Friday, April 29, 2011

Weird!

Weirdness is a frequent visitor in my life, as you know, but it seldom - in fact, NEVER - gets as weird as this.  Sincerely!

Let me tell you what's happened and hopefully someone will have an explanation:

I woke up yesterday morning, right?, and went out to grab my 'first of the day' ciggie but my packet wasn't in the usual place, right by the kettle.  I knew I'd left a freshly opened packet there before I went to bed and thought "Gosh, Keith is annoying." so I hunted around a bit and couldn't find it ... so went to my bag to get another packet.  None there, despite knowing there should be.  "Bloody Keith!" I thought. So I hunted out where I'd put old duty frees I'd got on my travels when I couldn't buy my usual brand and it turned out I didn't like the substitute but, being thrifty, put them aside for emergencies like this one.  All gone!

I was so cross with Keith. Normally he doesn't play these stupid passive aggressive games so all the time I was tearing our place apart, looking everywhere for where he'd hidden them, I wondered what was wrong with him and if he'd actually lost his mind somewhere along the way and I hadn't noticed.

But then I found them, all hidden under pillows on the sofa, with old newspapers folded tightly around them like a badly wrapped present. "When did Keith become this bizarre?" I thought!

So I had cigarettes, although not the open packet I'd left by the kettle. Never found that one. 

When Keith got home last night,  "I don't find you funny!" I scolded him the second he walked through the door.  He had no idea what I was talking about.  Swore blind, in fact, that he hadn't touched any of my cigarettes, and said that he'd noticed the open packet by the kettle and counted them (I've promised to cut down to 20 a day) before he left and very definitely left the packet right where it was, not wanting me to know he'd counted as he was planning to count them when he got home.

I believed him.  We've been married a very long time and I know he's not good at lying and so doesn't do it often. In fact, the only time I've known him to lie to me is when I've asked him to put up shelves and he comes up with blustering reasons for why it can't be done! Wall studs won't take it or something else equally ridiculous!

And that's when I remembered something very mysterious had also happened a fortnight ago when, before going to bed, I'd dumped the clothes I'd been wearing that day into the wash basket. The following morning, I'd gone to the laundry basket to grab those clothes to wash them, only they weren't there. I thought "Maybe Keith put on a load before leaving." only he hadn't. I hunted for them high and low, but they weren't anywhere ... and they haven't turned up since.  Thought it was odd but didn't make anything more of it.

But then came this missing cigarettes saga!

Two counts of weirdness in two weeks?  We've had stuff go missing before, but only when we've had a substitute maid - no names - and whenever I've later mentioned the loss to Our Beth, the very next day the missing objects magically reappear and we don't ask any more questions.

But Beth is in the Philippines at the moment, so for the past fortnight Keith and I are the only people who've been in the house.  Also, our place is right up high, and there's no way into our apartment except through the front door.

Mysterious, right?

Hunting for an explanation, I sent Keith out to test the front door just in case it wasn't shutting properly.  It was fine. Then we wondered if maybe Beth gave her keys to someone else, but decided she wouldn't because she's not like that. Also, as Keith pointed out, the apartment was full of yuan left over from our China trip all lying right out in the open, so any thief worth his/her salt would surely have taken that instead.

And, as he also pointed out, why would a stranger steal only two items of dirty clothes - black trousers and black top - from a laundry basket when there were ever so many similar items clean, ironed and hanging in the wardrobe, and then come back later to steal a packet of cigarettes ... as well as rummaging through drawers and handbags to find and then tightly gift-wrap and hide half a dozen packets of cigarettes.

OK, I'm forced to concede it's very unlikely thief behavior.

Nonetheless, I wasn't giving up this Strange Stranger notion lightly so made Keith go into the storage space in the roof to check there wasn't a sleeping bag or something else to indicate we had Strange Stranger living here uninvited.  Nothing, except a lot of bags and boxes of truly lovely stuff I'd forgotten I'd bought during our years in HK, and all stacked in ways that meant getting up into there was impossible.

"You're sleepwalking!" Keith accused me! "You're doing this yourself!"

"You don't suddenly start sleepwalking at our age." I retorted. "It's much more likely you're trying to send me mad using The Gaslight Method!"

"I wouldn't try The Gaslight Method on you! You're too strong-minded and opinionated! It only works on NICE people who are willing to surrender their views to accommodate other people's."

And then I recalled a variation on "The Gaslight Method" - let's call it The Lord-Bull Variation in honour of the folks involved - and how a professor friend of ours was once driven into a nervous breakdown by a student she'd failed, who got revenge by breaking into her house every couple of days to move a single item from one part of a room to another or else to remove something negligible and worthless, like the knob on the TV set or the rubber bits in all her taps.  Nothing in itself even worth mentioning, but it all accumulated and, after eight months of this unexplained weird 'haunting', she had to be carted away in a strait jacket, which was when the student began to boast about how he'd driven her insane and we all knew how it was done.

I toyed with the idea someone was playing a Lord-Bull game on us before realising we have no one in our lives who'd feel the need to do it.  Besides, it all came back to the stumbling block: how was this person getting in?

So that's how things currently stand.  Something very strange and mysterious is definitely afoot and I would LOVE an explanation.

Any ideas?


Apart from this one, obviously! I really don't want to go there! No siree!

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Pixar Exhibition, Hong Kong!

"You really have to see it." said David.  "It's very special."

And he wasn't wrong.  Several times, as we did the rounds of the exhibit at The Chinese Heritage Museum in Sha Tin, the stray thought crossed my mind "This is actually kinda important!" and "I don't know how they've made this meaningful in the greater scheme of things, but they have."

What had we gone to see?
 
 One of the first books EVER mass produced!

No, not the Oxford University Press exhibition also on in Sha Tin, although that was a perfect side trip after the other! You couldn't help but think how magnificent it is that this one was actually responsible for the other in the greater scheme of things.

What we saw was ...

... and if you can't see that properly, let me show you another:


Yup, it's the "25 years of Pixar" Exhibit and I must tell you that David nailed it because it is indeed pretty special ... although what it's doing in The Chinese Heritage Museum is a little perplexing, unless there's something Pixar isn't telling us! But whatever!

Hey, did you know that the little fellow in "UP" actually started life as Asian.  See this early drawing:

Do note how much prominence
it's given, hanging right in
the lobby!

There is actually a series of drawings inside - you weren't allowed to take photos in there -  that traces his development from Asian to Caucasian, and it looks like they rethought it a couple of times before the decision was finally made:



 As you can see, that decision was to leave it ambiguous!

However, even though photography was forbidden inside, I couldn't resist taking this one because it was just so bizarre:

 How wrong is this!

That is the actual first visualisation of what Woody, the main character in "Toy Story", was going to look like.  Thank heavens they quickly revisualised him as ...

How right is this?

So that's what this exhibit was about: the visual history of the creation of all the Pixar films.  However, it was so much more than that and actually now and again, as I mentioned before, reached up to a level that made it seriously important.

An example?

To see this zeotrope "in the flesh" is so far beyond incredible, you begin to ascribe all sorts of import and meaning to the making of it.

I'm not kidding about this.  In fact, this Exhibition is full of objects hinting at serious science and serious art and all sorts of serious step-taking on the path of serious philosophical and material culture development and I actually found myself thinking "Pixar is actually MAJOR!" and "It used to be WAR that lead to these giant steps for mankind sort of things, but Pixar isn't about war; it's about comedy." and I wondered if I should be doing a proper post-structural discursive analysis of what I was seeing ...

... until I realised my brain has simply become too lazy and my language-dolche so increasingly limited that I probably shouldn't even attempt to attempt it.

And so, to remove any desire to be intellectual, I simply ran around taking photos of children and of children taking photos of children ...



 Only a small sample of what I've got!

 One of my favourites!

... which is, as you know, a wonderful cure for intellectual urges.

So I cannot recommend this highly enough. Even if you're an adult and don't have a single kiddie anywhere near your life, that's no excuse not to see it.  And if you're a more pretentious sort of adult, if you throw in a side trip to see the Oxford University Press's history of publishing, that works too.

Oh, and go early because word is out and those are some serious crowds they're drawing and the queues to get in are BRUTAL.

And the details for getting to see it for yourself can be found here:  PIXAR EXHIBIT.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Being Hong Kong!

Could Hong Kong GET any Hong-Kong-ier?

You may recall The Wishing Tree at Tai Po?



If you don't, this is an ancient and venerable tree where, for centuries, folk congregated to write their wishes on streamers tied to an orange and then throw the fruit high into the branches, all done to request a boon from the Tree Spirit!

And you may recall that an elderly boon requester was killed about two years ago when the orange she was throwing brought down a branch on her head?  And it happened shortly after an elderly man attempted to sue HK when a branch fell on his head.

A blast from the past.  
HK Magazine's Threatdown.


And so the Conservation Society brought in tree doctors who declared that the tree was in its death throes and needed to be left alone.

Well, you'll be happy to know that, as of yesterday, The Wishing Tree is doing well:


Really quite restored to 
health and vigor, isn't it!

And it's all thanks to smarty-pants Hong Kong erecting close by ... a New Improved PLASTIC Wishing Tree.

Meaning that instead of requesting a boon from this ...


... you boon request at this ...

Note the oranges and streamers!

... which begs the question that sounds like it should be the title of a Gonzo Journalist novel:  

Do Plastic Trees Have Tree Spirits?

Gosh, I do love Hong Kong!

Ching Ming Trash!

The Redoubtable Mrs Walker is on the warpath. Three weeks ago, she was enraged about the amount of rubbish left behind at the cemeteries after the Ching Ming Ancestor Worship Festival this year ... and so we passed through one yesterday on our way to Ma Shi Chau National Park to see if this one too had yet been cleaned up.

The answer was ...




Three weeks and still no clean-up.  Not even the bins emptied!

Who you gonna call?  28680000 it says here?  Joke!!!  It isn't the right number however this government number will transfer you from here if you ring.

And I must tell you that I'm currently trying to ring them and I've been on hold since 11.45! 25 minutes of "Sorry, our hotlines are busy, please wait!"

Apparently this grave clean-up service has now been passed from Government to the private sector ... and do you too feel that the private sector is not doing their job?  This cemetery was filthy and the entire hillside stinks!

And there's all sorts of random wind-blown Hell Money all over the National Park ... 


 ... although that is the least of the National Park worries! (Another huffy post yet to come!)

Shocking, isn't it!  This year everyone is talking about how the standards of cleanliness in HK have dropped so dramatically - you should see the numbers of "Angry in Tseun Wan" etc Letters-to-the-Editor in various newspapers - and now it looks like we could have just found the reason:

SUB-CONTRACTING!!! And, specifically, sub-contracting to people who aren't actually doing what they're being paid to do!

It's such a shame to see it so neglected and stinky because these cemeteries are so very pretty ... 


... and surely dead ancestors deserve so much better!

I'll eventually be posting on these fabulous Chinese cemeteries so I won't show you any more now.  I've just done this one since Mrs Walker wants my photos to send to the Government Department formerly responsible for the annual post Ching Ming clean-ups with an attached PLEASE EXPLAIN! 

And I'm right there behind her because three weeks - THREE WEEKS!!! - is just too long for nothing to have been done!

Go go Mrs Walker!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Keith's P&T Annual Big Day Out - 2011

Keith is off today on his LEGENDARY P&T's Annual Big Day Out! 

I have told you all about these in the past; outings that are so BAD I've decided the Parents of the students at his school can only be described as "comedians of the first order."

I was in Australia this time last year, so I missed that one, but apparently they all went out for long coach ride out into the wilderness of New Territories to a Korean banquet hall for a traditional Korean banquet.  Sounds OK, right?  Not so!  When the food turned up that they realised it was NORTH Korean!  Cabbage, cabbage and more cabbage.  And it was followed by a very long, fraught and embarrassing coach ride back.

And here's what happened in 2009.

And here's 2008, which includes mention of earlier years.

So are you too just longing to find out what surprise these parents organised for the teachers this year.

(And it's raining today too!  Bahahahahahaha!!!)

Later:

Keith and co are out there somewhere and Black Rain Warnings have gone out!  Yup, there's a massive thunderstorm in the offing.  Bahahahahahahhhhhaaaaa! 

Later:

I doff my hat!  I call them Master!  Every time I think they've topped the top - reached the very pinnacle of plumbing the depths - they step it up a notch!

KEITH'S BIG DAY OUT - 2011

A two hour coach ride up to a fish farm near the border with China!  But anyone can do a fish farm!  To honour the teachers this year, the P&T took them to ... a FORMER fish farm!  A fish farm that hadn't been a fish farm for nearly 30 years!

 Keith visits a former fish farm!

Let me show you more:


 The path to the farm!

 The farm!

 The farm house!
 
 The neighbouring fish farmers!

But Keith, ever the cheery easy-going optimist, said it was worth it to get this single shot:


As for the organisers?  These comic geniuses?


As well as staying by the road to read newspapers, they watched model aeroplanes fly!

Kudos, P&T, kudos!  Long may you continue to astound me!

10 Things to Learn from the Japanese.

I was admiring the amazing photographs of the Japanese disaster that are now up for awards, including this really quite astonishing one that made the front page of the Chinese Communist Party newspaper:

 No matter an enormous disaster, 
Japanese are knee-jerk well mannered!

Anyway, after showing this around, Lyn sent me this wonderful article:

 

 10 things to learn  from Japan – SKYNEWS reported this few days  back.
 

 


 
1. THE  CALM
 
Not a single visual of  chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated.

   
2. THE  DIGNITY
 
Disciplined queues for water  and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture. Their patience is  admirable and praiseworthy.


3. THE  ABILITY
 
The incredible architects, for  instance. Buildings swayed but didn’t fall.
 

4. THE GRACE  (Selflessness)
 
People  bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody could get  something.
 

5. THE  ORDER
 
No looting in shops. No  honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just  understanding.

 
6. THE  SACRIFICE
 
Fifty workers stayed back to  pump sea water in the N-reactors. How will they ever be repaid?
   

7. THE  TENDERNESS
 
Restaurants cut prices. An  unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the  weak.
 

8. THE  TRAINING
 
The old and the children, everyone  knew exactly what to do. And they did just that.

 
9. THE  MEDIA
 
They showed magnificent  restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage. Most of  all – NO POLITICIANS TRYING TO GET CHEAP MILEAGE.
 

10. THE  CONSCIENCE
 
When the power went off in a  store, people put things back on the shelves and left  quietly.
 

 
With their country in the midst of a  colossal disaster - The Japanese citizens can teach plenty of lessons to the  world.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Holiday Plans!

Making a mad dash to finish the script - today? - since we want to go up to China next week for a week.

Only to Guangzhou however.  I MUST SHOP!!!  And I want to go back to Rosie's wonderful riverside restaurant in Shamian Dao since I haven't been there since I was robbed and it was hard to enjoy her fabulous seafood while so stressed. And I want to take a riverboat cruise around Pearl River Delta AND take Keith to Bao Mo Gardens,  (If I weren't in a hurry, I'd link you to these posts.) which he has never seen.

AND while we're at Bao Mo Gardens, I want to point over the river to show him the site of the city of Pan Yu, the oldest city in the world, even older, by thousands of years, than Ur and Sumer and all the rest of those present-title-holders in Mesopotamia.

Yup, the oldest city on earth is today a bare stretch of weed-covered earth on the banks of Pearl River right next to a huge industrial complex, across from Bao Mo Gardens, in a suburb of Guangzhou called - undoubtedly in a faint historical echo - Panyu. 

You won't find any advertising for this Marvel however, nor anything whatsoever written about it, nor can you get near it, since it's all a deep dark secret that Beijing doesn't want mentioned ...

... but you can't keep this lady down.  I can winkle out anything, including word that, in an act of 'the dirtiest of dirty politics', China won't let archeologists excavate because the Hun of the North like to think of the South - Canton - as "deepest, darkest, most primal Africa" with inhabitants who are little better than monkeys, and so are angry to discover - as they have since discovered to their very great disgust - that the famed Jade Emperor who invented Chinese civilisation - and did it right there in Pan Yu too -  was A Monkey From the South!

And I also know that Pan Yu came about, around 10,000 years ago, as the trading wharf for foreigners and their 'boats' who had begun to arrive, eventually in droves, to SHOP!

And shop they all did because right there, nearby, on the banks of the Pearl River, there were once entire cliffs of green and white jade that these "monkeys from the south" carved into weapons, money-tokens and jewelry ...

... PLUS they had ever so many acres of fragrant trees that seeped out fragrant resin and so, being very clever little "monkeys", managed to invent incense sticks ...

... and thus the world beat a path to their door and they became very rich and powerful "monkeys" whose influence, culture and material goods spread right across China. And thus it was that Chinese Civilisation came about and it was all thanks to Pan Yu, the city that lasted for many thousands of years, starting out as a simple trading wharf  but which kept growing and growing until it ended up as The World's First Giant Shopping Mall.

So, after 10,000 years of almost constant SHOPPING, you probably understand that, despite my vow to stop consuming so much, Guangzhou calls to me so loudly saying "Come Shop".

Yes, I hear you, Guangzhou!!!  Don't worry! I'm coming!

Ruby The Marvelous!

I am making a mad dash, trying to finish the script this week, and am merely dropped by to tell you the latest Ruby the Marvelous story just arrived from Jane.

If you don't already know, Ruby is a rescue dog from the pound that Baby Jane, who runs an Aged Care Facility, suspected was very intelligent and so started training her, mainly to be a pet-companion for the residents at the Home ... but then Ruby began to do amazing things that went far beyond any sort of training.

I've told you Ruby the Marvelous stories before, however I won't find them for you now.  It's that hurrying thing!

Jane writes: "Ruby just put another notch on her collar as to being Most Most Marvelous Dog Alive.

We had a very elderly confused resident vanish from the facility late last night, so the search began. He couldn't be found anywhere, so at 11.30pm we had to get the Police involved. After many fruitless hours searching around in bushland, house yards etc, it looked hopeless and so, on a whim, I went to Peter's place and got Ruby as I thought she may be helpful.

I had no idea how use Ruby as a scent dog so I just did what they do in those Police Procedural films and docos, and got the pillowslip from the old guy's bed and put it to her nose and said "Find!’’ and she was off. She was a little confused at first because she'd never done anything like this before, but I kept doing it every time she came back to me and sure enough it turned out she indeed had the working nose I thought she had, so I let her take me to the jungle and within 15 minutes we found him underneath one of the nearby houses.  Turns out the old guy had crawled under the house and was asleep, so we would never have found him. 

The police were astonished and made such a fuss of Ruby and even gave her a ride home in the police car.  Mmmmmmm, and yes, there were several mentions of the fact the police up here don’t have search and rescue dogs and so always have to bring them up from down south ... but, nonetheless, even if they were projecting a certain future role for her, and I'm not saying they were, and it definitely wouldn't be anything official, that's not something we should be talking about.

 And needless to say, I’m so very proud of her!  And a little bit of me too for my faith in her!"

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Like, huh??

There are times when I simply don't get Hong Kong.

Take this example: 


It's a free gift given away at our local convenience stores: a small package containing children's stickers and which always includes a half-priced special offer for next time you shop there.

And, in this instance, see what children are being given a discount on!

Like, does that make no sense to you either?

Article by Senona Smiles in Fiji Times

Seona Smiles, the lovely Fiji Times reporter, has kindly supported our cause to erect a headstone for Dame Mary Edwell-Burke.  Interrupted by my inclusions and interjections, here is her article:

Where have all the paintings gone?

Seona Smiles
Sunday, April 10, 2011

Where are they now - the beautiful people painted by Mary Edwell-Burke?

 Painting by Dame Mary Edwell-Burke!

Or rather, where are the paintings?

It is certainly not a matter of 'where is she now' because for once we can be sure of that.

Fiji's 'Miss Mary' lies in an unmarked grave in Nasinu Cemetery and not beneath the headstone she desired.

 Dame Mary's grave!

Which is why a couple of other Fiji artists have taken an interest in tracking down her work and doing something about Miss Mary's last wish.  (Anne and Craig!)

She could be a demanding and difficult woman, let me tell you.

I used to wonder why some of her portrait sitters didn't look just plain terrified instead of reasonably relaxed.

Sometimes she was impossible to track down, and sometimes she was plain impossible.

But she was also talented, courageous, flamboyant and resourceful and when I did track her down, full of stories as colourful as her brilliant paintings.

I suspected there was more colour than truth to some of the stories while some of the true stories she would have preferred to forget.

Like the one about the 1943 Archibald Portrait Competition held at the New South Wales Art Gallery.

Although the Gallery bought one of her paintings, the prize was awarded to a portrait of Joshua Smith by another internationally-known Australian artist, William Dobell.

  "Portrait of an Artist"
The painting that caused all her future problems
 and current neglect!

Miss Mary had the courage to challenge the decision and in an historic and bitter court case, she and another artist sought to prove that the prize had been awarded for a caricature, not a portrait.

Dobell, whose award was ultimately vindicated by the court, went off to the country and Miss Mary packed her bags and set out for parts abroad, settling semi-permanently in Fiji.

She had already made her name - which was originally Mary Edwards but later changed to both her natural father's and her mother's names -- in the art studios of Europe by the time she was 20.

When World War I broke out she had taken a slow trip back to her original home in Australia that actually took her to India and then again to Europe and around the Pacific as far as Java and Tahiti.

A photograph of her that seems to have been taken at the beginning of her career shows a cheeky smile and laughing eyes that never missed a thing. (This is a stunning photograph.  I only wish my scanner was working so I could show you.)

She is wearing rather dramatic clothes, something with a big frilled collar and dashing hat.

Her outfits in the years I would see her in Suva streets always tended towards the interesting rather than the fashionable­; voluminous gowns I would now covet in lace-trimmed icky green or earthy brown, her still abundant though fading hair caught up with a velvet bow.  (How interesting is it that every single time I met her, she was dressed in white?  I know I said she always wore white - because that's what I believed - however no one else agrees with me on that point.)

We would occasionally meet, and if she was feeling friendly would tell me what she was doing and more importantly, where she was living.

She constantly chased the perfect studio location, where the light was right.

In Fiji it was for a while a bure on a ridge top near Mau Village, next to where Pacific Harbour is today.  (Yay, this is the one I remember, although I thought it was closer to Suva!)

Another time it was a bamboo raft houseboat on the Lami river, given up because her cats didn't like getting their feet wet. (I wonder if this is the bamboo raft houseboat that was still moored below the Laylor's hill in Lami last time I was in Suva?)

Several times she went off to northern Canada, the last trip when she was in her late 80s, to the great concern of her Fiji friends. (I recall her saying once that she was off to Canada, but that was in the '60s.)

Her last studio was at the Home of Compassion, set up by the good Sisters to her explicit instructions.
She lived there in her final year before passing away in January 1988, aged 93.

In that last year, a group of Miss Mary's friends and admirers got together with the Australian High Commission to hold a retrospective exhibition of her work in March 1987. (I have this catalogue, btw)

The list of the 90 paintings put on display read like a roll call of Pacific personalities and beauties, some of the names reflected in the exhibition committee and on the guest list.

Two Fiji artists who value her work are interested in locating her paintings again with a little project in mind.

They would like to have a commemorative event for Miss Mary and fulfil her final wish: to have a simple stone erected on her grave with the inscription 'Miss Mary' - Mary Edwell-Burke 1894-1988. (This request is in her will.)

 Instead of this!

If you have an interest in the project, or you have a Mary Edwell-Burke painting, contact seona.smiles@gmail.com

Fiji really shouldn't forget this woman; I certainly never will.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Tina! For David!

Last night at dinner, David said that he never 'got' Tina Turner and couldn't understand why she had this cultural and musical iconic status.

This is for him:



Do you get it now, David?  She's holds a certain semiological metaphoric status not back then held by any other woman, yet at the same time she transcends it, and BEING AND YET TRANSCENDING is always the sign of The Master ...

... oh look, I'd explain it better only I'm busy and don't want to get my head out of My Own Private Killing Field.  Later, friend, later!

Monday, April 4, 2011

While I'm Busy!!

Am madly dashing away on the script.  Decided in the end to go with turning "Tabu" from treatment to script, so Major Hadley and "Hunting Amelia" must wait a while longer.

In the meantime, here's something very beautiful to enjoy:



It is, as Robert says, something like a prayer, isn't it!