3 Idiots

Saw the most gorgeous film on the weekend. 

It's been showing in HK since September 1st but I dismissed it because of the name, "3 Idiots", convinced me it had be something along the lines of "Dumb and Dumber" or "Jackass"; films so far over my stupidity-tolerance level I wouldn't see them to save my own life.

However, despite a very slow start at the box office, "3 Idiots" has such great word-of-mouth it's built up in momentum and this past month it's been playing to packed houses all over HK and everyone's raving about it, so much so we finally surrendered ... and came away understanding why it has everyone talking: not just because it's a truly fabulous film but also because it's an important film here in HK since it directly addresses the torture imposed by our HK education systems, where it's all about exams-exams-exams and success or suicide are the only two options open to young folks.

And apparently this is the first film to ever address this issue here in Asia and, despite HK never before showing a Bollywood film, it's something everyone wants to see because it's finally dawning on everyone that education shouldn't be this way.

Did you know that as well as being the highest grossing film in Indian cinematic history, "3 Idiots" had the longest run in Taiwan of any film EVER, and I'm guessing that is because Taiwan too has the same type of education system as India and HK, where getting qualifications is more important than gaining knowledge.

And that, in a nutshell, is what the film is about: that getting an education should be about exploring and applying knowledge and NOT about this heavy-duty pressure to pass exams, like it is all over Asia.

The story? It's a Bollywood film set in a university, and is the classic tale of two studious types, Raju and Farhan, meeting up with a wild Dionysian genius-type fellow student, Rancho, who bucks the system, gets them into trouble and makes them confront their fears and explore who they are and who they really want to be and thus they grow and become better and more courageous people from knowing him ... but then, once they get their degrees, Rancho vanishes. "Who was that masked man?"

And so this is a film is set ten years later when Raju and Farhan - along with their arch enemy The Silencer - set out on a road-trip across India to find Rancho, with the university story about why Rancho was so important to them being told in flashback.  (Normally I detest flashback, but here it really works.)


Yeah, I know. We've all heard this tale many many times before, but here it's fresh and exciting and just beautiful to watch ... because of the Bollywood angle.

Let me show you just one little bit so you get what I mean:



Isn't it marvelous.  That's the theme of the film: that when your life is out of control, reassure your heart that all is well - "aal iz well" - because it doesn't know the difference and keeps beating strongly and you can then behave courageously and do anything. Yeah, good one!

All though, I kept thinking that it was the Bollywood tradition of bursting into song at critical emotional points that stopped this film from becoming bogged down in the grim mire of the seriously dark subject matter and that nothing less than a Bollywood film could have successfully told this story.

Like, let me show you another song, this one dealing with Raju's suicide attempt:



The entire suicide aftermath done in three ultimately joyous minutes? So Bollywood: so beautiful! I'm convinced that any other way of storytelling here would not have worked.

And I have to say in this film India looks amazing, so much so that I'd put money on a lot of the funding coming from India Tourism.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt that there's a beautiful love story tucked in there as well. with Rancho falling in love with Pia, the youngest daughter of their evil professor - nicknamed Virus - and their subplot is so cute and so touching that when Raju and Farhan steal Pia away from her own wedding to come with them to find Rancho, you want to cheer out loud.  Ooooh, let me show you a little of their love story:



Cute, huh!

And how odd is it that Pia looks so much like Cuddy from "House". In fact, the resemblance is so striking they should bring the actress onto "House" to play Cuddy's long-lost secret Indian love-child. Or, at the very least, a doctor who everyone thinks is Cuddy's long-lost secret Indian love-child

And I want to say that again: only a Bollywood film could have told this story so successfully; any other genre and the pressure those students were suffering through, and all the subsequent suicides (in HK if a significant proportion of your students don't suicide, you're obviously not working them hard enough), would have created a story so grim it would have been Bergman-esque and unbearable.

So that's "3 Idiots": less an Indian "Dumb and Dumber" and more an important film that has a message that needs to be heard right across Asia, and which is being told in the exact best genre for the story, and I predict that if it ever gets past the Mainland Chinese censors, it's going to achieve huge success once it gets shown in China because, from all accounts, China needs it too.

You too can help!

Have you seen this website?
 

http://enews.oxfam.org.au/rp//821/process.clsp?t=2FCE899BF43177D4EF31F1FAA973A21325F6A8D8A5A9318E988B86052190FBDF3

Instead of Christmas presents this year, I'm planning to buy goats and mosquito nets for folks who need 'em. You can too!

Our Songbird in Cairo!

There is something especially grim about watching the news when you know somebody right there, on site, where the horror is happening.  A dear friend who does not wish to be named in this regard because she doesn't like the sensationalism involved, but let me give you a small hint ...

... lives right on Tahrir Square, in Cairo, and not only does she regularly have an apartment full of teargas to deal with - milk gets it out of your eyes, and a heavy-duty air purifier cleans it out eventually, and when it gets really bad, race into the lift and travel up and down for a while - she has to walk through that death and squalor and ruckus every evening to get to her job.

I feel for her and fear for her, I really do, but she doesn't want commiserations. "Like everyone else in Cairo, I'm just trying to get on with my life." she tells us.  Yeah, they raise 'em tough in Fiji, but every night I watch that horror unfold ...

... so keep that in mind, folks.  It's not just a news story. Those are real people around there, living through that and, no, it isn't "God, are those Egyptians still at it!" at all.

Latest on Laos Orphanage

As you know, this blog supports the Luang Prabang Orphanage, and here's the latest news:

Dear friends, family and all the wonderful people who support our work with the children of Laos and their families to keep them healthy, educated and safe.

It's been another interesting and challenging year for Lao-Kids. Our aim is to fill the “gaps” where traditional charities or NGOs don’t work or overlook. Because of the way we work, we are able to provide “micro” assistance that can make a huge difference to people’s lives, for example the provision of vegetable seeds and farming equipment to a poor family, or bus fares for a family to take a sick child to hospital.

I have put together a small web site to share with you some of our successes this year. I hope you enjoy it. The address is http://2011laokids.shutterfly.com. And we’d love your feedback in the Comments section.

All credit must go to Ruth and her family who do all the hard work of buying the required items, driving to the orphanages/ethnic schools (in one case, a 2-hour drive) and ensuring that the correct people receive what’s required. Also the amount of time they spend talking with respected members of the community to identify areas of need. This takes hours and hours of work.

Once again we would like to ask everyone reading this to please be very careful when you are travelling and feel that you want to help those people less fortunate than yourself to always make sure that you money will actually go to the correct people. It is always better to donate via a recognised organisation than give to individuals "on the ground" (no matter how convincing these people's stories are, and no matter how much they promise that the money will be used legitimately). Most countries have a number of organisations that work to improve people's lives and that can be trusted to ensure that money is used for legitimate purposes.

And finally, wishing you all a wonderful, happy holiday season and a 2012 which brings us peace, joy and prosperity.

The Gowrie Boys

An old friend sent me a youtube link from her former college which has entirely blown my mind. Let me share:



It makes me want to cry it's so beautiful, but you'll only understand my reaction if you know that St Teresa's Abergowrie College in Far North Queensland has become "the last chance before jail" dumping ground for troubled and trouble-making Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island teenagers ...

... but just listen to them. That's some serious wisdom they've taken deep into themselves.

I think I may have told you before that I spent a while in the mid 80s teaching in the Australian Outback in Far North Queensland, where the Aboriginal kids were so deeply troubled and so off the rails that my 'inner moral compass' and my 'inner Fijian' combined to urge me to do some serious "Self-Esteem Building", so I'd do stuff outside of school with them, mainly Theatre Sports and modelling and choreography and dancing and other sorts of fashionista-style projects, seen by everyone else to have no value whatsoever but definitely enjoyed by all of us ... and yes, the kids I worked with have gone on to do great things, although I won't name names ... Deborah Mailman might take offense.

It was all my own thing, done in my own time, without funding or support from anywhere, (except for those two sublime ladies Lyn G. and Anna B.) (Still love you both, you honeys!) and because it was a concept so new there was nothing out there to use so I had to come up with stuff of my own invention ...

... and also to suffer a great deal of vicious, tearing-at-the-flesh criticism and heavy-duty flak because everyone in the white community - as well as a number of truly nasty adults in the Aboriginal camps - was convinced I was off-the-planet and a dangerous meddler to boot.

I have to tell you, those were rough years. The Australian Outback genuinely is a horrible place, especially when it disapproves of you, so much so I could even claim that what I went through was something along the lines of "The horror! The horror!" which turned up in my nightmares of sharks attacking and tearing apart my shark-cage to get at me. Yes, night after night, the same dreams, however, in those dreams I progressively armed myself with increasingly large electrical cattle prods, an obvious reference to my 'broken record' response to the flak wherein I'd raise one of my eyebrows and say in my very best British Colonial Service voice, "Oh, do you really think so?"

Yeah, it was rough, but this is me we're talking about here. I've always admired St Joan of Arc and, you know how it is. I felt a duty to my amazing parents to wage war against injustice and all that yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah!  But to know how bad this all got, let me tell you that the phrase from Shakespeare's Macbeth "I am so far now into the blood that it is easier to go forward then to go back" spent a great deal of time in the forefront of my mind, as did several of the more obscure verses in T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", the main of which I still now know off by heart since it spent so long lodged inside me.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

 And after all this hell-on-earth, I was outraged to discover many years later that the very nastiest of these Outback Nasties have claimed various of my Self-Esteem Projects as their own work and have them outlined in their C.V.s.  No, they seriously have.  Honestly, don't you just want to slap people.

However, this post is meant to be about the Gowrie Boys, not me so ...

Yes, I know that "Self-Esteem Raising" among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island teenagers has become exceptionally fashionable these days, but it's most usually the type of immediately transparent bullshit you'd expect from fashionably P.C. types ... however what's been done with the Gowrie Boys seems seriously kick-arse and effective so I was intensely curious about who it could be, and to this end I've been exploring the other youtube clips they've made ... and let me show you one where I think I've identified who it could be:



See that exceptionally large black man behind the boys?  He's wearing the school uniform but he looks like an adult.  I think he's an American black man working with these kids, and he's certainly large enough to have their instant respect, respect being the first step of any attempt to raise the esteem of any troubled youth.

Anyway, from this clip I'm guessing this is him, and I'm guessing he's the Toby Finlayson mentioned in this blurb:

"This hip hop track is an outcome from a project called 'Song Nation' -- A collaboration between Toby Finlayson and Matthew Priestley from Desert Pea Media, The Smugglers Of Light Foundation, Vibe Australia and APRA/ AMCOS."

And even if I'm wrong about this, I hope you're as impressed as I am with the outcome. And that you too want to offer kudos to Toby and Matthew for some completely amazing work.

It's really all about encouraging souls to breathe free and these kids are clearly inhaling and exhaling up the whazoo!  And isn't it nice to know that these days it can all happen, presumably, without anyone being ripped apart by cage-tearing sharks!

GOWRIE BOYS, YOU ROCK!  And Toby?  If it's indeed you who has mentored these kids into such deep wisdom, let a voice from a harsher and more brutal past offer you my "Yo Bro, RESPECT!!!"

Like, say wot???

An Old Fiji Friend has been recently hanging out with the French Foreign Legion (I've always wanted to say that!) and I'm loving the photographs.  Thought I'd just share one with you, because it's sooo cute:

Photo by Graham D.

Seriously, this is the French Foreign Legion as it stood last week.  Love it?

Darwin Awards!

You all know about The Darwin Awards, right?  Given each year to the person who died in the most stupid and self-deserving way?

Well, if you know anyone from Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, you know they should be calling these  "Just Normal Behaviour Awards". 

Old friend Leah just sent me a newspaper clipping which - despite the fellow not dying, although he richly deserved to - left me entirely gobsmacked. Every time I'd think "Could this be any sillier?" lo and behold, it sinks to a lower level.

Do have a read.  You too will not believe ANYONE could be such a true moron! 

Double-click for the stupidest man who has ever lived!

(Mmmm, what's the bet I once taught him!)

Life Imitates Art!

OK, so there I am, this morning, deep into writing my new novel wherein I've got my hero living on a junk in among the sleek white launches at Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, and so decide to go down there in person to Causeway Bay to see if it's possible to get a large old junk into that breakwater ...

... only to discover:

That's how I described the junk, even down to the green tiled pagoda at the back.

Now there's a problem. Everyone will think that whoever owns this real life junk is the model for my hero, but I swear, hand over my heart, that I did not know that junk existed, and definitely didn't know it was inside that breakwater.

But there's more.  In the second chapter of my novel, my heroine stands at the railings on the shore at RHKYC, looking out at the smoggy view of TST and notices a Tanka fisherman on a sampan throwing out his nets and white egrets fly out to see what he's after.  And so, after getting such a shock at seeing my fictional junk existed in real life, I stopped by the RHKYC for a drink, and while standing at the railings I saw this:

Can you see him there?  My fictional Tanka fisherman? No?  Well, here's another shot:

However, in my novel, the fisherman is much closer to shore, but those egrets were also there and also went over to see what he was after, but I didn't get a shot of the hovering.
 

But if you want to see the egrets, here's another shot ... which also the smoggy view she's looking at:

Writers are forever saying how scary it is how whatever they're writing appears to manifest itself in real life, and a lot even talk about writerly responsibility. I think I've even posted on this in the past but I doubt I could ever find that post again.

Still, there you go:  although I wouldn't ever dream of calling this novel ART, nonetheless life is still imitating it!

The 12 Girls Band

A friend just sent me this and asked if I'd ever seen anything so bizarre?



Those folks are so obviously amateur I realised why my friend was laughing but what got me was that they were accompanied by The 12 Girl Band. How and why would a band so sublime be associated with them?

Do you know The 12 Girls Band?  HK has long been crazy for them and we are too, and Keith, after buying their DVDs, actually went out and got himself a pipa that he learned to play. Badly!

Let me show you what The 12 Girl Band are usually like:



In love?  Another one?

Thomas Cook Complaints.

Couldn't resist posting these.  Gosh, there are some silly people traveling abroad:

Thomas Cook Holiday Complaints
Whilst researching Thomas Cook Holidays <http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=LARSB&m=3Zn2inzPnvuYx59&b=RE0XHZdNeR3crjBDgCG4ZQ> for my forthcoming Ebook I came across this list of complaints they've received from previous customers. I'm sure it will help brighten up your Monday morning:

1. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

2.  "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned

3. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry.  I don't like spicy food at all."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

5. A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a water hole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".

6. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she'd been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the "do not disturb" sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.

7. "The beach was too sandy."

8. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."

9. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.

10. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."

11. "We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five Euros from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."

12. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."

13. "There was no egg slicer in the apartment..."

14. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish..."

15. "The roads were uneven.."

16. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it took the Americans only three hours to get home."

17. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."

18. "The brochure stated:  'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying there?"

19.  "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners now live abroad'"

20. "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."

21. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

22. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."

23. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."  
 

The New Adventures of Our Eefje!

How horrible is this! This story is about Our Eefje, Baby Jane's WWOOFER, the lovely soul who made me that amazing birthday cake. I'm so happy she didn't die. Irukandji is the most deadly of all the jellyfish of North Queensland, and you have only minutes before the neurotoxins stop your heart and lungs.  I'm so very happy there were lifeguards on hand who knew what to do, although I won't tell you what they did to her because ... well, I think she'd prefer that kept secret!

Tourist's close call with an irukandji

NATHAN PAULL  |  November 8th, 2011

Dutch tourist Eefje Coolen was the first person to be stung by an irukandji this stinger season. She was stung on Magnetic Island and is pictured at Toolakea Beach. Her friend Travis Nasevy helped take her to lifeguards after she was stung.

AFTER spending 11 months in Australia, Dutch tourist Eefje Coolen got to experience the worst of Australia's deadliest wildlife first hand just before she was leaving. 

Ms Coolen, 28, became the first person in the region this stinger season to feel the wrath of the potentially deadly irukandji, less than two weeks before she returned home to Holland.

The backpacker was swimming with friends at Arcadia on Magnetic Island on Sunday when she felt what at first she thought was an ant bite, before searing pain began coursing through the rest of her body.

Her friend rushed her over to lifeguards, who recognised the tell-tale signs of the tiny stinger and treated her while they called an ambulance to take her to Townsville Hospital.

Ms Coolen said while she was released later that night, she did not want to experience that much pain ever again. "I didn't know to expect that," she said.

However, the tourist said it would not stop her enjoying Australia's beaches during the rest of her trip as she relaxed at Toolakea yesterday.

"I'll definitely be going back into the water, it is really nice here," she said.

Ms Coolen's friend Travis Nasevy, 28, said he began to recognise her symptoms and rushed her over to the lifeguards straight away. "You could tell she was in a lot of pain," he said.

Mr Nasevy said while the emergency crews on the island did a great job, he hoped his friend's experience would encourage other to take care and wear stinger suits.

Stinger season in the North typically runs from November to May.

Surf Life Saving Queensland Regional Manager Peter Roulston said beachgoers should wear protective clothing and listen to lifesavers when at the beach.

"It's also a good idea to enter the water slowly, as box jellyfish and other marine stingers will often swim away from people if they are given the time and opportunity to do so," he said.
"And, as always, it's important that beachgoers stick to the red and yellow flagged areas."

Happy Diwali Everyone!

Happy Diwali everyone!  Each year, I've written about Diwali and in so much detail - here - there isn't really a lot more I can say about it.

So, instead, here's Maria's lovely photo of her lights in Suva tonight:

 Thanks Maria!

HAPPY DIWALI EVERYONE!