have achieved in your term
Is the strengthening of people's demand for democracy.

Donald Tsang, please die
When will you die?
Donald Tsang, please die…
When will you be fired?


(Thank you, Sleepboy, for this.)

The Democracy March 2009

It looked terrifying for a while.

The morning's Pro-Beijing Anti-Democracy March was about 4000 strong - including those who'd undoubtedly done it at least twice, judging how they arrived at Southorn Park and then snuck out the side, en masse, and walked back down side streets in the direction the march had come.

Thought it would be easy for our side to ace that number.

The March was due to start at 3.00pm at Victoria Park, however we no longer go down there. In the past, with about 100,000 folk ahead of us, it usually took about four to five hours to get out and that gets really annoying, so for the last few years we've waited until the March reaches Wan Chai and simply join in.


Then at 3.20 about 4000 folk marched under our window ...

... which we thought was quite remarkable time because Victoria Park is quite a distance away ...

Can someone explain
who they are?

... and then it stopped. That was it! Yup, it looked like it was over. I couldn't believe it and felt really quite sick.


We'd invited Aussie Christine over from Lantau to march with us and it seemed so much like a wasted journey. Only 4000 folk! Surely not!

But the streets were still all cut off and there were zillions of police, journalists and spectators lining the road ...... so it was all most odd.

After more than an hour of ringing folk we knew had gone to the park and not being able to get them - not a single person - and hanging out the windows looking down towards Causeway Bay, we'd talked ourselves into thinking that something had happened - like maybe an accident - and all the rest of the march was dead and/or panicking somewhere back at the start ...

... but then, just before 5.00pm, in the distance and coming towards us ...

4.55pm

... Yayyy! Mucho cheering!

We hung out the window and filmed for a while ...

5.15pm

... and the numbers kept coming ...

5.45 pm

... and coming ...

6.00pm

Just after six, The Redoubtable Walkers rang to say they were passing beneath us so we went down and added ourselves to the count ...

And instantly scored a banana with Donald Tsang's face on it:



A good march. Lots and lots of causes, lots and lots of discontent:

Loved this homemade banner.
Can someone tell me what it's about?

Although mainly it was about One Person: One Vote, and we scored pendants saying that too:

How cute is Leon!
Starting young, huh?

But it seems the main reason for the discontent was Donald Tsang's comment last month that "Hong Kong doesn't care what happened at Tiannaman Square", which, as you know, so outraged HK that 150,000 turned up to The Vigil for the Fallen in Victoria Park a few weeks back. And it also lead to that song, now on Youtube, "Donald Tsang! Please Die!" which I really should find and show you.


I actually like Our Donald a lot, but it was a truly stupid remark to make and I don't mind that he's copping all this flak, as long as it doesn't go beyond ...

... mass sales of this T-shirt, which tens of thousands were wearing.

And this poster up everyplace which I just love and want to buy:

"The Voice of Beijing"

And also to this cartoon, being handed out during the march, which is amazingly drawn but which no one can actually explain to me:

Everyone recognises
Longhair and Our Donald
and that guy who threw bananas at him
- which actually happened, by the way -
and they can see the line from Mao
"Nothing happens without struggle from the people"
But beyond that, it's beyond them.

Maybe it's that there's something
deeply strange
about using Communist slogans
to fight against communists!

Or does that just say something about how far
the Communist Party of China
has moved away from its roots.

Since I was wearing my pedometer I can now tell you that it's 5340 steps from our place to Government House, but when we got to the turn-off ...

... we all decided that all the bottle-necks up there, with all those twists and turns and thousands pressing against your back, had kinda freaked us out in the past, so we stopped off for chai lattes in a cafe immediately opposite and watched the march through the windows, waiting to see when it would end.

If you haven't been on HK's Democracy March, what happens is that you go up the winding path on the hill ...

... to Government House where you stick your banners - and bananas - petitions and ribbons around the gate and fence, and then you pass through the main entrance to the street on the other side - where the Comedy Club is, by the way, if that's your thing!

Well, we sat and watched the march for over an hour and I can tell you categorically that it was still all ...

... with absolutely no end in sight, so we decided we'd all go into Lan Kwai Fong for a while instead.

So what do you reckon? Did our side ACE the Pro-Beijing Anti-Democracy March, or what?

Will give you the actual numbers for both sides, including the police ones which totally LIE!, when I get today's newspapers.

The official Beijing count:

Pro-Beijing Rally
40,000

Pro-Democracy March
26,000

Don't you just love it?

My count was about 4,000 for the Pro-Beijing crowd, and our side came in at about 100,000.

Let me see if I can find what the Pro-Democracy crowd had to say about it:

The organisers put the count at 76,000 and that seems about right.

Ah, and the mystery crowd in the middle who didn't appear to belong to either March were the folk who lost all their savings on the Lehmann Brothers minibond scam, who wanted to protest against USA suing HK to stop HK giving them back their money, and who didn't want to be seen belonging to either side.

And the numbers given to this march was 4000, exactly what my eye told me ... which makes it extremely odd that my eye also put the Pro-Beijing March at roughly the same number ... yet the Pro-Beijing count put at 40,000. How could I have been so right about one and so wrong about the other?

Because I wasn't! Those are just stinking rotten lies! And it's starting to deeply concern me that China lies so easily ... as also witnessed by that hideous Guangzhou policeman who wrote that my belongings weren't stolen so they didn't have to investigate!

But here's strange thing: the front cover of South China Morning Post has a photograph of the Pro-Beijing Rally that is actually the Lehmann Brothers protesters! In fact, this is such a big deal - and it's too difficult inserting photographs when I've already got so many - I'll do another post on it to show you.