LFC

The first letters of the alphabet I ever learned were L, F and C!  I was about two and had no idea what they meant and really didn't yet have pencil control, but nonetheless dad wrote the letters down and made me copy them over and over again until I could do them properly, and then I had to write them, when instructed, onto little white cards. And I had to do it for the next five years. Five whole years!

LFC, LFC, LFC, LFC.

How I longed to do nice rows of "e".

It was in the early 60s. As you know, dad was brought to Fiji in the early 50s to handle the Tuberculosis Epidemic that hit the Pacific after World War II. It was back then a disease new to the region, so no one had any immunity and thus ... ten years of rampant TB, rampant death, rampant horror!

But, by the early 60s, dad had got the epidemic under control however he had such a hate-love relationship with the disease, he was determined to run it to ground and stomp it out of the British Pacific altogether, and to that end procured a ship - our darling Vuniwai - Fijian for 'doctor' - that he had turned into a floating hospital and he also got funding (I think the wonderful and mighty Queen Elizabeth II, who was his stalwart support throughout these horrible times, was personally responsible for getting him everything he wanted) so every single person in Fiji got a chest X-ray, and Vuniwai sailed the seas, around all the islands, gathering these for him.

But instead of being delivered to Tamavua TB Hospital - the now World Heritage Listed hospital on the ridge above Suva - these X-rays were delivered to our home in the hospital compound, coming in by the thousands in large official-looking cartons every time Vuniwai returned to Suva. And despite having a "nice people eat in the dining room" sort of mother, these cartons were stacked up in our dining room, putting that room out of commission. That must have been a nightmare for mum, but she never said anything!

The X-rays themselves came in miniature, each about four inches by three inches, in large ominous-looking black rolls of thousands, and the light-box enlarger sat on our dining-room table and for hours on end, dad looked through them, each in turn, looking for signs of the disease he hated so very much that he was determined to wipe off the face of the earth - or at least the part of the earth he was responsible for.

However, can you see the problem? Back then the population of Fiji was just under a million ... which meant that over the course of five years, we had just under a million of these sodding X-rays in our lives, sitting in our house, taking over our entire existence (Baby Jane's earliest memories involve sitting on dad's lap at the light box as he explained to her how to read a chest X-ray! Mine too!) because our father alone looked at every single one. Yup, he was so mistrustful of anyone else doing a proper job, he examined every single X-ray personally.

And at least one of us, little more than toddlers, would be kneeling on a chair next to him (being too small to see properly if we sat) at all times, turning over those sodding little white cards every time he said "Next"!  And, despite none of us yet being able to read, it was our job to tell him if there was any handwriting on the card. And if there was, we'd shout "Writing!" and dad would take the card and check the name and number was correct, read what was there - usually something about how a family member had died of TB - and then he'd examine that X-ray and most usually we'd then have to write those dreaded letters "LFC"!

Lung Fields Clear!!!!

Sometimes however it got more involved and, after "Writing!", dad would cut the X-ray out of the roll, staple it to the card and it would be put into the special box of cards that named those people Vuniwai had to sail out to collect to bring back to the hospital so dad could get his hands on them.

Thus, that was our earliest childhood: day and night, dad looking at these sodding X-rays, working from home for some unfathomable reason - maybe mum was insisting he spent more time with his children - and involving us in the process, trying to make it into a game that we could all play together.  Don't know why. Surely it counts as "cruel and unusual punishment".

And I suppose I shouldn't be telling you this, but the best part of this game - the part I truly loved - was that, when we were all still little more than toddlers, dad taught all of us how to read a chest X-ray, and then he'd go off and read the newspaper while we kiddies did a roll or two. I must add that this wasn't entirely irresponsible because he was always sitting nearby, and since he knew that we all knew exactly what 'normal' lungs looked like, the rule was that any that didn't look normal we'd give him a yell and he'd come over to look ...

... but there was that spectacular time when we kiddies discovered a man who had all his organs on the opposite side of his body.  Oh wow!  It was so unbearably cool!  We all got so excited (we kids loved all the freaky objects like two headed chickens they had at the Medical School next door) and yelled for dad to come look. At first dad dismissed it, saying that the radiologist must have screwed up and put the image the wrong way round, but nonetheless - screw-up or freak - that X-ray was cut out and put into the box because either his radiologist was in trouble or else this freakish man was definitely someone dad wanted to get his hands on.  (As it turned out, he did indeed have his organs all round the opposite way, and the phrase "one in a million" really hit home for me.)

Anyway, all this came back to me yesterday when I got the results of my chest X-ray and was able to write to my siblings those fabulous letters of the alphabet ... LFC!!!!!

Go Hakkas!!!

This is sooo cute, I have to share.

The HK Council now says that the Hakka Ladies on their staff now have to wear helmet-style hard-hats, same as the men, instead of their traditional hakka-hats.

Well, have a look at how they're doing it:

Love?

Yayyyy!  You GO, Hakka Council Workers!!!

My Rugby World Cup 2011!!!

All Blacks beat France 37 to 17!  Beautiful game! 19 to 3 at half time and all the Frenchies sitting around us were very humble and quiet, but then, only minutes into the second half, the French Barbarians - or whatever they're called - made a try and they were all immediately jumping up and down in their seats and crying "We are rallying! We are rallying!" only, you know, in French - but then the All Blacks made another try and another ...

 ... and they were back to humble-and-quiet and it was so sweet watching them and we were madly loving our All Blacks for so obviously toying with French emotions! GO ALL BLACKS!!!

Oooh, and I have to tell you about the very dainty and lady-like Mainland Chinese ladies sitting in the armchairs next to us in the company of very upper-crust English types who'd obviously dragged them along to watch, and who got totally swept into the game and began this excited but so dainty clapping coupled with cries of "Run away fast, All Black. Run away fast with that ball." which indeed showed they had a deep and fundamental understanding of rugby ... but that their cheering needed work!

And, as you can see, we deserted Devil's Advocate. It's where we usually go but increasingly, as we get deeper into the tournament, there's nowhere to sit in there! In fact, the entire stretch of Lockhart Road is increasingly packed with folks watching these matches so that it's virtually impossible to find space anywhere at street level, thus, in the end, we went looking below ground and discovered that not many folks have yet discovered that Canny Man has arm chairs in front of the giant screen and immediately decided that, in future, this is our World Cup venue of choice!

And the upshot? OK, I'm switching allegiances and not just because I have to now that Fiji is - deservedly - out of the 2011 Rugby World Cup!  Ooooh, they make me so cross, the stupid big ball-fumblers!

It's All Blacks for me now!  All the way!  They are amazing to watch and not just because they're such sublime players but also because - let's admit it - they're just so damned handsome.  Oh man, there are some seriously gorgeous hunks in this year's team.  I mean, look ...

Israel Dagg

... and he's not even the best looking of them.  Oh yeah, it isn't just that they all so tall and broad-shouldered and have such TDF bodies, but NEVER have you seen such chiseled faces with cheekbones up the wazoo, epic-warrior eyes and those Greek-statue lips! Major MAJOR HOT!!! And then, when their faces go all still and epic as they focus their energy before doing something spectacular and they'd be pure Greek Warrior, it's such bliss to watch them.

It's so against the stereotype, isn't it, to have rugby players with such manly beauty. The English rugger-buggers on one side of us during the game yesterday were saying "It isn't right to reach top grade rugby without damaging your face." and "How do these guys remain so handsome?" and the others were saying "Because they're too good to get injured!"

And somebody else who shall not be named refused to look at the screen because "I'm not into Neandertals!" and all I could think was "Just look up, you silly twerp!" because there was no cave man in sight on that giant screen! Israel Dagg and Sonny Boy Williams!  Mmmm mmmh!!  And then there is Mr Dan "Makes-Me-Weak-at-the-Knees" Carter.  Let me see if I can find you image so you know what I'm talking about here:

Nice, huh!!  So GO ALL BLACKS!!! I'm with you all the way! And this time it's not like, all those years ago, when I got into the Welsh 7s team because they were so good-looking, because these Kiwi boys can really really play and so you don't have to make excuses for them like I had to do with those Welshies!

Yeah, yeah! I know. I'm probably outraging the entire "Land of the Long White Cloud" because we all know that All Blacks aren't about luscious lips and epic eyes, because they've been beloved for over 130 years for their fierce warrior spirit so let's pay tribute to that before I have Kiwis throwing tuataras at me:



And see Jonah Lomu in the haka there. The big guy with the truly stupid hair? Yeah, it's old footage so, although there are several of the same faces, this team isn't quite so Swoon-Worthy as the ones in this year's World Cup!!!

And speaking of the incomparable Jonah Lomu, have you seen the film "Invictus"?  Gosh, all those years ago, back when they had the Rugby World Cup in South Africa, Keith was watching the NZ games religiously, and, despite previously hating 15s, I started watching too simply to see Jonah Lomu do his spectacular feats of strength and agility ...

...

... but within only a couple of games I was sooo cheering for All Blacks ... so it meant that I felt very guilty when I saw "Invictus" and realised how much was at stake for South Africa in those matches, and how much was actually riding on it.

We were talking about this last night - about how "Invictus" made us all feel guilty for supporting Jonah Lomu and the other All Blacks back then - and had a big laugh over it, so let's see if we can find the "Invictus" trailer to give it its due:



And my prediction for the outcome of this tournament? I'll bet you anything we'll be seeing this at the finals:



With All Blacks to win. GO ALL BLACKS!!!

GO GO ALL BLACKS!!!

Off now to watch the Rugby World Cup, the All Blacks vs France!!!

I'm hoping for slaughter, I'm hoping to see blood, I'm hoping the Pacific will stomp those Frogs into the grounds in the most vile and humiliating manner!  GO ALL BLACKS!!!

And if you wish to know exactly why I want to see vengeance extracted you have to see this:



Vile horrible French PIGS!!!

Funny thing, only today my darling Robert said "What's CHOG?" and I actually gasped ... before I recalled that Robert wasn't around when we screamed ourselves hoarse outside the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Fiji, at Tradewinds Hotel, back in the 70s, trying to raise ourselves support - albeit most ineffectively - among World Leaders so they'd help us stop the French nuclear testing in Muaroa in Tahiti!

And, although I know I've told you this several times before, I was like The Horse's Mouth on this issue since my dad was in charge of testing radiation levels for Fiji and Great Britain and I was often with him, particularly when we went out to catch and test fish, and we KNEW that the rotten vile French PIGS were lying through their teeth and to SUCH a huge extent because we knew for a fact - with the figures right in front of us - that the levels were 10s of thousands times higher than the French were reporting, and that all of us in the Pacific - Fiji is like a thousand miles away from Tahiti and yet we were still hugely in danger  - were being severely severely bombarded with hugely radioactive air, sea and fish.


So naturally you'll understand why I was willingly screaming at World Leaders to make them stop! And why we spent so much time raising funds for Greenpeace and Rainbow Warrior who were actually out there trying to help us!


And if you watch that footage above, you'll see the single most regretted event in my life: that I did not go out to sea that day to attend the re-sinking of Rainbow Warrior when I was actually in New Zealand at the time. Keith and I did go along to visit this heroic little ship only days earlier to say goodbye and thank you, and spent half an hour alone there (I still have photos, only not here in HK.) on the Auckland wharf and it was a very moving experience.

I should talk on this subject more, but recalling all this ... and suddenly I'm longing to go watch the All Blacks extract the Pacific's revenge on that vile vile nation!!

The Best Mango in the World!!!

I am not ashamed to admit I'm a Mango Snob!  Tell me about a mango you've had you found delicious and I'm immediately sneering "Turpentine!!!" because I KNOW MANGOES!!! And I know that if you aren't in either North Queensland or Fiji, or that mango didn't come from either NQ or Fiji, that mango wasn't as wonderful as you think it was.

Yup, if your mango isn't from those places I'm instantly "Bah Humbug!!!  Don't talk to me about Turpentines!" because to both me and Keith - another Mango Snob - living in NQ and Fiji will do that to you -  anything that isn't R2 or Ox-heart is immediately consigned down there with those revolting Turpentine Mangoes (only good for chutney) of the Australian Outback!

And that's because the best mangoes on the planet are DEFINITELY to be found in North Queensland and the second best you'll ever taste are in Fiji, no question.  Let me fill you in:

Bowen Mangoes from around the town of Bowen - duh! - in North Queensland were once recognised as the most delicious mangoes anyone anywhere had ever tasted, but the trees didn't produce a lot of fruit so CSIRO (the Australian scientific organisation) went to work to make the trees smaller, more compact and, most importantly, more productive, and thus created a new hybrid they called R2-Bowen which is soooo amazing, so delicious, so sweet-and-tangy, so mouth-watering, that farmers across the North of Australia put in plantations of them, and thus all over NQ even a random road-side stall will be filled with fruit so delicious, so beyond heaven, you'll willingly ruin your best silk blouse to guzzle a half-dozen of them.

And it appears that CSIRO has recently created an even better mango they call "Kennedy" but all the NQ farmers are more than happy with what they've got ... but wouldn't you like to try one of those Kennedys? (Which I have, and which is the point of this post, but you'll have to wait.)

And then, after the success of R2, CSIRO then did the same to Fiji's wonderful Ox-heart Mango, taking these bright claret-red fruit and making them huge while, at the same time, turning the trees into highly-productive dwarfs so picking is a breeze, however you probably don't know them because ... well, we in Fiji aren't as organised as the NQ farmers, so you probably don't even know that mangoes also come in a bright claret-red colour.

So THOSE are the very best mangoes you'll ever eat.  EVER!!! Remember those names: R2-Bowen and Fijian Ox-heart!

However, I have to tell you that a new contender for Thoroughly Wonderful Mangoes has just hit the market for the first time.  I don't know their names but I do know they come from Taiwan and, as of yesterday, you can find them in HK's street markets! And, for the first time ever, here in HK, Keith and I aren't sneering at the mangoes. Let me show you:

 

Taiwanese Mangoes!

See how huge they are? Those are normal-sized apples and see how they're dwarfed by the mangoes?  When I spotted them on a stall yesterday ...

 The giant-mango seller!  See them there

on his stall?

...  I first thought they were pawpaws they were so big, and when I realised what they were I HAD to try them, so got those two above on an eat-today and eat-tomorrow basis because I knew that, even sharing, Keith and I could only get through one per day.

As for the taste, yeah, they're fine.  Sure, they're no R2 or Ox-heart, but they're certainly that sweet-and-tangy combination that will satisfy the less refined mango-palate and those folk-who-don't-know-better.

However, this post is really to tell you the sad sad story about The Best Mango on the Planet!!!

It was in Innisfail in NQ, about a decade back, when a very charming mango-farmer we know dropped by my sister's place carrying a single large orange mango.  "This is a gift for you." he said to me.

It was deep into Mango Season, and I was sorta mango-sated but his face was so sad and serious I had to pretend I was thrilled with this gift.  "It's such a perfect mango!  Thank you so much for it!"

And then he said "Do you mind if I watch you eat it?"

"Yes!!!! What are you? Some kind of mango-pervert?" 

"No! It's not anything like that.  It's just that I've been very very very stupid."

He indeed had the crest-fallen look of someone who'd been foolish so that's a story you want to hear, right?  "What have you done?" I asked.

"Several years back, I planted a single Kennedy so I'd know if the fruit was as good as they claimed, and the first crop came through last year and they were so delicious and sold so well, I decided to see if I could improve on this year's crop ... and so, for the entire year, I've been watering this Kennedy with tonic water. Nothing else. Only tonic water. For an entire year.  Cost me 28 thousand dollars!  Yup, that's what it costs to water a single tree with tonic water for a year.

And then this year's crop came through! Yeah, right!! What crop???  28 thousand dollars I spent on that bloody tree and so far this season I've only had twelve mangoes from it. That comes in at over A$2000 per mango, and no one will pay over $2000 for a single mango, so I'm not trying to sell them. Any that are ripe, I think of some special person who deserves to eat a $2000 mango and I give it to them as a gift."

"And you picked me?"  It was such a special thing for anyone to do, I almost cried.

And so, yes, I let him watch me eat that mango and, yes indeed, it was a mango worth any price. Nectar of the Gods! Watering with tonic water isn't such a foolish thing to do because the sweet-and-tangy flavour literally popped in your mouth and left a strange but delicious lemonade after-taste that was somewhere far beyond heavenly.

In fact, it was so far beyond amazing, and despite it being a very difficult thing to do, I did share it with Keith and family, however I could part with only slithers, just so they too could know the-taste-of-heaven-itself.

And since our lovely mango farmer was planning to never again water anything with tonic water, and because no one else will ever be foolish enough to try it, this surely means that no one else, apart from We Lucky Lucky Twelve and the odd Slither-Worthy around at the time, will ever get to taste this Heaven on Earth that indeed was The Best Mango in the World.

So, having once eaten The Best Mango in the World, I'm sure you'll agree that I've earned the right to be this Vile Mango Snob, and to say "Bah humbug!!!  Turpentine!!" to every other mango in the world!

Hong Kong, how I love you!!!

If I had to choose the one thing above all others from the very very many that make me love Hong Kong so much, I'd have to choose this:

 HK Street Market!

No, not the street markets - although I do love strolling along them buying my groceries each day - but what you can actually witness in this photo.

Can you see it?  No???

OK, let me explain:  you see how the Foreign Devil-Lady is buying fruit?  And although you can't see it here, she's asking questions of the fruit seller standing next to her!  In English!!! "What are these?" "Where do you get them?" "What do they taste like?" "How are they grown?" and he's answering her in harsh choppy monosyllables!  "Papaya!"  "Indonesia!" "Sweet!" "Mango!" "Taiwan!" "Organic!".

There's a reason for that: HE DOESN'T SPEAK ENGLISH!!!

But the lady alongside him does!

This is what always happens in HK.  You start talking in English, and the nearest random bi-lingual passerby just stops and translates for the uni-lingual Cantonese speaker.

When I saw the nice English lady here stop to look at the fruit, I stopped too and just waited with my camera at the ready, knowing what was about to happen.  And yup, that's how it went down!!!
 Gweilo-Ma ("Foreign Devil-Lady") asked a question and the nice winsy little lady passerby stopped and repeated the question in Cantonese, and the man answered as best he could, just single struggled-for word from a very limited vocabulary!

And nice bi-lingual lady waited until the entire transaction was over before going on her way, and Gweilo-Ma didn't even notice it was happening.

Nice, huh!  Gosh, it makes me MELT just thinking about it.  And doesn't it make you just love Hong Kong too?

What Birds Are These? For Richard!!

At the farthest end, Mong Kok Flower Market Street leads onto Mong Kok's Yuen Po Street Bird Garden:

 Through those red posts and down that lane.

It's hard to miss:

The Wall outside.

So that's how you find it.  Wander down the length of Flower Market Street, see that stunning wall, go through those red posts and down the lane ...

 

The lane! 

... until you reach, voila!!! ...

Where the caged birds sing!

... THE HONG KONG BIRD GARDEN!

This little area of the world is famous for being the place where elderly gentlemen come early every morning to show off their singing birds.  And I can now tell you that, late in the afternoon, they cover those birds up ...

... and go off together because they are also there to chat and play cards:

Anyway, it's a sweet little area of HK although we arrived late afternoon and so missed it at its best, however at 4 pm there was still a lot of life and action ...

... and a tad of animal cruelty:

 The poor little mite!  

Doesn't the Geneva Convention clearly state

that no cats are to be stored amidst birds!

However, this post is for Richard who is, as he's so amply demonstrated recently, such a big fat smarty pants at this bird-identification-thingy ...

... as well as being an amazing bird photographer ...

Astonishing, la?

... so let's set him a challenge:

OK, Mr Richard Smarty-Pants.  How many of these birds from the Mong Kok Bird Garden can you actually identify? Some I know, but some I've never seen before!

The same bird from two angles, just to help you!

My absolute favourite, 

with the sweetest song too!

 These babies could talk up a storm in TWO languages!

Hilarious!!!

And the one nearest the camera did the best ever 

"evil villian" sinister laugh!

Keith tried to catch it on video

but it did an elaborate coughing fit instead.

So, Richard, how did you do?

For everyone else, this place is just lovely, even in the afternoons when "the show" - all those elderly men trying to out-compete each other with the bird-song - is over for the day.  Highly recommended!


And for details on how to get there are click on the link above.

The Quest for BOPs

While we were in NQ, Baby Jane bought two rather nice paintings of Birds of Paradise - the flowers not the birds or the Regency era prossies - here! let me show you some ...

... but despite her knowing exactly where she planned to hang them, we ran around her house trying them in different spots, and everywhere we put them they looked exactly right.

"This is a house that's crying out for BOPs."  I told her.

She agreed.

She also lives right next to many BOP plantations (I once spent a very pleasant morning with Other Jane - "Over-the-hill Jane" - driving around these plantations picking up a host of subtly different-coloured BOPS so Other Jane - an artist - could make up her weekly spectacular household flower arrangements.) so we decided it's only right, yes?, that Our Jane pay artistic tribute to her immediate locality!

So to this end we hunted around Cairns and environs for more paintings but, alas, BOPs were nowhere to be found so that's when I undertook to both travel up to Dafen to find more BOP paintings and to also search HK for fake BOP flowers, to act as sculptures of sorts!

Thus, in lieu of a trip to Dafen, last week I BOP-hunted around HK but without success.  Ovo - absolutely my current favourite shop - had some, only they were all in black-and-white, which really begs the question WHY????  I mean, the whole point of BOPs is the clash of colours so WHY, WHY, WHY????

Anyway, the other night, I brought up this knotty BOP-absence-problem with friends.  "Why don't you try the Mong Kok Flower Markets?" everyone suggested. "The WHAT???"

No, seriously.  I had never even heard of the Mong Kok flower markets!  It made me rather cross because at some point, Keith and I stopped exploring HK because we believed, stupidly as it turns out, that we'd seen everything.  No, seriously! That's what we thought.  "Denise, you ARE a worry." said Wendy!

So yesterday, Keith and I had a big new HK tourist-style adventure, jaunting through the Mong Kok Flower Markets ... and yes, they had BOPs, both real and fake ... so I bought up the entire market's stock of fake BOPs and here they are ...

... honestly, after a four-hour search, that's every single fake BOP in Mong Kok. Since I had visions of a house with BOPs galore in every room, this was desperately disappointing.

But it was hardly what you'd call a wasted jaunt - although I did discover I'm a tad over orchids, which came as rather a shock because they have always been my favourite plant, both because my mother grew them and also because they are practically impossible to kill - because we came across a plant we'd never seen before ...

 ... that they are currently promoting as "the latest fud" - "treasure to give, fan to get." - which I fell deeply in love with, although I have no idea what they are nor what they're called because apart from the sublime comments above, everything about them was in Chinese.

So after those many hours of sheer jaunting-pleasure, we went up to the Mong Kok Goldfish Market, and then the Mong Kok Bird Market ...

This pretty baby had the most 

sinister "evil villian" laugh!

... but those are other stories.

In the meantime, the quest for a household full of BOPs continues.  Any suggestions?

What Kills Us This Week!

Honestly, Hong Kong!!!

Our latest big drama?  Well, I know I've shown you them before ...

 At the Democracy Rally 2011!

... these horde of kiddies currently running around wearing Guy Fawkes/ "V for Vendetta" masks waving the flag for Democracy ...

  After the Democracy Rally!

... but hasn't HK gone crazy about it!!!  Same ol' Same ol'! All that "The Fall of Civilisation-As-We-Know-It", in fact.  All those doom-laden "Angry in Tung Chung" letters to the editor protesting against these protestors!

It got so bad even, that, while we were away, when a visiting CCP dignitary visited Chinese University from Mainland China, and the "Guy Fawkes" were out in force, the dean ordered the police to beat them up which meant another group of HKers went berserk, but since these ones were for freedom of speech, I'm with them.

 Protesting the police beating on campus!

And please note the fellow with the PLA haircut

filming them!

Although I can't say I'm entirely with them on this count ...

 Provocative, yes?

Waving this flag while surrounded by police?

Although Alex finds it the coolest photo EVER!

... but I think you have to be under 30 to find this sort of thing a valid form of protest!

However, lots of these kiddies have been beaten up so the ones injured after "doing violence to security guards" - or so they're accused - yesterday took off their Guy Fawkes masks so we can see their faces:

 

 Oooh, scary, scary!  Don't we look mean!!!

I mean SERIOUSLY!!!!  Just look at those kiddies!  Can you imagine them even raising their voices, let alone do violence to men in uniform?  

In fact, I think this is a perfect example of how stupid HK can be with all this regular "going crazy"  over the stupidest little things! 

This could even be seen as a Metaphor.  Sure, we may have SARs-style killer epidemics and all, but most of our panics are simply "sweet-faced kiddies behind a scary mask"!

Wasgij!

Do you know about these?  Wasgijs? 

 The New Zealand invention 

that's become this craze that 

really deserves to sweep the world.

They are these New Zealand jigsaw puzzles that work like a regular jigsaw except you don't get a picture of what you're trying to put together. Instead you're given a clue wherein you're told to either: 

1) put together a picture of what a nominated person in the given picture is looking at

or 

2) the picture as it would look minutes later.

You cannot imagine how much fun it is. Nor how difficult.  Nor how absorbing.

Here's one we started earlier!

It's like an entire left-brain/right-brain workout where you have to use a combination of logic and guesswork and, well, once you start you can't stop and huge chunks of time just vanishes. While staying at Jane's, every night after dinner we'd break out one box and "ten minutes later" look up to discover it was actually two in the morning. And, strangely, you weren't tired, just energised ... however you paid the price the following day.

I first came across them at Lois and Paul's place in NZ when Jaime got a box for Christmas. Lots of squealing "OMG, a Wasgij.  I love these. I love these." In fact, she was  so excited she had to get onto it straight away, so set up a bridge-table and ... well, in no time at all, the entire household was gathered around and the intense discussions and contributions took up the next five hours.  There was no way you could stay out of it.

Same thing happened at Jane's. No one could walk past the table without stopping to make suggestions, and then they'd immediately be sucked in as well.  "I'm too stupid for this." Julie kept saying, until she realised she wasn't.

Jane is determined to collect the entire set and with five of them already she's made a start.

Earth Memory!

Having this on-going conversation with a friend about Earth Memory and am sincerely wishing the concept wasn't currently being hi-jacked by extremely silly people who appear to be turning it into arrant nonsense, because there is really something to it.

I've talked about this before in here, but if you've forgotten, "Earth Memory" - without all the attached silliness about sacred doorways into different worlds - blah blah blah - is the theory that the ground retains a memory of what has occurred on it; a theory that began with the question "Why don't birds sing at Auschwitz?" and developed by a Physics Professor at Yale by the name of Paul Schwartz or something like that.

I definitely believe this.  I can tell you so many stories, but instead I'll only recall one:

Visiting my friend Andrea's new house in Brisbane, acquired very cheap, and instantly feeling the hair rise on my arms.  "I think you should off-load this immediately!" I told her. She accused me of being jealous of her bargain because it was a beautiful old house indeed, but ... well, most of the house just had a feeling of deep deep sadness however there were areas of "emanating evil" that I could even feel from the front door. I told her this but she said to stop being silly, however I was insistent! I walked through to where I could feel 'the pure evil' - the living room - however it felt so ghastly and full of fear I couldn't go inside, so I went to where I could feel the "lesser evils" - the toilet and bathroom - and all I could feel in the bathroom was suicides and drug deaths - several of them - and in the toilet both suicides and drug over-doses - lots and lots of them.

But in the hallway there was an almost overwhelming feeling of fear ... but then it got really weird and I started seeing flashes of a small boy - about 8 years old - scrambling down the hallway backwards - he'd tripped while running away - as a man walked towards him with a shotgun.  "Please don't walk through this hallway." I said to Andrea.  "It's the energy from here that's getting into people and causing all that suicidal depression."

I got away from it fast and told her that if she going to live there, she needed to do "a smoking" (an aboriginal ceremony) or "a stomping" (a NZ Maori ceremony) or something along those lines as soon as possible but she told me I was being very silly ... however, after I left - I couldn't stay there any longer - and it took me hours to get rid of the mood - she went visiting around the elderly folk in the neighbourhood mainly to prove me wrong ...

... except she discovered that, back in the 60s, a man had killed his family with a shotgun in the living room while they were watching TV, but his 8 year old son was killed outside his bedroom door, obviously while trying to get away.  And if that wasn't enough, everyone who'd lived in the house since had died horrible deaths, usually by their own hand, until no one wished to live there anymore and the place had become a squat for homeless drug addicts, who did indeed frequently die in either the toilet or bathroom.

The upshot of this, however, was that Andrea was so freaked out that she blamed me and didn't talk to me again for months, and also that she off-loaded the house ASAP.

Another story? There was that time in Siem Reap, in Cambodia, where a temple deep in the jungle felt so downright evil that I couldn't even walk on the platform next to the temple. It was so bad, I wanted to leave, but Keith refused and kept on exploring, so I found a statue of an elephant which didn't emanate that awful fearful "broken" feeling, climbed underneath and went to sleep.

Me, trying to shut out the 'pure evil' 

emanating from the temple platform, 

in Cambodia!
Also, BTW, the tiredness was the result
of the TB bacilli I'd picked up in Vietnam,
and which my body successfully defeated,
probably right as Keith took this photo!

 And it turned out, as we found out later, that Pol Pot did his final massacre here, only a few years earlier, right on this temple platform, and the monks, overwhelmed by the amount of "space-clearing" required of them in the 18 months since Pol Pot's death, had yet to arrive to clear the energy.

So, yes, I do believe in Earth Memory.  And so does my very sensible, scientifically-minded brother, despite it being against his value system, his world-view, his will and his inclination, however he's had experiences where ... well, it's saner to believe in Earth Memory than NOT.

I could tell you my brother's strange story about standing on the side of the road waiting for a friend to pick him up, but he'd get cross!  Oh, why not!  He's got cross before:

There he is, in Germany, right?, standing on the side of the road, at a bus stop, waiting for a friend to pick him up, but something's making him most uncomfortable and the hair keeps rising on the back of his neck and he has the most awful feeling of creeping evil, fear, doom and danger that's coming from behind him except there isn't anything behind him except empty fields.  Anyway, he is so uncomfortable he starts to walk away, off down the road ... and around the corner his friend is waiting in his car.  "Wondering how long it would take you to arrive." said the friend.  "That's one of the old Nazi death camps in those fields right there.  Everyone always talks about how evil it feels, so I just wanted to know if someone who didn't know it was once a Nazi death camp would also feel it was evil."

Yes, it did indeed feel evil!

But that's by the by because, well, here's something for the person I'm having this conversation with that takes it to another level, MAYBE:

My first visit to Macau, everywhere I went I kept seeing bits of broken bodies in boxes; broken statues, puppets, dolls, mannequins ...

 ... sorry, can't find any of the photos although I know I have heaps...


... but they were everywhere and it started to sincerely creep me out. "Why do you have bits of broken bodies in boxes?" I asked several people. "I don't know."  "They're waiting to be fixed." "It just happened." was the usual reply.

Odd, huh!  In fact, so odd - and being always unable to resist a mystery - I decided to find out what connection Macau had with bits of broken bodies in boxes.

It took a lot of reading but I eventually found something! Turns out that in the early days of Macau's European history, a cannon exploded up at the fort and a lot of people were killed ... and so very much in bits that rather than sort out who was who, they bundled all the body parts into a single box and stuck it into the ground.

So there's an unmarked grave someplace in Macau where a lot of people are all thrown in together and although this isn't part of this city-states' conscious mind - being long forgotten - there's something there that ... I don't know ... compels folk to put body bits in boxes ... like they're being reminded that something is deeply amiss in their collective unconscious.

So that's the point I want to make in this on-going conversation: the earth definitely retains a memory of what has happened on it and when something is amiss, we all pick up on it and ... well, it gets into us and we do things without realising why we're doing them. And, just guessing here, we keep on doing them until such time as the situation is put to rights.

Just saying!!!

Too Hot!

A cold wind from the North began to blow yesterday. It was sooo welcome in HK's current stinking rotten heat. Mind you, it's still hot and humid and sticky and rancid and vile if you're not catching this wind - I notice folks are angling their chairs in outdoor cafes so to get it - so air conditioners are still running hard.

Needless to say, with my considerably-lessened dislike of air-conditioning (not planet-friendly but who really cares when the temp is 35c), I'm still refusing to switch it on unless I'm going to be in a room for over an hour, and since I'm hoping for a short blog today, it's filthy hot in this room, so let me shut my eyes and randomly select a holiday photo and see how we go:

 

Superhero!!

Ah ha!  I've already told you about Super-Denise, WWOOFER Extraordinaire, so I don't have to tell you again.  Here!

Anyway, Super-Denise was at Jane's this holiday to burn off the very last of The Venerable Tree - called Cheryl because it gave off such a grandmotherly vibe - Jane lost in Cyclone Yasi.  This amazing tree was such a behemoth it took six months to burn off the remains and I do plan to blog on it eventually, after it stops being so brutally and hideously HOT.