Wishing all my Townsville friends the-best-that-can-be-hoped-for during their upcoming Cyclones Anthony and Yasi. And we all know that the-best-that-can-be-hoped-for is that they both swing around and wipe out Bowen instead.
Mind you, since Bowen is forever being wiped out by cyclones originally heading for Townsville, maybe it's not so nice to wish this on them AGAIN!!!
But what other towns on The Cassowary Coast and The Great Green Way would we choose to have wiped out instead? Baby Jane is in Innisfail so that's definitely out. Besides, they still haven't properly recovered from Cyclone Larry in 2006. Cairns? If I didn't have friends there I'd say Cairns for sure because it's so glitzy and "Oooh, we're so more International than you!!!" We have friends in Cardwell too! So ... oooh, let's pick Tully!!! They've been lying for over 30 years about their weather so maybe it's only fitting that the Weather Gods get revenge!
And if you want to follow what's happening with this story: http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/cyclone
Good luck to all you guys! And since everyone I know in Brisbane and Toowoomba came through their recent floods unscathed, I'll break out my beautiful Kwan Yin and light a candle for you all as well!
Later: Oh dear, Kwan Yin and these candles I light in front of her are very powerful indeed. Cyclone Anthony swung around and wiped out Bowen - that poor dear little town - so hated by cyclones they always swerve away from Townsville to destroy it instead.
And now it looks like Yasi is swinging upwards to wipe out Cairns ... only it's so big and so powerful, they're saying it will hit Cairns as a Category 5, but will impact Innisfail as a Category 4, and Townsville as a Category 2 ... so there's no way that Bowen is going to get that instead of Townsville!
Baby Jane is saying that she's looking at the map of Cyclone Yasi as it descends on them from the Coral Sea, and it's actually bigger than the State of Queensland!
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Dame Mary Edwell-Burke
This is really quite sad. I'm currently trying to find out what happened to that wonderful old oil painting of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna done by Dame Mary Edwell-Burke, which used to hang in the lobby of Fiji's Grand Pacific Hotel, back in the days before this elegant and luxurious hotel - the Pacific's version of Raffles - was acquired by the island of Nauru and slowly turned into a sad wreck of itself, until today it stands on the edge of Suva as a mould-covered Art Deco ruin; a heartbreaking shadow of past glory.
Photo by Jon Apted.
Although his version isn't all
weirdly pixilated like this!
Although his version isn't all
weirdly pixilated like this!
Now, you will have noticed that I have no link for Dame Mary Edwell-Burke and have to tell you the shocking news that this is because SHE DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO LINK TO!
OK, maybe that isn't so because I've only used one search engine: Fast Browser! Let me try to test the different search engines to see what they come up with:
Nothing on any of them except ... GOOGLE!!!!
Yup, once again Google has proved itself the best of all the search engines because it has five entries including this one of her paintings, and four more about her paintings being in various auctions. However, all it says about her in any of these sites is that she was born in Australia in 1894 and died in Fiji in 1988.
DAME MARY EDWELL-BURKE
(b. Australia 1894, d. Fiji 1988)
... and hope that someone sees it and thinks "Yup, I will have to do something about this!"
It has to be done because it's so wrong that she's gone! She was such an incredible character and such a great painter, I am really sad that she isn't still out there as some HUGE Feminist Icon. She certainly deserves it, this wacky dignified old Dame, wandering - al-la Paul Gauguin - throughout the Pacific practically from the turn of the century - the 20th century - onwards, never updating her clothes so always dressed like some latterday Gibson Girl, always in white, and just painting, painting, painting, capturing our Oceanic world and putting it out there for all the world to see.
It has to be done because it's so wrong that she's gone! She was such an incredible character and such a great painter, I am really sad that she isn't still out there as some HUGE Feminist Icon. She certainly deserves it, this wacky dignified old Dame, wandering - al-la Paul Gauguin - throughout the Pacific practically from the turn of the century - the 20th century - onwards, never updating her clothes so always dressed like some latterday Gibson Girl, always in white, and just painting, painting, painting, capturing our Oceanic world and putting it out there for all the world to see.
Seriously, she was so amazing WHY isn't she being remembered! I mean even Queen Elizabeth recognised her wonderfulness back in the day by honouring her with a Dame-hood! And now she's ... just GONE!!!
We can't just let her go. Can someone out there in the Art World or the Feminist World or the Pacific or even her family PLEASE give this mighty lady a cyber-presence, even if it's just her own Wikipedia entry? We cannot forget her contribution to our lives, and she really did contribute to ALL our lives, you know, and in such a big way too, because even as the Suffragettes were doing what they did to ensure women everywhere could do what they wanted to do, Dame Mary was "walking the talk" and out there in the world doing exactly what she wanted to do; taking slow boats and local transport, traveling alone through the most obscure and unknown parts of the world and PAINTING it!
So please start the ball rolling on remembering her contribution to the modern world and thus all our lives. And I'll start by putting my personal memories of her out there:
The first memory I have of her was when I was about four or five. We were somewhere ... I can't remember where it was - although it would have definitely been in Fiji - because I only recall a single image, which wasn't too far removed from this one:
Let me tease a little more out of this memory. OK, I'm getting something: blue-bottles! mangroves!
Right, it's not much past dawn, and I'd woken early and had gone for a walk alone down to the beach. But which beach? Were we camping on an island someplace? Or was it the health officers cottages at Nukulau? Or those cottages down in Lomeri?
Wherever and whenever it was, it was blue-bottle season - November? - when all these beautiful azure jellyfish invade our Pacific waters, and so I was running along the shoreline jumping on them because they always made such a delicious squelchy pop! And I continued popping and squelching right into a mangrove swamp ...
Right, it's not much past dawn, and I'd woken early and had gone for a walk alone down to the beach. But which beach? Were we camping on an island someplace? Or was it the health officers cottages at Nukulau? Or those cottages down in Lomeri?
Wherever and whenever it was, it was blue-bottle season - November? - when all these beautiful azure jellyfish invade our Pacific waters, and so I was running along the shoreline jumping on them because they always made such a delicious squelchy pop! And I continued popping and squelching right into a mangrove swamp ...
... when suddenly, looming up right in front of me, I saw ...
Yup, deep in a mangrove swamp in some unrecalled wilderness that's what I saw. The light hit strangely and the image was luminous and the figure frozen, looking hard at the painting in front of her! It was so surreal and astonishing, but then it moved and I gasped and backed away slowly ... then a mad dash back to wherever it was we were staying ... the cottages at Rukuruku on the island of Ovalau?
Give this Gibson Girl totally white hair
and entirely white clothing,
and that's almost exactly what I saw.
Yup, deep in a mangrove swamp in some unrecalled wilderness that's what I saw. The light hit strangely and the image was luminous and the figure frozen, looking hard at the painting in front of her! It was so surreal and astonishing, but then it moved and I gasped and backed away slowly ... then a mad dash back to wherever it was we were staying ... the cottages at Rukuruku on the island of Ovalau?
"There's a ghost!" I told my mother, pointing down towards the mangroves. "Down there! In the mangroves! It's a ghost!"
"Don't be silly, dear." my mother said fondly.
"No! It's a real ghost. Down there."
"What's it doing?"
"It's painting a picture of mangrove roots."
"Is this a very old fashioned looking ghost?" my mother asked calmly.
"Yes. It's like a ghost from last century and it's painting mangroves."
I hated being laughed at as a child, and, yeah, yeah, here my mother laughed uproariously and it made me very cross.
"That would be Dame Mary Edwell-Burke." my mother said eventually. "She's a famous artist. And she's very definitely still alive and staying just along there in that village. She likes painting in the early morning because the light is so good, so what you saw was obviously her simply looking like a ghost."
Since that actually made a lot more sense, I now accept this as my very first glimpse of Dame Mary Edwell-Burke. And since my first glimpse of her was when I thought she was a ghost, it's a strange co-incidence that I also mistook her for a ghost the last time I saw her too.
In between these two strange ghostly encounters, I met her several times over the years, at the odd exhibition mostly or a couple of times at her Fiji studio, which was, as I vaguely recall, a bure (Fijian hut) atop a hill that may or may not have been just along from the Naboro Prison Farm, on the land once part of Bailey's rubber plantation, a memory I'm willing to surrender in a heartbeat because I'm not at all sure if we occasionally dropped by on our way to Deuba or if we made deliberate journeys out to some other place to see her whenever she was in Fiji.
And my main memory of meeting her on these occasions is that she was an old grump who didn't like kids.
But my last memory of her? It was in about ... gosh, 1983? When Kele was here in HK last month, we talked about this and I was very sad that, although he remembers "The Kele and Denise Big Official Levuka Ghost Hunt", he has no recollection of 'the ghost' because it should have been a BIGGIE for him ... as it was for me!
Whatever year it was, I'd come home to Fiji for a holiday from university in Australia to discover that Kele, then about six or seven, was going through his ghost phase. He was fascinated by them and always wanted to talk about them and was cynical enough to want to see one with his own eyes. And no! He didn't want to see a Tau - the Fijian faceless spirit - because he wanted this ghost to be a good old fashioned European-style ghost, all white and drifting with his/her feet off the ground.
I remembered that I too had gone through a ghost phase when I was about his age and, like him, was desperate for proof one way or the other. I even had fond memories of sneaking out of my bedroom on moonlit nights during our holidays in Levuka, to spend long hours sitting on the "out of bounds because it's too dangerous" widow's walk on the roof of The Royal Hotel in Levuka ...
I remembered that I too had gone through a ghost phase when I was about his age and, like him, was desperate for proof one way or the other. I even had fond memories of sneaking out of my bedroom on moonlit nights during our holidays in Levuka, to spend long hours sitting on the "out of bounds because it's too dangerous" widow's walk on the roof of The Royal Hotel in Levuka ...
Not my photo of the Royal Hotel in Levuka,
but you can see the widow's walk in this one.
... watching out for The White Lady, the ghost of the wife of a missionary who had somehow fallen from grace - one of my first ever short stories when I was about ten was based around my imaginings of what she'd done to fall from grace, whatever that meant - who was reputed to haunt Levuka's Cricket Fields below.
Since this was the only ghost in Fiji I'd ever heard about that matched Kele's description, and because I wanted to give Kele happy ghost-hunt memories like my own, so, being very indulgent, I took him on a jaunt to the island of Ovalau for "The Kele and Denise Big Official Levuka Ghost Hunt" with the off-chance of seeing The White Lady with our own eyes.
Oh boy, thinking about this now, I have to say that entire jaunt was an adventure par-excellence, and well worth recording in here one day, however the only part of it that belongs in this story is our arrival at Levuka's Royal Hotel.
We arrived and were checked in by the Pattersons - dear sweet people I've known my whole life - and taken up to our room, where were told that the Hotel's regular afternoon High Tea was in progress downstairs. Kele went off to explore the century-old hotel - after being told to stay away from The Widow's Walk because it was too dangerous - but I was dying for a cuppa so made my way to the dining room.
I'd just hit the dark lobby and looked in towards the dining room when I saw an apparition dressed like an elegant lady from the Belle Epoch in Paris ...
Imagine this lady all in white
and very much older.
... who was sitting in the dining room with scones, little cakes and a pot of tea in front of her. The was a row of stained glass windows beside her and the light hit the figure with these unearthly colours and she was frozen in a reverie. I too froze on the spot, then frantically looked around for Kele, wanting to tell him the exciting news that The White Lady was actually sitting in the Royal Hotel dining room having High Tea.
Couldn't see Kele around so I raced upstairs to find him, but he was nowhere around, though I checked every place I could think of before I realised "Of course!" Since Kele was the same type of naughty imp we'd all been at his age, there was only one place where he'd be. And yes, there he was, coming down the stairs from the widow's walk, so I gestured frantically for him to come right away.
However, when we got downstairs again, she wasn't there; the ghost was gone! Kele was very cross with me for trying to fool him, so, wanting proof, I asked the Fijian waitress if she'd seen a ghost sitting at the table right there! And, yeah, yeah, the woman burst out laughing - I hate that - and said that it had been Dame Mary Edwell-Burke at that table, and that she always came in for High Tea whenever she was in town.
Gosh, didn't I feel such a burke!
So those are my memories of this great lady. And I do hope it's only the start of a great many from everyone else, because we genuinely cannot forget her! And we can't all have forever mistaken her for ghosts, so hopefully other people will have stories that are far more ... substantial.
Later: This is very very sad! I've just found out that Dame Mary Edwell-Burke is buried at Nasinu Cemetery (grave no. ND 236) and has no headstone!
An unmarked grave for such a Great Lady and such a Great Artist! This is a great wrong and something needs to be done to put that right! But how?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Laibach!
I think we should build altars and write hymns and psalms praising St Youtube, The Patron Saint of All Things Visual!
Honestly, it seems like there is no boon youtube won't grant us ... except maybe that really creepy press conference last week with Stanley Ho and Wife #3 ... although I'm betting that, within only a few more days, some nice person somewhere will put it up and thus we'll all be able to see once again what looks creepily like a poor sad old man, either senile or on drugs, obviously being suckered out of his billions by a scarily avaricious young trophy wife, and thus everyone who missed it first time around can stop kicking themselves and join in the on-going nth-degree analysis and discussion of each nano-second of that footage to work out what we think is really going on!
However, that is still to come! And, yes, we will be checking youtube OFTEN hoping to find it there, and, yes, we will post it here when it is! Since this latest Nancy Kissell retrial is behind closed doors, and such interesting real-life soap operas don't come around often enough for Hong Kong's taste, this is something we will be following avidly for many months to come.
However, that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell you how, once again, youtube delivered. And that really should be DELIVERED!!!
What happened was that, over a decade ago, I heard a song on the radio that left me awestruck with a loosely hanging jaw and a boggling mind. HAD to get it only ... well, I missed the name of the band and no one ever knew what I was talking about.
Then, yesterday, I was in youtube looking for something ... OK, OK, I was looking for the Stanley Ho footage ... when I accidently stumbled across something that made me go mmmm!, and exactly like an ADHD rottweiller I forgot what I was doing and went after this new rabbit and ended up ...
... tada!
... finding that song I went searching for all those years ago. And here it is:
I first heard this song - the Stones version naturally - back in High School and, totally nauseated by the usual "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I have Love in my Tummy" and "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" on Radio Fiji One, thought it was amazing! So clever and erudite and all that stuff missing from the bubblegum garbage that Radio Fiji One endlessly pumped into in my life!
Naturally this was before Morris Hedstroms got Fiji's first Import Record Bar where I discovered Leonard Cohen and David Bowie and John Lennon-without-Paul-McCartney and Moody Blues and Jefferson Airplane and Marianne Faithful and Patty Smith and ... well, you get the idea.
But anyway ... back to youtube and this amazing discovery:
Excited to finally have a name for that really dark and creepy version of the Stones classic, I spent yesterday hunting down all I could find on this Slovenian - SLOVENIAN!!! Who even knew that Slovenia had music!!! - rock band.
And once I got over the "OMG, Borat has put out a rock video!" and the "Do all Slovenians look like serial killers?", I was seriously impressed! And the more I found of their music the more impressed I was. Like, have a listen to this:
It's all so slick and sophisticated and erudite and wonderful, isn't it!, but coupled with that wonderful strange mispronouncements like "sleether as they pass"! Pure bliss!
But I found out they were most famous for this:
But decided, after only 30 seconds, that I wasn't very impressed and clicked it off, wondering if maybe the songs only worked if you knew the originals, so I dived again into youtube to hear the original Opus version of "Life is Life" ...
... and it was so ditsy, creepy and 'happy-clappy', I had to go back in to listen to Laibach's take ... and I listened to it all the way through and it built into something that completely blew me away ... and now I'm a massive fan!
But being a fan of a Slovenian rock band? Where is that even? The Balkans? And here I am, a Fijian living in Hong Kong, and I'm madly loving a Balkans band, and it just seems so perverse and off-beat ... but that's youtube for you. Saint Youtube makes global citizens of us all!
Honestly, it seems like there is no boon youtube won't grant us ... except maybe that really creepy press conference last week with Stanley Ho and Wife #3 ... although I'm betting that, within only a few more days, some nice person somewhere will put it up and thus we'll all be able to see once again what looks creepily like a poor sad old man, either senile or on drugs, obviously being suckered out of his billions by a scarily avaricious young trophy wife, and thus everyone who missed it first time around can stop kicking themselves and join in the on-going nth-degree analysis and discussion of each nano-second of that footage to work out what we think is really going on!
However, that is still to come! And, yes, we will be checking youtube OFTEN hoping to find it there, and, yes, we will post it here when it is! Since this latest Nancy Kissell retrial is behind closed doors, and such interesting real-life soap operas don't come around often enough for Hong Kong's taste, this is something we will be following avidly for many months to come.
However, that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell you how, once again, youtube delivered. And that really should be DELIVERED!!!
What happened was that, over a decade ago, I heard a song on the radio that left me awestruck with a loosely hanging jaw and a boggling mind. HAD to get it only ... well, I missed the name of the band and no one ever knew what I was talking about.
Then, yesterday, I was in youtube looking for something ... OK, OK, I was looking for the Stanley Ho footage ... when I accidently stumbled across something that made me go mmmm!, and exactly like an ADHD rottweiller I forgot what I was doing and went after this new rabbit and ended up ...
... tada!
... finding that song I went searching for all those years ago. And here it is:
I first heard this song - the Stones version naturally - back in High School and, totally nauseated by the usual "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I have Love in my Tummy" and "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" on Radio Fiji One, thought it was amazing! So clever and erudite and all that stuff missing from the bubblegum garbage that Radio Fiji One endlessly pumped into in my life!
Naturally this was before Morris Hedstroms got Fiji's first Import Record Bar where I discovered Leonard Cohen and David Bowie and John Lennon-without-Paul-McCartney and Moody Blues and Jefferson Airplane and Marianne Faithful and Patty Smith and ... well, you get the idea.
But anyway ... back to youtube and this amazing discovery:
Excited to finally have a name for that really dark and creepy version of the Stones classic, I spent yesterday hunting down all I could find on this Slovenian - SLOVENIAN!!! Who even knew that Slovenia had music!!! - rock band.
And once I got over the "OMG, Borat has put out a rock video!" and the "Do all Slovenians look like serial killers?", I was seriously impressed! And the more I found of their music the more impressed I was. Like, have a listen to this:
It's all so slick and sophisticated and erudite and wonderful, isn't it!, but coupled with that wonderful strange mispronouncements like "sleether as they pass"! Pure bliss!
But I found out they were most famous for this:
But decided, after only 30 seconds, that I wasn't very impressed and clicked it off, wondering if maybe the songs only worked if you knew the originals, so I dived again into youtube to hear the original Opus version of "Life is Life" ...
... and it was so ditsy, creepy and 'happy-clappy', I had to go back in to listen to Laibach's take ... and I listened to it all the way through and it built into something that completely blew me away ... and now I'm a massive fan!
But being a fan of a Slovenian rock band? Where is that even? The Balkans? And here I am, a Fijian living in Hong Kong, and I'm madly loving a Balkans band, and it just seems so perverse and off-beat ... but that's youtube for you. Saint Youtube makes global citizens of us all!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Japanese Irish Band!
Have you seen this? It's an Irish band in Nagasaki in Japan, that appears to have all Japanese members ...
... and which may or may not - hard to tell - be called Denise Murphy!!!
... and which may or may not - hard to tell - be called Denise Murphy!!!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Year of the Rabbit!
Our 2011 Chinese New Year begins at midnight 3/4th February, when the Big Red Cap Sifu at Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple ...
... sticks The Sacred Windmill on his head and - after many prayers and much chanting from the thousands of priests, monks and the tens-of-thousands-strong public - draws out the annual Fortune Stick, thereby predicting what will happen to us here in HK during The Year of The Rabbit.
Big, huh!!
No! Not so!
Not anymore!
It's a particularly nasty time in the history of this very important event. As I mentioned last year, what's happened is that despite this being OUR BUSINESS and no one elses, in 2010 those B**tards in Beijing got involved and thus this important annual ceremony has become all very political and nasty.
What this is about is that, since this Fortune Stick is right every year - it even picked the SARS crisis back in 2002, the tsunami, and the more recent 2009 finanical tsunami - everyone always trusts it and thus it's HUGE in Hong Kong's collective consciousness. However, this year we are currently at loggerheads with the Chinese Communist Party because we want them to JUST GO AWAY!!!
As I told you last year, those Beijing B**tards barged in and demanded the right to interpret the meaning of this Stick for us, and since CCP cadres are no Big Red Cap Sifus with the right pure motives to be unbiased and therefore correct ...
... and since their prediction for 2010 was "Hong Kong will obey the Communist Party of China" ...
... for the first time EVER our annual Fortune Stick caused no emotional response at all from the public. In fact, when the interpretation appeared in the newspapers, instead of the usual long and tortuous discussions on the possible meanings of each line and crazy interpretations of each nuance, no one mentioned it and just looked sour and angry as they immediately turned the page ...
... and everyone is just sick at the thought that this interference is likely to happen again this year.
It was incredibly stupid of Beijing. In fact, it was so far beyond stupid it made me wonder if the CCP had gone insane.
Obviously, since no one believes the CCP has anything remotely like good intentions, we all think another such nasty move from Beijing will actually kill off the importance of this event.
Yup, that's my prediction: more of this Mainland interference this year will indeed kill this very long, very old and Very-Hong Kong tradition. I hope they realise that!
Lillian Too, however, is still very trusted and so, without any faith and trust left in our Annual Fortune Stick, folks are turning to her books in numbers.
But the news from Lillian Too for 2011 is not good. She's predicting lots of Dangerous Yellows. Natural disasters! Political assassinations! Sabre-rattling! Lots more floods! (She predicted lots of floods for 2010 too.) If you'd like to read what she has to say, go HERE.
And the news for me personally is particularly bad since I'm facing down The Three Killings and have so many nasty Dangerous Yellows AND an Angry Great Lord Jupiter in my marriage ba gua, so I'm dreading The Rabbit. In fact, it's all so bad I doubt our marriage will survive, because I know that the last time I had such an afflicted chart, back in 1989, Keith and I ended up the year with such anger and animosity towards each other that it's a credit to both of us that we fundamentally liked each other enough to get over it.
Since we've been there before, we know what to expect - although in 1989 I wasn't also in line for Three Killings - and thus how bad it can get so we talked about this last night and shook hands, both agreeing that whatever happens to our marriage in 2011, on the night of the start of Year of the Dragon, we shall sit down together as friends, have a glass or two of wine and laugh about it.
However, several Chinese friends - and also non-Chinese friends - have suggested we get protective amulets to ward off all this inauspiciousness, and so - not entirely tongue-in-cheek - we are now hunting out "Allies and Special Friends" amulets while also researching more to discover what other auspicious ward-off-evils will help.
If you are also in this position, I should tell you that Lillian Too is the expert on this subject of what you need for whatever, and that she also sells the appropriate amulets on-line, but I should warn you that, since she takes all this very seriously, she only has high quality very expensive items, whereas you, like us, are most likely looking for cheap-cheap-cheap on the grounds that you're also only doing it because "it can't hurt"!
Thus, after an long and exhaustive hunt (OK, I lie! Anne told me about it.) I've just found a site that sells what you need cheaply. HERE.
... could easily make a fortune as a Super Model! An exceptionally low IQ surely wouldn't be a hindrance in that field, would it?
And this little darling, since she is actually 16 ...
... could spend the rest of her life as a child actor!
Gosh, look at that! We're so far away from today's topic of Year of the Rabbit, I have no hope of finding my way back again, so I'll just leave it for today with the thought "Can we all just skip The Rabbit and go straight to The Dragon?"
The Entrance Gate to
Sik Sik Yuen Sin Temple
Big, huh!!
No! Not so!
Not anymore!
It's a particularly nasty time in the history of this very important event. As I mentioned last year, what's happened is that despite this being OUR BUSINESS and no one elses, in 2010 those B**tards in Beijing got involved and thus this important annual ceremony has become all very political and nasty.
What this is about is that, since this Fortune Stick is right every year - it even picked the SARS crisis back in 2002, the tsunami, and the more recent 2009 finanical tsunami - everyone always trusts it and thus it's HUGE in Hong Kong's collective consciousness. However, this year we are currently at loggerheads with the Chinese Communist Party because we want them to JUST GO AWAY!!!
As I told you last year, those Beijing B**tards barged in and demanded the right to interpret the meaning of this Stick for us, and since CCP cadres are no Big Red Cap Sifus with the right pure motives to be unbiased and therefore correct ...
... and since their prediction for 2010 was "Hong Kong will obey the Communist Party of China" ...
... for the first time EVER our annual Fortune Stick caused no emotional response at all from the public. In fact, when the interpretation appeared in the newspapers, instead of the usual long and tortuous discussions on the possible meanings of each line and crazy interpretations of each nuance, no one mentioned it and just looked sour and angry as they immediately turned the page ...
... although it did result in the removal
of the HK flag from public buildings!
Notice this is just the Chinese Communist Flag
flying at the Central Library
and even the flagpost to hoist the HK Flag
has been removed;
an illegal act that deserves
a strong legal intervention.
... and everyone is just sick at the thought that this interference is likely to happen again this year.
It was incredibly stupid of Beijing. In fact, it was so far beyond stupid it made me wonder if the CCP had gone insane.
Obviously, since no one believes the CCP has anything remotely like good intentions, we all think another such nasty move from Beijing will actually kill off the importance of this event.
Yup, that's my prediction: more of this Mainland interference this year will indeed kill this very long, very old and Very-Hong Kong tradition. I hope they realise that!
Lillian Too, however, is still very trusted and so, without any faith and trust left in our Annual Fortune Stick, folks are turning to her books in numbers.
But the news from Lillian Too for 2011 is not good. She's predicting lots of Dangerous Yellows. Natural disasters! Political assassinations! Sabre-rattling! Lots more floods! (She predicted lots of floods for 2010 too.) If you'd like to read what she has to say, go HERE.
And the news for me personally is particularly bad since I'm facing down The Three Killings and have so many nasty Dangerous Yellows AND an Angry Great Lord Jupiter in my marriage ba gua, so I'm dreading The Rabbit. In fact, it's all so bad I doubt our marriage will survive, because I know that the last time I had such an afflicted chart, back in 1989, Keith and I ended up the year with such anger and animosity towards each other that it's a credit to both of us that we fundamentally liked each other enough to get over it.
Since we've been there before, we know what to expect - although in 1989 I wasn't also in line for Three Killings - and thus how bad it can get so we talked about this last night and shook hands, both agreeing that whatever happens to our marriage in 2011, on the night of the start of Year of the Dragon, we shall sit down together as friends, have a glass or two of wine and laugh about it.
However, several Chinese friends - and also non-Chinese friends - have suggested we get protective amulets to ward off all this inauspiciousness, and so - not entirely tongue-in-cheek - we are now hunting out "Allies and Special Friends" amulets while also researching more to discover what other auspicious ward-off-evils will help.
If you are also in this position, I should tell you that Lillian Too is the expert on this subject of what you need for whatever, and that she also sells the appropriate amulets on-line, but I should warn you that, since she takes all this very seriously, she only has high quality very expensive items, whereas you, like us, are most likely looking for cheap-cheap-cheap on the grounds that you're also only doing it because "it can't hurt"!
Thus, after an long and exhaustive hunt (OK, I lie! Anne told me about it.) I've just found a site that sells what you need cheaply. HERE.
So far, I've got myself these two:
"Allies and Special Friends"
The rooster on the right I picked up for pocket change at Wan Chai markets, while the Guardian Angel on the left is one made by the kiddies at Keith's school.
As you know, Keith's school is for mentally challenged children each with a range of other handicaps, but you may not know that it is also a Christian school, and so ... while they can't stop the kiddies believing in the most-Chinese idea of protective amulets, they can certainly change the nature of those amulets.
The different styles of amulets
the children make!
Angels, crosses and such!
And the kiddies have become so good at it, they even run workshops so other people can learn to make them as well.
Their amulet-making workshop!
And the other part of this thought is that since so many of these kids are profoundly handicapped having a skill like this will be a useful way of earning an income ...
... although I think this exquisite girl, almost six foot tall ...
Double-click to see how stunning she is!
... could easily make a fortune as a Super Model! An exceptionally low IQ surely wouldn't be a hindrance in that field, would it?
And this little darling, since she is actually 16 ...
One of the strange silent winsy-little "Indigo Children"
who appear to communicate through ESP!
Keith has taught so many he's got used to it
and is no longer stunned by their weird talents,
but they still shock me!
... could spend the rest of her life as a child actor!
Gosh, look at that! We're so far away from today's topic of Year of the Rabbit, I have no hope of finding my way back again, so I'll just leave it for today with the thought "Can we all just skip The Rabbit and go straight to The Dragon?"
Monday, January 24, 2011
What Kills Us This Week!
The big news in Hong Kong over the past fortnight has been The Fine Art of Policeman Slapping! Yup, young people - chic rich socialite types mainly - are forever going around slapping police officers.
Not that many slaps have gone down, probably about a dozen all told, but it's now front page news and all over the TV news are interviews with the Police Union and the Police Commissioner saying "Please stop slapping our policemen!" and promising to get very mean about it in the future.
Although we all know that Policemen Slapping isn't new in HK. I mean, even Fiji 10s players "slapped" HK policemen in Wan Chai back in March 2009 - which lead us to bring out the Riot Squad against us - gosh, I am conflicted here, aren't I - but personally I think "slapping" in that case was a euphemism for "punching out" because these Fiji boys were out drinking and we've all seen what happens around the Metropole Hotel in Downtown Suva on an average Friday night, don't we?, and KNOW that's not what anyone would call "slapping", and, besides, no one sane calls out a riot squad late at night after they've been slapped.
But these current bout of slaps really are slaps! And they happen after the police stop expensive fast cars to breathalyze the drivers. And, yup, that's how it's going down among the HK rich: the cops stop you when you're driving fast under the influence, and you get out and say "How dare you!!!" and you slap them!
Oh cool! I've just found one on youtube:
And isn't that the worst acting on the policeman's part you have ever seen?
The history behind Hong Kong's hottest new trend is that it was all started by wealthy socialite Amina Mariam Bokhary, (gosh, she now even has her own Wikipedia entry), niece of HK High Court Judge at the Court of Final Appeal. I don't know this young lady - thankfully - but she is reputedly a notorious drink-driver and trouble-maker who always makes a point of slapping cops whenever they stop her doing whatever she's doing. It happens so often the police began to make a fuss about her ... and thus the very next slap, she was arrested.
First time they took her to court, she got off with a small fine! And then she slapped another policeman and was again arrested, and, for the second time, she got off, but this time she was given a warning that she wasn't allowed to do it again! But she did it again ... and ... GOT OFF!!!
And, yes indeed, everyone all over HK was saying, loudly, that they had lost faith in the HK Judiciary, and there were Protests and Marches, and lots of exercising our Freedom of Assembly type gatherings!
And Amina, so I've been told, was so into gloating over her triumph that she began appealing to everyone - through facebook I believe - to also slap police men whenever they try to stop you doing whatever ...
And knowing there was no penalty attached, Police Officer Slapping became the big game in town! Everyone got into it.
Big Big Trouble from the police! Naturally! "We're not putting up with this!" said the HK Police Force, and so they, after much agitation and the Courts being asked to rethink their judgement, they reneged on the verdict of that case and Amina was hauled off to jail. It was meant to be for six weeks, although she was let out after a month! Very Paris Hilton!!!
So that's what's currently going down with everyone waiting with bated breath for what happens with the next slap. I'm looking forward to it because whatever happens it's either going to be BIG - and someone silly is going to be put away for a long time for a simple slap - or it's NOT going to big, in which case the whole city will be out there demanding SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT IT!!!!
So that's my choice for this week:
Not that many slaps have gone down, probably about a dozen all told, but it's now front page news and all over the TV news are interviews with the Police Union and the Police Commissioner saying "Please stop slapping our policemen!" and promising to get very mean about it in the future.
Although we all know that Policemen Slapping isn't new in HK. I mean, even Fiji 10s players "slapped" HK policemen in Wan Chai back in March 2009 - which lead us to bring out the Riot Squad against us - gosh, I am conflicted here, aren't I - but personally I think "slapping" in that case was a euphemism for "punching out" because these Fiji boys were out drinking and we've all seen what happens around the Metropole Hotel in Downtown Suva on an average Friday night, don't we?, and KNOW that's not what anyone would call "slapping", and, besides, no one sane calls out a riot squad late at night after they've been slapped.
But these current bout of slaps really are slaps! And they happen after the police stop expensive fast cars to breathalyze the drivers. And, yup, that's how it's going down among the HK rich: the cops stop you when you're driving fast under the influence, and you get out and say "How dare you!!!" and you slap them!
Oh cool! I've just found one on youtube:
And isn't that the worst acting on the policeman's part you have ever seen?
The history behind Hong Kong's hottest new trend is that it was all started by wealthy socialite Amina Mariam Bokhary, (gosh, she now even has her own Wikipedia entry), niece of HK High Court Judge at the Court of Final Appeal. I don't know this young lady - thankfully - but she is reputedly a notorious drink-driver and trouble-maker who always makes a point of slapping cops whenever they stop her doing whatever she's doing. It happens so often the police began to make a fuss about her ... and thus the very next slap, she was arrested.
First time they took her to court, she got off with a small fine! And then she slapped another policeman and was again arrested, and, for the second time, she got off, but this time she was given a warning that she wasn't allowed to do it again! But she did it again ... and ... GOT OFF!!!
And, yes indeed, everyone all over HK was saying, loudly, that they had lost faith in the HK Judiciary, and there were Protests and Marches, and lots of exercising our Freedom of Assembly type gatherings!
And Amina, so I've been told, was so into gloating over her triumph that she began appealing to everyone - through facebook I believe - to also slap police men whenever they try to stop you doing whatever ...
And knowing there was no penalty attached, Police Officer Slapping became the big game in town! Everyone got into it.
Big Big Trouble from the police! Naturally! "We're not putting up with this!" said the HK Police Force, and so they, after much agitation and the Courts being asked to rethink their judgement, they reneged on the verdict of that case and Amina was hauled off to jail. It was meant to be for six weeks, although she was let out after a month! Very Paris Hilton!!!
So that's what's currently going down with everyone waiting with bated breath for what happens with the next slap. I'm looking forward to it because whatever happens it's either going to be BIG - and someone silly is going to be put away for a long time for a simple slap - or it's NOT going to big, in which case the whole city will be out there demanding SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT IT!!!!
So that's my choice for this week:
THREATDOWN
The thin edge of the wedge
that may cause the breakdown of
The Hong Kong Judiciary System!
Later: Just look what someone very naughty has done with that TV footage:
LOVE!!!! I can see this being the hot new DJ's choice song in HK's Rave Dance Scene! I know I'd dance to it!
Gosh I love HK!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Big Brother's Photo!
Big Brother Gerald is currently jaunting in Japan and I saw his stunning photographs of those monkeys in the icepools and asked if he'd send a particularly special one to me ... and instead he's sent me this one:
He's very perverse, my big brother, isn't he!
However, let's forgive him by reading what he has to say about those monkeys!
"Wednesday really was the best day of my life. We went to see the Snow Monkeys in the hot spring. It's a two mile walk through a snow covered forest to get to those thermal springs ...
Snow Monkeys are wonderful; very hairy, red faced and not at all interested in humans, mainly because they don’t get fed by the tourists. They just sit there in their hot spa. Tourists are not allowed into the spa, firstly because it is nearly 50 degrees Celsius, and secondly, those little yellow things bobbing in the water are not pine cones."
And who needs his photo anyway, when there's always youtube:
NOT monkeys in icepools!
He's very perverse, my big brother, isn't he!
However, let's forgive him by reading what he has to say about those monkeys!
"Wednesday really was the best day of my life. We went to see the Snow Monkeys in the hot spring. It's a two mile walk through a snow covered forest to get to those thermal springs ...
Snow Monkeys are wonderful; very hairy, red faced and not at all interested in humans, mainly because they don’t get fed by the tourists. They just sit there in their hot spa. Tourists are not allowed into the spa, firstly because it is nearly 50 degrees Celsius, and secondly, those little yellow things bobbing in the water are not pine cones."
And who needs his photo anyway, when there's always youtube:
My New Plan!
Having given it much thought, I'd decided to NOT get the Art Frahms. Realised they are too creepy to live with full-time and I don't have the space to hang them where they won't be seen constantly.
Instead, I'm now going to get my five favourite heroes turned into Op Art and hang those instead, starting with these ones:
Instead, I'm now going to get my five favourite heroes turned into Op Art and hang those instead, starting with these ones:
Totally my favourite image of her.
Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna!
Founding Father of Fiji!
Ratu Sir Lala should be painted over the background of the Fiji Flag, I think, even though he never saw it! And since I'm getting one done, are there any people out there who would like me to get another Ratu Sir Lala for them too? Or do you want to see how it turns out first?
And if those two turn out really well, I'll go for Op Art portraits of Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi painted over a cascading background of orchids!
Don't you just LOVE Dafen!!!
Don't you just LOVE Dafen!!!
Friday, January 21, 2011
Bob Dylan, Eat Your Heart Out!
Have you seen this? Yes, we all know Bob Dylan was doing this stuff over 20 years ago, but this guy does it so much better and has the most fabulous charisma so he is totally forgiven for the "Homage!" - which I've decided is the new name for copycat plagarism!
Get why I love him?
And while we're on a hate-facebook theme, have you seen this wonderful but rather rude song by the wonderful Brisbane singer Kate Heidke-Miller? Or should that be Kate Miller-Heidke? Either way, isn't this just gorgeous:
Get why I love him?
And while we're on a hate-facebook theme, have you seen this wonderful but rather rude song by the wonderful Brisbane singer Kate Heidke-Miller? Or should that be Kate Miller-Heidke? Either way, isn't this just gorgeous:
Thursday, January 20, 2011
The Art of Art!
Apropos nothing - as least that's as much as I'm saying - I'm trying to select my five favourite images of Art Frahm's masterpieces.
Spoiled for choice here: I love that one above, but I think I want something more thematic: I want groceries, I want men in caps, I want celery! And I'm wanting the deeply disturbing Freudian symbolism of an open purse.
Spoiled for choice here: I love that one above, but I think I want something more thematic: I want groceries, I want men in caps, I want celery! And I'm wanting the deeply disturbing Freudian symbolism of an open purse.
So those are the five I think I want. But there are so many more amazing ones:
And this one may not have the man in a hat ...
... but it does have that elastic-zapping radioactive celery.
Oh dear! What to choose! What to choose! I don't have the wall space for more than five. I don't even have the wall space for five! But other people have walls too, don't they! Baby Jane's guest house is screaming for art, and maybe that art is the art of Art Frahm!
Whatcha reckon, Baby Jane? Get the lot and let you worry where to hang them?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Letter from 2005
WAN CHAI NEWS ROUND-UP
1) The Sample Shops along Johnstone Road are currently
overflowing with the entire range of J.Lo's Children's
Clothing Collection. Each piece is selling for between
A$0.30 and A$0.50 and still not selling.
Guess Jennifer Lopez really got it wrong and there is
absolutely NO market for sexy, sequinned, spangly,
"I'm a pole-dancing stripper" prostitute-style
toddler clothing.
2) You know that full-purdah Muslim woman I've told
you about? The one who must live around here because I
see her all the time, who wears the black veil to her
ankles with only her eyes showing and a white polar-
explorer-style puffy-jacket over the top? (There's a
Fundamentalist Muslim Drop-by Centre in the next street
so I'm guessing she's the one who runs it.) (I also
think it's her teenage sons who are training the little
sino-toddlers in how-to-play soccer down there in
Southorn Park.)
Well, here's a piece of news about her that will make
your jaw drop: Yesterday she was walking down Wanchai
Road, arm-in-arm and deep in conversation with a young
ponytailed Chinese guy! Doesn't that just boggle your
mind? I mean, what Fundamentalist Islamic Universe
does she inhabit where she's allowed to do things like
that?
Oh, yeah, I see how it's possible! Maybe she needs
glasses and thought he was a woman!
3) Last week, this self-same Purdah-Woman was wearing
a gorgeous Japanese silk print orange and white scarf
wrapped around her head over the top of her veil. I
decided that the urge for colour, beauty and adornment
must be universal and at that moment I decided that I
really liked her a lot ...
... or maybe that was the beginning of the slippery
slide into the reckless abandonment and degradation
that had her walking arm-in-arm with a young man who
was so obviously NOT of her immediate family.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Don Lane, RIP
A great Fijian has died. Don Lane. And, as he has done so many times before, Tony Snowsill has written an epitaph to his friend. I'm putting part of it here so folks don't have to know Tony Snowsill to read his words.
This is only an extract. I'm sure I can put you in touch with Tony if you'd like the read it in its entirety.
Don Lane was a giant and legend in Fiji; tourism, hotels, advertising, training and administration. Don’s professional achievements were many. Don managed and administered hotels, a chain of hotels and industry organisations. He was secretary and president of the Fiji Hotels Association and PATA representative at different times. Don was a Board member (and Secretary) of the Fiji Visitors Bureau, Fiji National Training Council and numerous other tourism and business orientated organisations. He was also a Board member of the Fiji Employers Federation for many years. Don generously gave his time, expertise and wisdom always seeking to obtain the best for his fellow Fijians. Don built, renovated, and guided the development of hotels and resorts and boats and ships ...
This is only an extract. I'm sure I can put you in touch with Tony if you'd like the read it in its entirety.
Don Lane was a giant and legend in Fiji; tourism, hotels, advertising, training and administration. Don’s professional achievements were many. Don managed and administered hotels, a chain of hotels and industry organisations. He was secretary and president of the Fiji Hotels Association and PATA representative at different times. Don was a Board member (and Secretary) of the Fiji Visitors Bureau, Fiji National Training Council and numerous other tourism and business orientated organisations. He was also a Board member of the Fiji Employers Federation for many years. Don generously gave his time, expertise and wisdom always seeking to obtain the best for his fellow Fijians. Don built, renovated, and guided the development of hotels and resorts and boats and ships ...
When I next stand to watch the Fiji flag raised or the Fiji anthem played I will remember these true sons of Fiji; those who came as strangers and ended as patriots. And along with names of the esteemed I recall will be that of Don Lane - the man who contributed in numerous ways to the betterment of the lives of those who lived and live in Fiji and whose legacy is all around us in our daily lives.
Don contributed to the betterment of Fiji’s society not for money, medals, honours or acclaim. He did it because of his love of his country and the friends and friendships he gathered. For Don was a true patriot!
While out fishing Don often observed the keenly eyed great frigate birds (kasaqa) flying with the Pacific Royal albatross, guarding the profoundly beautiful blue and aquamarine reefed coastlines of our beloved land. These aerial masters glide on the wind above these cerulean seas, verdant lands and exquisite reefs and one feels, there also, and deservedly, soars Don’s spirit.
It is here, in these aesthetically pleasing and wondrous places, I envisage that Don’s now spirit resides ever watchful over the people, lands and waters of Fiji which he so dearly loved.
So the final ship’s bell has sounded on the last voyage in the life of this great Fiji Patriot and a Fiji Legend, - Don Lane. The last bowl of kava has been served and drunk with dignity and respect. The final clap is formal and solemn. Moce Don....
Moce Don; Loloma va Levu. Tony Snowsill January 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Random NZ photograph!
As you know, Keith somehow managed to lose all my latest NZ photos, but I do know where's there's a different download, although these ones are pre-processed. However, I'll go into this raw footage with my eyes shut and select one and if it's interesting, I'll tell you about it, and if it isn't I'll go off and see "The Kids Are All Right"
No, can't happen. It won't give me anything because all I'm getting is Server Rejected.
KEITH MUST DIE!!
OK, will try to get something from those 'events' I can get!
Ah, cute! This is one Keith took of John checking out Paul's new Harley. Lovely bike, huh!
No, can't happen. It won't give me anything because all I'm getting is Server Rejected.
KEITH MUST DIE!!
OK, will try to get something from those 'events' I can get!
Ah, cute! This is one Keith took of John checking out Paul's new Harley. Lovely bike, huh!
Ross River Virus!
Ross River Virus! Oh yeah! I know it well! They say it's different for everybody, so I can only talk about what happened to me, but since Brisbane and environs are now expecting the usual post-flood plague of mosquito-borne diseases, including RRV, I'm putting this out there to give people a rough idea of what to expect ... and hopefully to inspire them to do everything possible to avoid those pesky mosquitoes and so NOT get this unspeakably horrible disease.
Right up front, let me tell you that this disease is something you don't want to get, so I'm offering this advice: Be afraid! Be very afraid!!!
I caught RRV back in ... 1997? During Townsville's mosquito plague after our Cyclone Justin floods, anyway! And this disease lasted until ... mmm? ... today? Yup, I still feel the effects now and again! In fact, 14 years later, whenever I come down with something else, this hideous opportunistic disease returns with a flourish to add to my misery!
So let's say it again: Be afraid! Be very afraid!!!
It's caused by a mosquito that has previously bitten ... something! They say they don't know what the intermediate host is. But I know! There is only one possibility because I was there and saw what I saw and so know what I know ...
What happened was we'd been flood-bound for days but the waters had finally receded, and my two rottweilers, Joop and Rosk, had been increasingly stir-crazy and annoying, so late in the afternoon I took them for a much-needed walk. No biggie! Just our usual brisk stroll in the nearby park ... but this time we got there to discover the park was still underwater and all over this new lake were flocks of wild ducks! Several different species! All flown from someplace else on their annual migration! "Ah, this is so beautiful!" I thought the very second before ...
... yeah, yeah, you can guess what happened! You know, since I've talked about them before, both my beautiful darlings weighed more than I did - Rosk 67ks and Joop 92ks - which meant I had no chance of ever restraining them when they didn't want to be restrained. Usually on our walks, since they were both sweethearts, they seldom challenged my grip - which was particularly nice of them since rotties were originally bred by butchers to pull bull carcasses and so, like huskies, pulling comes naturally and instinctively - so holding them was never usually a problem. In fact, before the leash laws came into effect, in 1997, they always walked to heel beside me, one on each side, and that's what they continued to do after I was forced to walk them on leashes!
But not that afternoon! The instant they saw the ducks it was mad frantic barking and then, WHOOSH!!, they were gone! I tried to hold them back, honestly, mainly because the new leash laws were strenuously enforced with massive fines, but didn't stand a chance. And so there's me running desperately behind them, shouting and grabbing ... but good luck with that! Yup, for more than two hours, I was running madly up and down that lake, grabbing them only to lose them again, slipping and sliding in the mud and water, filthy and completely humiliated, as these vile dogs took it upon themselves to individually terrorise each of those ducks in turn!
Thankfully no one in the vicinity called the police. Guess they sympathised with my plight! Or maybe they were laughing too hard!
It was well after dark when my dogs returned to me of their own free will, all tired and happy, and, since there were mosquitoes everywhere, there was barely an inch of me that wasn't red raw from itchy bites.
So that's how I know what causes this disease. Since we were always so mosquito-careful, with dozens of citronella candles burning everywhere, that's the only opportunity I could have caught RRV so we can safely say the intermediate host is WILD DUCK!!!
So what happened next? Looking back, the first symptoms were a general malaise coupled with a complete failure of joy and humour! Normally, my life is so endlessly absurd I find reasons to laugh everywhere, but not during the RRV incubation period ... which is really sad because our lives were, at that point in time, completely ridiculous!
Oh yeah! Those were vivid times! Not only was my garden completely out of control and requiring constant work, we had a Japanese exchange student come to stay with us - several days after the incident with the ducks - who was ... HIDEOUS!! I can't find another word to describe her.
Back then, we were part of a world-wide exchange program and so hosted many lovely teenagers from around the world as they experienced a month of high-schooling in the tropics and I enjoyed them all very much.
But not Shino! Shino was evil incarnate! Shino was the epitome of trouble-making, evil-minded, dumb, self-important, rude, nasty-nasty-nasty, spoiled-rotten brat and how I didn't end up beating her continues to amaze me.
In fact, everyone, including the police, constantly said "Why haven't you beaten her?" and "How can you NOT beat her?" and "Look, don't worry about her parents. She needs it so badly, they'll probably thank you!" and a kindly "Beat her and we'll turn a blind eye!" from the exchange program, and even, from the police, "If you beat her and there's any fuss, call on us and we'll say we investigated and found nothing in it." and she was so ghastly, I thanked them for their offers and concern.
Apart from being the nastiest and rudest person I have ever known - and I mean that most sincerely - Shino's main party-trick was phoning the police to report me. She was frightened of Keith so thankfully left him alone, but I was fair game so, yup, for that horrible month, every day sicker, more feverish and more in pain than the last, most afternoons I'd return home from a hard day's teaching to find police cars in front of our house and Shino throwing a spectacular temper tantrum as she reported my latest heinous crime to them.
Like, the first crime she reported was me lighting citronella candles! I did it, as any normal person would know, as our nightly mosquito repellent on the veranda, but according to Shino they were proof I was a practising Satanist intending to kill her as a sacrifice to my evil dark lord!
Never has any moment of my life more deserved a huge uproarious bout of roaring laughter, but for some strange reason I couldn't find any humour in it and, in fact, felt it more like a nightmare. "I'm a teacher!" I pleaded with the cops. "I can't have anything like this on my record!"
"Don't worry about it." was the cheerful reply. "We're only going to have big belly laughs about this back at the station!" and then they switched over to a much more important topic: Joop! My male rottweiler! 92 kilos of gentle amber-eyed rottweiler perfection! These particular cops bred rotties and they sooo wanted Joop, who they said was better looking than even Sam and Bear, the two famous rottie studs every breeder in NQ normally aspired to, on their breeding program!
So that's undoubtedly the reason why the cops continued to drop by even after they knew Shino was completely mad. Yup, after she saw the painting in my study, given to me by an aboriginal artist friend, Deborah Dank, of The Rainbow Serpent and took this aboriginal symbol of creativity as again proof I was a practising Satanist, I had two police cars and four cops drop by to get that report. And when she found, in my locked bedroom, my sketches of Keith in the nude, and reported me as a Satanist Pornographer, there was an endless stream of police visits where, after Shino's screaming temper tantrum subsided, we'd go out to the garden for a serious round of rottie inspection and long hard questioning about about my rotties' pedigrees.
Oh, and when the investigating officers discovered that Rosk, not nearly as beautiful as Joop, was the litter-sister of Bob, the NQ rottweiler who was a legend in police circles for his human-level problem-solving intelligence - and had recently been sold off to a high ranking policeman/breeder down south for A$1,800.00 - there was no stopping the constant stream of police officers from the entire region who wished to investigate my heinous crimes.
But the Shino-nonsense went, on and on, until - despite my rottie's pedigrees - even the police had enough!! "Please beat her!" the nice policemen begged us. "We are sick to death of this evil bitch, so please do whatever you can to force her to stop bugging us!"
So you get why, since her police reports were barely the tip of the iceberg of the constant horror she inflicted on us, this was no time for sense-of-humour failure. Normally, I could have coped PLUS PLUS PLUS and loved every minute, but not on this occasion. Instead of laughing, I just got angrier and angrier until - and please don't blame me for this - when she very presumptively and rudely ordered me to take her clothes off the line, I felt this empowering sense of rage and, just like The Incredible Hulk, and despite having the most intensively painful hands, I actually hauled the huge Hills Hoist out of the ground and aimed it right at her as a missile!
Got her too! Knocked her out! Man, that felt so good! And, yeah, yeah, when she came to, all cut up and battered, and raced in to ring the police, they arrived - tee hee! - only to give me a big hearty pat on the back and said "On ya, mate!!!", and they did it right in front of her too!
Yee ha! Go go, Townsville Police Force!
But let's get back to the real story!
With the RRV plague, no one knew what was happening but everyone knew something was wrong. Too many of us were coming down with mystery ailments. As a highschool teacher, you deal with close to three hundred people a day and practically everyone was talking about something being wrong with them; all different things, sure, but most of us definitely knew we had something! And, sure, there was a Dengue epidemic happening in the region, but we all knew this definitely wasn't Dengue.
RRV was virtually unknown to the general public back then and because it presents in so many different ways, people were fronting up to their doctors with gout and others with desperately painful muscles that felt like they've been ripped out of sockets, and joints that felt like someone had stuck a knife in, and still others turned up with bones so painful they were convinced they've broken lots of them.
Me? I too had never heard of RRV and couldn't understand why I felt like I'd been in a car accident that had broken every bone in my body. I thought maybe it was Shino-induced stress and just took aspirin for it ... until the moment I got the full dose of poly-arthritis in my hands.
Man, that was amazing! It happened so fast I felt like a werewolf under a full moon!
Seriously, you should have seen that first bout. My garden was such a mess that, despite feeling very feverish and foggy-headed and with extremely painful hands, I was out there digging out the masses of weeds, when my spade hit a rock under the earth, jarring my hands ... and that's when it happened.
Right before my eyes, my fingers began to curl inwards, and then the bones in the back of my hands began to protrude and twist into the most bizarre shapes, and then my hands themselves began to curl and twist into these inhuman claws, and then they twisted around and curled themselves up right against my wrists in a position they normally couldn't reach.
You have never seen anything like it EVER! If it hadn't been so unbearably painful, it would have been rather fun! But that's when I realised something was definitely seriously wrong with me so I made my way down to my doctor.
"I think I've developed arthritis!" I said to him, holding up my vile freakishly-twisted claws.
"Mmmm, yes, a very serious bout indeed!" he said, trying to hide his smile. "And how long did it take you to develop this bout?"
"About 10 to 15 minutes."
And that's when he burst into unsympathetic roaring laughter. "That 40 years of arthritis you have in those hands." he eventually settled down enough to say. "It's not possible to get 40 years of arthritis in 10 to 15 minutes."
That was when he picked up the bottle he had right in front of him - he must have been doing this for days - and said "This is most irresponsible of me to do this without doing blood tests first, but those tests will take days and I can see how much pain you're in, and besides, I'm so convinced I know what you've got, I'm going to give you a pill ... so let's diagnose you this way: if one of these pills gets rid of your bout of arthritis, what you have is definitely Ross River Virus." and took out a tablet and, saying, "This is always fun to watch." he gave it to me with a glass of water.
I took it and it was indeed fun to watch. Within only minutes, the pill took effect and my 40 years of arthritis, which took about15 minutes to form, took only about three to unform. And my sense of humour returned too, so when "Fun, huh!" my doctor said, I laughed along with him!
I don't recall the name of that drug, but I only wish all drugs worked that well. And needless to say, despite my normal refusal to take any medicines, pain-relief makes hypocrites of us all so I bought a jar of these suckers - expensive but who cared - and took them exactly as my doctor ordered.
And whenever I stopped taking them, I'd go all werewolf-hands again ... so I stayed on them for many months. And continued to take them as the bouts continued over that first year, until they suddenly stopped having the same effect and I was back onto the aspirin for the pain, as I have been for the years since.
Yup, years! At first they said this disease would only last months, and then, when it continued, that it would last a year, and then that figure rose to three years, and then to five and then to nine, until here I am, 14 years later, still on close intimate terms with RRV, because whenever I come down with anything else, like with this current cold I've got, I feel like I've been in a bone-smashing car-accident and I werewolf up ...
... although I never feel it as badly nor look as freakishly-clawy as I did with that first ever bout.
So that's how I discovered Ross River Virus! It's painful and horrible and you really really REALLY don't want to catch it. So please take my advice and Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Oh, and stay away from DUCKS!!!
Right up front, let me tell you that this disease is something you don't want to get, so I'm offering this advice: Be afraid! Be very afraid!!!
I caught RRV back in ... 1997? During Townsville's mosquito plague after our Cyclone Justin floods, anyway! And this disease lasted until ... mmm? ... today? Yup, I still feel the effects now and again! In fact, 14 years later, whenever I come down with something else, this hideous opportunistic disease returns with a flourish to add to my misery!
So let's say it again: Be afraid! Be very afraid!!!
It's caused by a mosquito that has previously bitten ... something! They say they don't know what the intermediate host is. But I know! There is only one possibility because I was there and saw what I saw and so know what I know ...
What happened was we'd been flood-bound for days but the waters had finally receded, and my two rottweilers, Joop and Rosk, had been increasingly stir-crazy and annoying, so late in the afternoon I took them for a much-needed walk. No biggie! Just our usual brisk stroll in the nearby park ... but this time we got there to discover the park was still underwater and all over this new lake were flocks of wild ducks! Several different species! All flown from someplace else on their annual migration! "Ah, this is so beautiful!" I thought the very second before ...
... yeah, yeah, you can guess what happened! You know, since I've talked about them before, both my beautiful darlings weighed more than I did - Rosk 67ks and Joop 92ks - which meant I had no chance of ever restraining them when they didn't want to be restrained. Usually on our walks, since they were both sweethearts, they seldom challenged my grip - which was particularly nice of them since rotties were originally bred by butchers to pull bull carcasses and so, like huskies, pulling comes naturally and instinctively - so holding them was never usually a problem. In fact, before the leash laws came into effect, in 1997, they always walked to heel beside me, one on each side, and that's what they continued to do after I was forced to walk them on leashes!
But not that afternoon! The instant they saw the ducks it was mad frantic barking and then, WHOOSH!!, they were gone! I tried to hold them back, honestly, mainly because the new leash laws were strenuously enforced with massive fines, but didn't stand a chance. And so there's me running desperately behind them, shouting and grabbing ... but good luck with that! Yup, for more than two hours, I was running madly up and down that lake, grabbing them only to lose them again, slipping and sliding in the mud and water, filthy and completely humiliated, as these vile dogs took it upon themselves to individually terrorise each of those ducks in turn!
Thankfully no one in the vicinity called the police. Guess they sympathised with my plight! Or maybe they were laughing too hard!
It was well after dark when my dogs returned to me of their own free will, all tired and happy, and, since there were mosquitoes everywhere, there was barely an inch of me that wasn't red raw from itchy bites.
So that's how I know what causes this disease. Since we were always so mosquito-careful, with dozens of citronella candles burning everywhere, that's the only opportunity I could have caught RRV so we can safely say the intermediate host is WILD DUCK!!!
So what happened next? Looking back, the first symptoms were a general malaise coupled with a complete failure of joy and humour! Normally, my life is so endlessly absurd I find reasons to laugh everywhere, but not during the RRV incubation period ... which is really sad because our lives were, at that point in time, completely ridiculous!
Oh yeah! Those were vivid times! Not only was my garden completely out of control and requiring constant work, we had a Japanese exchange student come to stay with us - several days after the incident with the ducks - who was ... HIDEOUS!! I can't find another word to describe her.
Back then, we were part of a world-wide exchange program and so hosted many lovely teenagers from around the world as they experienced a month of high-schooling in the tropics and I enjoyed them all very much.
But not Shino! Shino was evil incarnate! Shino was the epitome of trouble-making, evil-minded, dumb, self-important, rude, nasty-nasty-nasty, spoiled-rotten brat and how I didn't end up beating her continues to amaze me.
In fact, everyone, including the police, constantly said "Why haven't you beaten her?" and "How can you NOT beat her?" and "Look, don't worry about her parents. She needs it so badly, they'll probably thank you!" and a kindly "Beat her and we'll turn a blind eye!" from the exchange program, and even, from the police, "If you beat her and there's any fuss, call on us and we'll say we investigated and found nothing in it." and she was so ghastly, I thanked them for their offers and concern.
Apart from being the nastiest and rudest person I have ever known - and I mean that most sincerely - Shino's main party-trick was phoning the police to report me. She was frightened of Keith so thankfully left him alone, but I was fair game so, yup, for that horrible month, every day sicker, more feverish and more in pain than the last, most afternoons I'd return home from a hard day's teaching to find police cars in front of our house and Shino throwing a spectacular temper tantrum as she reported my latest heinous crime to them.
Like, the first crime she reported was me lighting citronella candles! I did it, as any normal person would know, as our nightly mosquito repellent on the veranda, but according to Shino they were proof I was a practising Satanist intending to kill her as a sacrifice to my evil dark lord!
Never has any moment of my life more deserved a huge uproarious bout of roaring laughter, but for some strange reason I couldn't find any humour in it and, in fact, felt it more like a nightmare. "I'm a teacher!" I pleaded with the cops. "I can't have anything like this on my record!"
"Don't worry about it." was the cheerful reply. "We're only going to have big belly laughs about this back at the station!" and then they switched over to a much more important topic: Joop! My male rottweiler! 92 kilos of gentle amber-eyed rottweiler perfection! These particular cops bred rotties and they sooo wanted Joop, who they said was better looking than even Sam and Bear, the two famous rottie studs every breeder in NQ normally aspired to, on their breeding program!
So that's undoubtedly the reason why the cops continued to drop by even after they knew Shino was completely mad. Yup, after she saw the painting in my study, given to me by an aboriginal artist friend, Deborah Dank, of The Rainbow Serpent and took this aboriginal symbol of creativity as again proof I was a practising Satanist, I had two police cars and four cops drop by to get that report. And when she found, in my locked bedroom, my sketches of Keith in the nude, and reported me as a Satanist Pornographer, there was an endless stream of police visits where, after Shino's screaming temper tantrum subsided, we'd go out to the garden for a serious round of rottie inspection and long hard questioning about about my rotties' pedigrees.
Oh, and when the investigating officers discovered that Rosk, not nearly as beautiful as Joop, was the litter-sister of Bob, the NQ rottweiler who was a legend in police circles for his human-level problem-solving intelligence - and had recently been sold off to a high ranking policeman/breeder down south for A$1,800.00 - there was no stopping the constant stream of police officers from the entire region who wished to investigate my heinous crimes.
But the Shino-nonsense went, on and on, until - despite my rottie's pedigrees - even the police had enough!! "Please beat her!" the nice policemen begged us. "We are sick to death of this evil bitch, so please do whatever you can to force her to stop bugging us!"
So you get why, since her police reports were barely the tip of the iceberg of the constant horror she inflicted on us, this was no time for sense-of-humour failure. Normally, I could have coped PLUS PLUS PLUS and loved every minute, but not on this occasion. Instead of laughing, I just got angrier and angrier until - and please don't blame me for this - when she very presumptively and rudely ordered me to take her clothes off the line, I felt this empowering sense of rage and, just like The Incredible Hulk, and despite having the most intensively painful hands, I actually hauled the huge Hills Hoist out of the ground and aimed it right at her as a missile!
Got her too! Knocked her out! Man, that felt so good! And, yeah, yeah, when she came to, all cut up and battered, and raced in to ring the police, they arrived - tee hee! - only to give me a big hearty pat on the back and said "On ya, mate!!!", and they did it right in front of her too!
Yee ha! Go go, Townsville Police Force!
But let's get back to the real story!
With the RRV plague, no one knew what was happening but everyone knew something was wrong. Too many of us were coming down with mystery ailments. As a highschool teacher, you deal with close to three hundred people a day and practically everyone was talking about something being wrong with them; all different things, sure, but most of us definitely knew we had something! And, sure, there was a Dengue epidemic happening in the region, but we all knew this definitely wasn't Dengue.
RRV was virtually unknown to the general public back then and because it presents in so many different ways, people were fronting up to their doctors with gout and others with desperately painful muscles that felt like they've been ripped out of sockets, and joints that felt like someone had stuck a knife in, and still others turned up with bones so painful they were convinced they've broken lots of them.
Me? I too had never heard of RRV and couldn't understand why I felt like I'd been in a car accident that had broken every bone in my body. I thought maybe it was Shino-induced stress and just took aspirin for it ... until the moment I got the full dose of poly-arthritis in my hands.
Man, that was amazing! It happened so fast I felt like a werewolf under a full moon!
Seriously, you should have seen that first bout. My garden was such a mess that, despite feeling very feverish and foggy-headed and with extremely painful hands, I was out there digging out the masses of weeds, when my spade hit a rock under the earth, jarring my hands ... and that's when it happened.
Right before my eyes, my fingers began to curl inwards, and then the bones in the back of my hands began to protrude and twist into the most bizarre shapes, and then my hands themselves began to curl and twist into these inhuman claws, and then they twisted around and curled themselves up right against my wrists in a position they normally couldn't reach.
You have never seen anything like it EVER! If it hadn't been so unbearably painful, it would have been rather fun! But that's when I realised something was definitely seriously wrong with me so I made my way down to my doctor.
"I think I've developed arthritis!" I said to him, holding up my vile freakishly-twisted claws.
"Mmmm, yes, a very serious bout indeed!" he said, trying to hide his smile. "And how long did it take you to develop this bout?"
"About 10 to 15 minutes."
And that's when he burst into unsympathetic roaring laughter. "That 40 years of arthritis you have in those hands." he eventually settled down enough to say. "It's not possible to get 40 years of arthritis in 10 to 15 minutes."
That was when he picked up the bottle he had right in front of him - he must have been doing this for days - and said "This is most irresponsible of me to do this without doing blood tests first, but those tests will take days and I can see how much pain you're in, and besides, I'm so convinced I know what you've got, I'm going to give you a pill ... so let's diagnose you this way: if one of these pills gets rid of your bout of arthritis, what you have is definitely Ross River Virus." and took out a tablet and, saying, "This is always fun to watch." he gave it to me with a glass of water.
I took it and it was indeed fun to watch. Within only minutes, the pill took effect and my 40 years of arthritis, which took about15 minutes to form, took only about three to unform. And my sense of humour returned too, so when "Fun, huh!" my doctor said, I laughed along with him!
I don't recall the name of that drug, but I only wish all drugs worked that well. And needless to say, despite my normal refusal to take any medicines, pain-relief makes hypocrites of us all so I bought a jar of these suckers - expensive but who cared - and took them exactly as my doctor ordered.
And whenever I stopped taking them, I'd go all werewolf-hands again ... so I stayed on them for many months. And continued to take them as the bouts continued over that first year, until they suddenly stopped having the same effect and I was back onto the aspirin for the pain, as I have been for the years since.
Yup, years! At first they said this disease would only last months, and then, when it continued, that it would last a year, and then that figure rose to three years, and then to five and then to nine, until here I am, 14 years later, still on close intimate terms with RRV, because whenever I come down with anything else, like with this current cold I've got, I feel like I've been in a bone-smashing car-accident and I werewolf up ...
... although I never feel it as badly nor look as freakishly-clawy as I did with that first ever bout.
So that's how I discovered Ross River Virus! It's painful and horrible and you really really REALLY don't want to catch it. So please take my advice and Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Oh, and stay away from DUCKS!!!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Silent Auction, Queensland Flood Relief!
A friend of Robert Oliver, Clare Richards has been in touch. This is her letter:
Hi Denise,
The impact of the floods in Queensland is currently beyond comprehension, and the ongoing risk of further flooding makes what is already a disaster of extraordinary scale even more daunting.
I have been contemplating what I can do to support those affected by the floods.
But I do have one thing to give - my book. So I have decided to run a silent auction of 10 of my books to raise money for the many thousands upon thousands of people affected by the Queensland floods.
Here is how it works:
Australian bids start at $59.95 Australian Dollars (AUD)
International bids start at $99.95 Australian Dollars (AUD) ($40 of international bids will go towards postage, I will cover the remaining postage cost as Australia's international postage costs are so high)
Bids are to be made on the Silent Auction page <http://tropicalcuisine.com/silent-auction/>
I will post the highest current bid twice daily at 9am and 9pm
The auction runs for 10 days and closes at 9pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) on Friday 21st January 2011
Each of the 10 winning bid amounts will be listed on this website, with winners choosing whether they wish their name to be listed or kept private.
Bids must be paid by 9pm Sunday 23rd January AEST via the silent auction payment page, the link to which will be sent to each winner (Paypal, Visa or MasterCard accepted). If bids are not paid by that time the bid will be annulled and the next closest bidder will be notified.
The only cost recouped from the auction will be $40AUD from each successful international bid - all other funds will go directly to the Queensland Flood Relief Appeal <http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html> .
Books will be inscribed as follows:
"This book is one of ten copies won in a silent auction that raised $...... for those affected by the Queensland floods. Thank you for your generous support. Kind regards, Clare"
I hope you will join me in this effort to raise funds for our fellow citizens. Please send the link to this post (http://tropicalcuisine.com/2011/01/11/silent-auction-to-support-qld-flood-relief/) and the donation page (http://tropicalcuisine.com/silent-auction/) to anyone who you feel may be interested, and keep checking in to see how the auction is progressing.
Kind regards,
Clare Richards
Hi Denise,
The impact of the floods in Queensland is currently beyond comprehension, and the ongoing risk of further flooding makes what is already a disaster of extraordinary scale even more daunting.
I have been contemplating what I can do to support those affected by the floods.
But I do have one thing to give - my book. So I have decided to run a silent auction of 10 of my books to raise money for the many thousands upon thousands of people affected by the Queensland floods.
Here is how it works:
Australian bids start at $59.95 Australian Dollars (AUD)
International bids start at $99.95 Australian Dollars (AUD) ($40 of international bids will go towards postage, I will cover the remaining postage cost as Australia's international postage costs are so high)
Bids are to be made on the Silent Auction page <http://tropicalcuisine.com/silent-auction/>
I will post the highest current bid twice daily at 9am and 9pm
The auction runs for 10 days and closes at 9pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) on Friday 21st January 2011
Each of the 10 winning bid amounts will be listed on this website, with winners choosing whether they wish their name to be listed or kept private.
Bids must be paid by 9pm Sunday 23rd January AEST via the silent auction payment page, the link to which will be sent to each winner (Paypal, Visa or MasterCard accepted). If bids are not paid by that time the bid will be annulled and the next closest bidder will be notified.
The only cost recouped from the auction will be $40AUD from each successful international bid - all other funds will go directly to the Queensland Flood Relief Appeal <http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html> .
Books will be inscribed as follows:
"This book is one of ten copies won in a silent auction that raised $...... for those affected by the Queensland floods. Thank you for your generous support. Kind regards, Clare"
I hope you will join me in this effort to raise funds for our fellow citizens. Please send the link to this post (http://tropicalcuisine.com/2011/01/11/silent-auction-to-support-qld-flood-relief/) and the donation page (http://tropicalcuisine.com/silent-auction/) to anyone who you feel may be interested, and keep checking in to see how the auction is progressing.
Kind regards,
Clare Richards
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Flood Update!
You'll be pleased to know that Didi's house is fine despite the rest of her neighbourhood going under. Yup, just like Loredana. But whereas Loredana feels guilty about coming through intact, Didi says she feels blessed !!
Didi's right, Loredana honey, FEEL BLESSED!
Michael and Paula are fine too, although Michael's farm down the coast apparently got a severe bashing! Haven't yet heard how bad.
And the big big news is that Margaret got back from Berlin yesterday only to discover her house in Toowoomba ... is just dandy! Well above the waterline, she has no problems whatsoever. Am very pleased because I was visualising a very nasty homecoming, a la what happened to Joanne many years ago!
What happened there was our friend Joanne returned to Townsville after seven months in Africa - and had been telling us all she was so looking forward to coming home because Africa stunk beyond anything she could ever have imagined. However, we'd had the Cyclone Justin series of flood in her absence, so when she walked in her front door ... she immediately walked out again ... because it smelled worse than anything she'd ever encountered in Africa; anything she'd ever encountered in her life; anything she'd thought it possible to encounter. What happened was that she'd gone under several times, and everything had dried out in a locked house, and then got inundated again and then ... well, to cut a long story short, everything she owned was fetid, dank, mushy, covered in mushrooms, mould and simply rotted away in the most putrid way imaginable. She had to toss out every single thing she owned and start again ... in a new house!
And speaking of mushrooms growing in houses, that's exactly what happened to Julia's neighbour's house in Innisfail many years ago. Julia's elderly neighbour had a heart attack while doing the dishes, so her elderly husband, in a panic, drove her straight to the emergency room ... and never returned home himself ... so the tap in the kitchen just ran and ran and ran ... and over the years that followed we watched the very nice wooden house next door get consumed by mushrooms! Seriously! It was like Attack of the Killer Fungi over there, with these mushrooms over every inch of the place. And the smell! Oh boy, that SMELL!! Tried many times to get authorities to take an interest - if only on the grounds of conserving water - but no one cared. Julia moved out so I've no idea how that ended up, although I imagine it would have been a demolition-job for definite!
But back to the present! That's the round-up of everyone we know in this disaster. Everyone is fine and well and escaped anything bad.
And Keith laughed at me for lighting that candle in front of Kwan Yin for them!
Didi's right, Loredana honey, FEEL BLESSED!
Michael and Paula are fine too, although Michael's farm down the coast apparently got a severe bashing! Haven't yet heard how bad.
And the big big news is that Margaret got back from Berlin yesterday only to discover her house in Toowoomba ... is just dandy! Well above the waterline, she has no problems whatsoever. Am very pleased because I was visualising a very nasty homecoming, a la what happened to Joanne many years ago!
What happened there was our friend Joanne returned to Townsville after seven months in Africa - and had been telling us all she was so looking forward to coming home because Africa stunk beyond anything she could ever have imagined. However, we'd had the Cyclone Justin series of flood in her absence, so when she walked in her front door ... she immediately walked out again ... because it smelled worse than anything she'd ever encountered in Africa; anything she'd ever encountered in her life; anything she'd thought it possible to encounter. What happened was that she'd gone under several times, and everything had dried out in a locked house, and then got inundated again and then ... well, to cut a long story short, everything she owned was fetid, dank, mushy, covered in mushrooms, mould and simply rotted away in the most putrid way imaginable. She had to toss out every single thing she owned and start again ... in a new house!
And speaking of mushrooms growing in houses, that's exactly what happened to Julia's neighbour's house in Innisfail many years ago. Julia's elderly neighbour had a heart attack while doing the dishes, so her elderly husband, in a panic, drove her straight to the emergency room ... and never returned home himself ... so the tap in the kitchen just ran and ran and ran ... and over the years that followed we watched the very nice wooden house next door get consumed by mushrooms! Seriously! It was like Attack of the Killer Fungi over there, with these mushrooms over every inch of the place. And the smell! Oh boy, that SMELL!! Tried many times to get authorities to take an interest - if only on the grounds of conserving water - but no one cared. Julia moved out so I've no idea how that ended up, although I imagine it would have been a demolition-job for definite!
But back to the present! That's the round-up of everyone we know in this disaster. Everyone is fine and well and escaped anything bad.
And Keith laughed at me for lighting that candle in front of Kwan Yin for them!
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Leoni!
Oh dear! I've just had this entire post on my friend Leoni and how she was destroyed by North Queensland's 13 floods in less than three years, and what she did to triumph over her adversities, wiped and nothing appears to be saved!
I'm definitely not typing that all out again - at least not today - so let's have a random photo instead.
I'm definitely not typing that all out again - at least not today - so let's have a random photo instead.
Oh, look at that. A charming photo of the floods in Thailand last year. Gosh, isn't this photo appropriate, given what's happening in South Queensland, Sri Lanka and Argentina!
And I have to tell you that we're having crazy-mad conspiracy theory conversations all over about what's causing all this. "It's all HAARP!", says Leisha as she directs us to various web sites to check it all out.
By the way, have you seen this one?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
How Does The Garden Go?
It's hard to know the etiquette with these things! How soon after a disaster where lives have been lost and so many folks have lost everything, can you start asking how well a garden has survived?
I'm talking about the Japanese Garden in Toowoomba. It was outstandingly the best Japanese-style garden in Australia and was a gift from Japan and I used to find it so peaceful and inspirational I loved it.
I mean, LOOK:
How can you not worry about what's happened to it?
So, does anyone know?
I'm talking about the Japanese Garden in Toowoomba. It was outstandingly the best Japanese-style garden in Australia and was a gift from Japan and I used to find it so peaceful and inspirational I loved it.
I mean, LOOK:
How can you not worry about what's happened to it?
So, does anyone know?
PHEWWW!!!
Kwan Yin be praised. Everyone I know in Brisbane is fine, although I have yet to hear from Didi but, since she has a stream at the bottom of her property, I guess she's still going through this, without power and so still waiting it out, maybe just playing Scrabble - the best game ever while you're waiting out disasters ... after you've plaited everyone's hair so they look like Bo Derek - so I won't fear the worst.
Loredana, right in the danger zone and who expected to go under, didn't and she says it feels very surreal to still have her normal life while so many around her have lost so much!
Andrew too is fine. I wasn't really worried about him since he was well out of the danger zone - although I did have one "Too Hong Kong" moment when I remembered that his house was perched on the side of a gully and thought maybe all the torrential rain would destablise his foundations - till I remembered I wasn't actually a True Hong Konger and got sane again!
However, I was "True Blue Hong Konger" worried about Margaret in Toowoomba because I hadn't heard from her and so, after an entire day without word, I contacted Judy in a mild panic and felt most silly when she pointed out Our Marg was actually in Berlin and probably wasn't even aware that dreadful "Inland Tsunami" devastated her town. Judy and I then discussed her house and where it was situated above the park and if it was high enough to have escaped ... or if Margaret has a very unwelcome homecoming ahead of her ... and if we should contact mutual friends and ask them to pick her up when she returns later this week and be with her when she makes this discovery!
Not hearing news while you're traveling is a real problem, isn't it! Remember how Collette and Jimmy were traveling and didn't know about the earthquake in Christchurch until they reached Spain, and, because their son was at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, it was immediate panic ... but they got through to him on his mobile straight away only to discover he was well and happy. And, after they reached HK they heard about the aftershocks, so when they again rang him in a panic, they discovered he was still well and happy and doing good work with Search and Rescue and thus on that "Out Volunteering" high!!!
Gosh, that's such a good high, isn't it! Have you ever had it? When you're out in an emergency and doing really good and important work, including saving lives? WOW!!!
Growing up in Fiji, after every cyclone, The Royal Suva Yacht Club would be out there, our boats trawling up and down Rewa River, doing Search and Rescue ... and I now recall those harsh days of hard, hard work - sitting on the prow of our boat, not wearing my too-cumbersome life-jacket, living up to my childhood nickname "Bright Eyes", watching out for for bodies, hopefully still alive, clutching to trees and logs in among the debris - as the very best times of my young life.
And I notice all the young folk in Brisbane who are doing SES volunteering have a similar high! It's a good, good feeling, folks, so if you're ever in a disaster area ... GO OUT THERE AND DO YOUR BIT!!
Good luck with this Brisbane ... and Ipswich ... and Toowoomba ... and Rockhampton ... and everyplace North because I hear they've started doing food drops up there because the roads and railways have all been cut off so nothing is coming and going at all! Gosh, I do hope the beer supply is OK!
Loredana, right in the danger zone and who expected to go under, didn't and she says it feels very surreal to still have her normal life while so many around her have lost so much!
Andrew too is fine. I wasn't really worried about him since he was well out of the danger zone - although I did have one "Too Hong Kong" moment when I remembered that his house was perched on the side of a gully and thought maybe all the torrential rain would destablise his foundations - till I remembered I wasn't actually a True Hong Konger and got sane again!
However, I was "True Blue Hong Konger" worried about Margaret in Toowoomba because I hadn't heard from her and so, after an entire day without word, I contacted Judy in a mild panic and felt most silly when she pointed out Our Marg was actually in Berlin and probably wasn't even aware that dreadful "Inland Tsunami" devastated her town. Judy and I then discussed her house and where it was situated above the park and if it was high enough to have escaped ... or if Margaret has a very unwelcome homecoming ahead of her ... and if we should contact mutual friends and ask them to pick her up when she returns later this week and be with her when she makes this discovery!
Not hearing news while you're traveling is a real problem, isn't it! Remember how Collette and Jimmy were traveling and didn't know about the earthquake in Christchurch until they reached Spain, and, because their son was at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, it was immediate panic ... but they got through to him on his mobile straight away only to discover he was well and happy. And, after they reached HK they heard about the aftershocks, so when they again rang him in a panic, they discovered he was still well and happy and doing good work with Search and Rescue and thus on that "Out Volunteering" high!!!
Gosh, that's such a good high, isn't it! Have you ever had it? When you're out in an emergency and doing really good and important work, including saving lives? WOW!!!
Growing up in Fiji, after every cyclone, The Royal Suva Yacht Club would be out there, our boats trawling up and down Rewa River, doing Search and Rescue ... and I now recall those harsh days of hard, hard work - sitting on the prow of our boat, not wearing my too-cumbersome life-jacket, living up to my childhood nickname "Bright Eyes", watching out for for bodies, hopefully still alive, clutching to trees and logs in among the debris - as the very best times of my young life.
And I notice all the young folk in Brisbane who are doing SES volunteering have a similar high! It's a good, good feeling, folks, so if you're ever in a disaster area ... GO OUT THERE AND DO YOUR BIT!!
Good luck with this Brisbane ... and Ipswich ... and Toowoomba ... and Rockhampton ... and everyplace North because I hear they've started doing food drops up there because the roads and railways have all been cut off so nothing is coming and going at all! Gosh, I do hope the beer supply is OK!
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Queensland floods! My advice!
It seems callous to talk about a holiday in NZ when so many friends are staring down the barrel of a gun. Actually not so much a gun as the floodwaters currently making their way down Brisbane River, expected to hit the city tomorrow.
The beautiful Loredana, known to you through this blog, is among those expected to be affected. She says she's saving the photo albums but, as far as she's concerned, the rest can go, although I suspect she is rethinking this as we speak! The waiting must be horrible if only because it gives you so much time to think about other things that mean a lot to you and which you realise you MUST save.
That old lady packing up her grandfather clock and wondering where she can store it for the duration! Did you see that on yesterday's news?
And I had to laugh at Premier Anna Bligh's comment "I want everyone to go around to visit your elderly neighbours to see if they're OK?" because ... well, since these floods are expected to reach and even exceed the heights of the devastating 1974 Brisbane floods, and the website with the 1974 flood map crashed because of the sheer numbers of visitors, everyone I know is going around to visit their elderly neighbours to ask "Am I going to be OK?"
Australia is always wonderful in a crisis! I guess they've had a lot of practise for surviving disasters PLUS they've also got that wonderful John O'Brien poem "We'll all be rooned, said Hanrahan!" to keep everything in perspective.
Do you know that poem? If you don't - HERE - and do read it because I think this quintessential piece of Australiana is the secret to that wonderfully careless heroism Australians bring to situations like these.
Me, I know floods. When we lived in Townsville, we had 13 of them in less than three years. This was mainly due to Cyclone Justin, the largest cyclone the world has ever seen, which was so big it couldn't move - and a cyclone needs to move if it is to blow itself out - so it hung around for a month and the devastating torrential rains soaked the ground so deeply that we flooded over and over and over, for the next three years, each one worse than the last ...
... and so we all well learned the lessons ... the main one being ... keep your photo albums high and dry ... and the big one ... PROTECT YOUR SOFT FURNISHINGS!!!
Floodwater isn't like regular water and if any gets into your mattresses or sofa or carpet or linen closet there is no saving anything. Within days, no matter how much you scrub and bleach, the stench becomes unbearable and that putrid rotting smell permeates everything and so many of your possessions, including books, must get tossed.
The other thing worth noting is that being in a flood can be rather fun provided you don't have to drive anywhere ... and make sure you don't drive anywhere because you WILL break down and you WILL have to wade or even swim to get to safety and, in Australia, there are always frightened snakes in that water ... and then your car, if it's been under, even if it still works, when you finally rescue it, it too will stink unbearably and will also have to be tossed.
And there are two really fascinating facts I learned because of these floods: 1) that water actually bends. There's a viscous substance on the surface of water that holds it back from attaining its true level, and frequently flood waters can be even a foot higher than your front door but doesn't enter your house because of this frequently very large bend. (And don't ever poke it, no matter how tempting, because if you break the surface tension, VOILA!!! You're under!)
2) that the earth appears to have a memory all of its own. When we were digging the fishponds in our Townsville garden, we discovered that most of our garden had very little topsoil and that beneath the ground were large sacks full of rubble. I asked our neighbour Old Kevin about it and he said our suburb once had a stream running through it but the property developer, just after WWI, diverted it and filled in the old stream bed with whatever he could.
Well, here's something so worth knowing: when you divert and fill the former creekbed, during a flood, the stream begins to run again. Seriously! In the still flood waters, above where the stream once ran, the water races along at a very fast pace still following its old path, even if that path is right through the middle of your house.
Fun facts, right?
However, less fun is the fact that, while your floods are very newsworthy and you get lots of sympathy, the real horror begins AFTER it's over. First, the mosquitoes arrive in swarms, then everyone you know, including yourself, comes down with Dengue and Ross River Virus and Barhma-Forrest. And then, during the clean-up, other nasty insects come into play and those folk who escaped the first round, and even those who didn't, like our poor darling Keith, come down with other nasties like Q Fever or tick paralysis or Lyme Disease.
But, right when you start to feel like you're trapped in some Old Testament bible-story, Mother Nature confirms it because along comes the truest of the fearful post-flood monsters: the hideous disease of meliadosis. I may have spelt this wrongly, because I can't find a reference to it anywhere, but nonetheless this is something you MUST take into account when you're cleaning up after a flood.
This hideous disease is caused by bacteria normally only found deep within the earth, but floods bring them to the surface and with your topsoil full of these vicious little things, even the tiniest scratch can kill you!
Dozens of friends came down with this disease during our three years of flooding. Most of them died. And someone I knew well, David, a professional gardener with a beautiful wife and three gorgeous little children, so with a lot to live for, got it six times and heroically fought it off five times, "The hardest thing I've ever done!" he told me - however, during his sixth bout, said "No more. I have no fight left. This time I go." and he died almost immediately.
This is a hideous disease, although the world mostly ignores it despite it killing over 13 million Africans every year. But the really horrible part is that those friends who heroically fought the disease and survived were all left with the most curious coloured skin. They were all kinda purple-ish-reddish and it was extremely freakish-looking, and it lasted for years afterwards too. That was such a tragedy and I felt deeply for them; all these people who'd gone through life looking normal suddenly had to learn to cope with people staring at them, and teenagers laughing at them, and children running away screaming.
Of these dozens, the lucky ones began to fade after three or so years, but others were still purple after five, but those folk weren't seen in public anymore because they were all too ashamed. People can be very cruel. Even me! I used to look at them and think "I think I'd have preferred to die!"
I was lucky, I suspect, because I too was a serious gardener, however, because I came down with Ross River Virus early, with the usual crippling poly-arthritis and hands too twisted and painful to do anything at all, I escaped this particular horror!
So that's my advice regarding flooding and I hope you take away something from it, even if it's just PAY SOMEONE ELSE TO DO YOUR CLEAN-UP!!!
The beautiful Loredana, known to you through this blog, is among those expected to be affected. She says she's saving the photo albums but, as far as she's concerned, the rest can go, although I suspect she is rethinking this as we speak! The waiting must be horrible if only because it gives you so much time to think about other things that mean a lot to you and which you realise you MUST save.
That old lady packing up her grandfather clock and wondering where she can store it for the duration! Did you see that on yesterday's news?
And I had to laugh at Premier Anna Bligh's comment "I want everyone to go around to visit your elderly neighbours to see if they're OK?" because ... well, since these floods are expected to reach and even exceed the heights of the devastating 1974 Brisbane floods, and the website with the 1974 flood map crashed because of the sheer numbers of visitors, everyone I know is going around to visit their elderly neighbours to ask "Am I going to be OK?"
Australia is always wonderful in a crisis! I guess they've had a lot of practise for surviving disasters PLUS they've also got that wonderful John O'Brien poem "We'll all be rooned, said Hanrahan!" to keep everything in perspective.
Do you know that poem? If you don't - HERE - and do read it because I think this quintessential piece of Australiana is the secret to that wonderfully careless heroism Australians bring to situations like these.
Me, I know floods. When we lived in Townsville, we had 13 of them in less than three years. This was mainly due to Cyclone Justin, the largest cyclone the world has ever seen, which was so big it couldn't move - and a cyclone needs to move if it is to blow itself out - so it hung around for a month and the devastating torrential rains soaked the ground so deeply that we flooded over and over and over, for the next three years, each one worse than the last ...
... and so we all well learned the lessons ... the main one being ... keep your photo albums high and dry ... and the big one ... PROTECT YOUR SOFT FURNISHINGS!!!
Floodwater isn't like regular water and if any gets into your mattresses or sofa or carpet or linen closet there is no saving anything. Within days, no matter how much you scrub and bleach, the stench becomes unbearable and that putrid rotting smell permeates everything and so many of your possessions, including books, must get tossed.
The other thing worth noting is that being in a flood can be rather fun provided you don't have to drive anywhere ... and make sure you don't drive anywhere because you WILL break down and you WILL have to wade or even swim to get to safety and, in Australia, there are always frightened snakes in that water ... and then your car, if it's been under, even if it still works, when you finally rescue it, it too will stink unbearably and will also have to be tossed.
And there are two really fascinating facts I learned because of these floods: 1) that water actually bends. There's a viscous substance on the surface of water that holds it back from attaining its true level, and frequently flood waters can be even a foot higher than your front door but doesn't enter your house because of this frequently very large bend. (And don't ever poke it, no matter how tempting, because if you break the surface tension, VOILA!!! You're under!)
2) that the earth appears to have a memory all of its own. When we were digging the fishponds in our Townsville garden, we discovered that most of our garden had very little topsoil and that beneath the ground were large sacks full of rubble. I asked our neighbour Old Kevin about it and he said our suburb once had a stream running through it but the property developer, just after WWI, diverted it and filled in the old stream bed with whatever he could.
Well, here's something so worth knowing: when you divert and fill the former creekbed, during a flood, the stream begins to run again. Seriously! In the still flood waters, above where the stream once ran, the water races along at a very fast pace still following its old path, even if that path is right through the middle of your house.
Fun facts, right?
However, less fun is the fact that, while your floods are very newsworthy and you get lots of sympathy, the real horror begins AFTER it's over. First, the mosquitoes arrive in swarms, then everyone you know, including yourself, comes down with Dengue and Ross River Virus and Barhma-Forrest. And then, during the clean-up, other nasty insects come into play and those folk who escaped the first round, and even those who didn't, like our poor darling Keith, come down with other nasties like Q Fever or tick paralysis or Lyme Disease.
But, right when you start to feel like you're trapped in some Old Testament bible-story, Mother Nature confirms it because along comes the truest of the fearful post-flood monsters: the hideous disease of meliadosis. I may have spelt this wrongly, because I can't find a reference to it anywhere, but nonetheless this is something you MUST take into account when you're cleaning up after a flood.
This hideous disease is caused by bacteria normally only found deep within the earth, but floods bring them to the surface and with your topsoil full of these vicious little things, even the tiniest scratch can kill you!
Dozens of friends came down with this disease during our three years of flooding. Most of them died. And someone I knew well, David, a professional gardener with a beautiful wife and three gorgeous little children, so with a lot to live for, got it six times and heroically fought it off five times, "The hardest thing I've ever done!" he told me - however, during his sixth bout, said "No more. I have no fight left. This time I go." and he died almost immediately.
This is a hideous disease, although the world mostly ignores it despite it killing over 13 million Africans every year. But the really horrible part is that those friends who heroically fought the disease and survived were all left with the most curious coloured skin. They were all kinda purple-ish-reddish and it was extremely freakish-looking, and it lasted for years afterwards too. That was such a tragedy and I felt deeply for them; all these people who'd gone through life looking normal suddenly had to learn to cope with people staring at them, and teenagers laughing at them, and children running away screaming.
Of these dozens, the lucky ones began to fade after three or so years, but others were still purple after five, but those folk weren't seen in public anymore because they were all too ashamed. People can be very cruel. Even me! I used to look at them and think "I think I'd have preferred to die!"
I was lucky, I suspect, because I too was a serious gardener, however, because I came down with Ross River Virus early, with the usual crippling poly-arthritis and hands too twisted and painful to do anything at all, I escaped this particular horror!
So that's my advice regarding flooding and I hope you take away something from it, even if it's just PAY SOMEONE ELSE TO DO YOUR CLEAN-UP!!!
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