The Strange Incident at Singapore Zoo.

Just found another letter from our Singapore holiday in 2005:

Here's something very strange I forgot to tell you about ... most likely because it was so odd my brain sidelined it because it had no way to deal with something so far out of everything it believes possible.

We're at Singapore Zoo, right. Lovely place and I especially loved the birds:

Man, I loved that camera!

Sure, it was the one that exploded 

in my hand, but look at the picture quality.

I should get another one!

And this bird was one I've never seen before.

Lovely day but I have to tell you this incident that happened when I went to the loo.

I'm on my way out but there's this tiny sickly-looking "failure to thrive" syndrome little Chinese girl in front of me, already at the door, blocking my way. She's pressing hard at the door with both hands like she's trying to push it open - whereas it opened inwards - and I notice she's got hands that look more like a gorilla's feet - in shape rather than colour or hairiness - with these tiny fingers the size of a baby's toes and a very long palm that didn't bend and so, being helpful - and also wanting to hurry her along - I reached over the top of her head to open the door.

But just as my hand moves towards the door ...  I swear, I swear, I swear ... this hand snakes out the neck of her T-shirt and, traveling right beside my own hand, turns the door knob first. Then this bizarre hand pulls the door towards us and she goes outside.

For long long minutes I'm standing there, frozen on the spot, with my mind whizzing in and out, backwards and forwards, shaking and trembling like some strange formless mindless blob that has nothing to do with me, and then I think "Is this what they mean when they say 'the mind boggles'? " and then  "Yes! My mind is boggling! Definitely! It's not just an expression!  It is something that actually happens!"

But I'm still standing there stupidly with my brain still out of my control, and it's trying without my help to make sense of it; going "Extra arm growing out of her back. She can't use it unless she presses hard against something. So that's what she was doing at the door; pressing hard against it to get use of that spare hand that grows out of her back."

But it's still all too strange and too much to take on board, however I come back into myself and immediately my curiosity kicks in and so I decide to follow her to see where she comes from.

Outside, she's rejoined a bunch of people who look like a Mainland Chinese tour group - only without the usual shrieking cadres or the usual angry woman carrying the red flag on a stick.

There are about twenty adults aged from about twenty to eighty, all looking like perfectly normal humans, but there's also a dozen kids all aged about eight who've all got these extra limbs - like five arms or three legs - and two of these kids in addition had huge lumps on their backs that the adults were taking turns to press - swopping places every five or so minutes - like these are lungs outside the body that have to be manipulated by hand.

None of them were in wheelchairs or anything like that and they were all dressed in normal red T-shirts like it's a school uniform with no allowances like extra armholes or whatever for their extra bits so it's all like two arms coming out of one arm-hole.

My mind, fully back under control, decides it's most likely a class from a school of desperately deformed kiddies from Mainland China traveling with their nurses, teachers, parents and grandparents and just having a nice day at the Zoo but my curiousity about them is in full swing - and I had hundred of questions which I knew they couldn't answer, being from Mainland China and so undoubtedly having no English - so when they set off down the hill I follow so I can watch.

Like, how does someone with three legs actually walk?

And, yes, I'd entirely forgotten about poor Keith but he's seen me trailing them and races up and starts hissing at me "What are you doing? Stop it!  You're treating those poor little kids like they're freaks!"

"Um, yeah, like, what exactly isn't "freak" about them? They, surely, are the very definition of freak!"

So Keith and I have a big fight and I realise I should be more considerate of him; that he teaches kids who have deformities, although not on this scale, so he has a vested interest in seeing them treated as 'normal' ... although he's been outside with this tour group the whole time and so probably had already had a really good hard look at them.

But I wasn't being spurious and downright condemnable with this interest.  I just wanted to know.

I remember, when I was about three, seeing a deformed Indian baby and was so curious about her I asked the mother if I could have a closer look, and the mother was just so proud and unwrapped her from her blanket and showed me all the strange bits and pieces and manipulated the bits to show me they worked. But Indians think deformity is a gift from the gods and so aren't all touchy and icky on the subject.

And that's really all I wanted to know; to see these strange bits and discover how they worked. I tried telling Keith this but he refused to discuss it with me and dragged me off in the opposite direction so we ignored each other for over an hour - difficult when you're walking side by side - until we both got over it.

BUT ... I still have so many questions.

Like, what the hell is China doing with so many of these kids? And since these ones were all about eight years old, are there dozens more someplace who are all about ten? Or five? Or 17? Or 30? Do they actually have hundreds and hundreds of them?

At first I was wondering if they weren't the result of some weird genetic testing, or if they'd been a Chenobyle-type nuclear power meltdown someplace they weren't telling us about.

But then I thought about statistics?

China has a population of 3 billion, sure, but what % of human population actually throws up these massive deformities? One in 13 million? One in a quarter of a billion? OK, maybe this is the right number of 8 year olds with massive deformities for the population - I can't be bothered doing the maths - but why are they allowed to survive?

Those two who looked like they couldn't even breathe unassisted? What are they doing keeping them alive? China has a strictly enforced one-child-policy (although the rich have recently been encouraged to have a second) so, since these ones are so obviously nonviable, why aren't they allowed to die so the parents can have another possibly undeformed kid? It isn't like Communist China has a philosophy of Right to Life blah, blah, blah, so why are they doing it?

For show-off scientific reasons? Because they can? So many, many questions.

Are you able to provide any answers?

Insider HK Shopping Secret!

Promised to show you the secret place where you can buy just about everything sold expensively in the tourist markets for a fraction of what you pay elsewhere.

It's in the Market Street off Johnstone Road just along from Southorn Playground in Wan Chai.

You can't bargain in here but why would you want to when the prices are so cheap anyway?

Singapore Snapshots

Busy again today so I'll select a random old letter and post that instead.

Got one.  This is from our 2005 holiday in Singapore. Mmm, yes, it's

LONG. I'll have to edit it back so you only get bits of it:

1)  We're at the world-famous Singapore Botanic Gardens when there's 

this sudden tropical downpour. We rush for the nearest shelter - the old 

hybridizing laboratory at Bilnew Villa (or some name like that). 

 Keith sheltering at Bilnew Villa.

Dripping wet, we tumble straight into a drama.  A nice Chinese woman 

with a name-tag saying Head Botanist is scolding a young Tamil gardener, 

pointing out through the rain into the V.I.P. garden where they grow 

Singapore's exquisite,priceless and rightfully world-famous  

Orchid-Diplomacy  collection. 

 Only a tinsy sample of their collection.

"Look, look." she's saying to him, pointing to a clump of those tall 

orange-flowering shrubs my baby sister Jane grows and treasures in her 

front garden. 

 The actual plants in question!

(Jane, they may be pretty 

but they are WEEDS!)

"Those are noxious weeds. You should never have let the beds get even 

one, let alone so many. Why didn't you pull them out weeks ago?"
 

"You never said." says sullen git-boy, without making a single one of

 those gestures of indescribable beauty Somerset Maugham was forever 

ascribing to these self-same Tamil gardeners.
 

"I shouldn't have to say." says Botanist-Lady.  "Use your own initiative. 

If you see something that needs to be pulled out, you pull it out. 

You don't need me to tell you everything."
 

Sullen git-boy looks even more sullen and gitty and I have a sudden 

flashback to 1978 at Burns Philips in Fiji when they used to hire Tamil 

boys to work for me during the rush-periods and they were always

 so sullen and passive-aggressive, misogynistic and nasty, and always 

did such cruel and vengeful things behind your back if you told them 

off, it never once reached noon before I'd be marching into Personnel 

saying "You get rid of that boy NOW because he's making me so angry, 

only one more thing and I'm going to hurt him."
 

Botanist-lady is getting such an angry look on her face it looks like

she's about to hurt him too but instead politely says "Do you understand 

me? Is this it? Don't you speak English?". 

He doesn't answer and just looks passive-aggressive and misogynistic

 andnasty so she calls over another older Tamil gardener and says 

"Tell him what I'm saying. Translate for me. Tell him he's got to start 

using his initiative. Tell him ..." 

Older-Tamil-gardener starts talking in Tamil and I hear him say the word 

"Gandu" and have another flashback. "He's calling the nice Botanist-Lady 

the Tamil word for female genitalia." I tell Keith. And that's when I really 

start listening and my extremely minimal grasp of Hindi is definitely more 

than adequate.

"He's not translating at all." I gasp "He's just describing different 

disgusting things she should do to her anatomy."

Both Tamils are looking impassive and I realise they do this sort of thing

all the time. Normal practise, I guess, among these passive-aggressive 

women-hating sullen-git types.
 

Anyway, the rain stops and Head Botanist leaves and we go off to look 

at the most famous orchids in South East Asia - if not the world. They're 

wonderful and I'm taking lots of photos:

 Completely gorgeous!

But then I happen to look back at the V.I.P. Diplomacy Garden. 

Those noxious weeds are still standing but the Tamil git-boy has ripped 

out all the yellow Benazir Bhutto orchids and the purple Nelson Mandela 

orchids and has just started on the golden Queen Elizabeth orchids. 

I'm not kidding; the most exquisite orchids you have ever seen, and the 

centrepiece of all Singapore's international diplomatic relationships, 

strewn all over the ground.

As you know, I'm not normally one for gross acts of violence but suddenly 

I'm willing to make an exception, so I'm marching over to do serious 

damage when Keith grabs me and says "No need." and thumbs upwards. 

There are a great many surveillance cameras surrounding these priceless 

plants. And then we see Botanist Lady and three security guards 

scramblingup the hill towards us, looking furious, obviously ready 

take care of business.

"They won't do anything to him with us watching." Keith says.

"Then let's not be watching!" I say. And so we hurry out of there.

Yeah, you GO, angry botanist lady! 

2) We're at Ginger House at the Halia Restaurant blowing the budget, 

trying the much-lauded new Singapore fusion cuisine. 

(Wonderful stuff. I had no idea that radish tasted so good, especially 

mixed with mango.) 

Anyway, at the long table next to us are four large American ladies in 

powersuits and four demure little Chinese ladies - unfortunately with 

their backs to us so we couldn't see their reactions - all dressed in 

serious Chanel, and they all having what is obviously a power-lunch. 

But then it starts: 

 "I don't know where American women get the reputation for 

promiscuity." says one particularly large and important-looking American 

lady. "I mean, we all hate sex." 

"I know I do." says another of them. 

"Yes. Me too. I have to get fall-over drunk before I can even let a 

man touch me." 

"Me too!"  It goes on and on.
 

I say to Keith "That's probably the most inappropriate lunchtime 

conversation I've ever over-heard."
 

But I was so wrong.
 

Next topic: "Oh no. I would never eat Chinese food."

"Me neither. Chinese food is disgusting." 

"It's all insects and things that make normal people vomit." 

"Honestly, I don't know how you can stand to eat Chinese food 

yourselves."
 

I say to Keith "I was wrong. That's the most inappropriate 

lunchtime conversation I've ever over-heard."
 

Wrong again.
 

Next topic: "I would never read Dan Brown." 

"Neither would I. Dreadful stuff." 

"Me either. I'm Catholic and we're forbidden to read books with the 

word "demon" in the title." 

Chinese lady wearing a sublime pink post-modern reconstructed 

Chanel suit pipes up "I'm sorry. I don't understand. What's this 

about not reading these books? I'm Catholic and I've never heard 

anything like that in my life." 

American lady replies "Oh, but you're CHINESE Catholic. That's 

completely different. It's not like you're real Catholics at all."
 

I say to Keith "OK! OK! That's the most inappropriate conversation I've 

ever over-heard, any time, any place. In fact, it's the worst thing I've 

ever heard one person say to another my whole life."
 

Wrong again.
 

Next topic: "I've been in South East Asia for eight months and I've had 

nothing but non-stop diarrhea the whole time." 

"I know. Me too. In the past six months I must have had every type 

of diarrhea imaginable." 

"Yes, I never knew there were so many different types. I've had ..." 

I will not continue with what she went on to say but just let you know 

it went on a long time and was so gross and descriptive it got straight 

into our gag reflexes so Keith and I signaled to our waitress Lydia that 

we had to have the bill immediately because we had to get out of there. 

She had in fact already prepared it anticipating our fast departure.

"Who ARE those dreadful women?" I asked her.
 

"They're diplomats with the American embassy." Lydia tells us strait-faced.

"WHAT?!" and "Oh my god!!" ... 

And that's when Keith, Lydia and I begin to grin and at that moment, 

large power-lady begin talking loudly about farting during diarrhea and 

all three of us entirely lose the plot and race outside to laugh ourselves 

stupid.

Americans abroad, huh!  And these were their DIPLOMATS! So what chance 

does that nation have to make the rest of the world like them!

Easter Procession in Seville.

The Lovely Lisa is back in Hong Kong after her jaunt around Spain and is currently turning her travel footage into nano-films. Here's the first:  The Easter Procession in Seville:



Isn't it creepy.  I kept waiting for something bad to happen, and all I got was some gorgeous guy scratching his ear.

But it looks fabulous, doesn't it. Kudos, Lisa, honey-bunny treasure!  Big kudos!

The Latest "I Hate the French" Rant!

The 'Official Secrets' 30 years is up and the French have now released their top secret classified documents from the 1970s and thus you can now get in to read about the French machinations in the Pacific during that decade. Green Peace is in there, doing the editing and translating for those of us who failed High School French, so great kudos to them.

As it turns out, my father was right.  The radiation levels from the bombing of Muraroa Atoll were over a 100,000 times higher than the official French announcements at the time. I've already told you how, when these tests were on, my dad was in charge of monitoring the radiation levels in Fiji's air and fish for the Fiji and British Governments, and how he was horrified by the figures he was getting and started ranting about what a filthy bunch of liars the French were, because radiation levels - in Fiji too - nearly a thousand miles away from Muraroa Island - were so many thousands of times higher than the French were supposed to be getting at Ground Zero in Tahiti. 

I've told this story in here before, haven't I. Let me find it: here!

Also turns out from a cursory read of these documents that it was a deliberate French policy to lie to the Pacific.  And also turns out they were expecting a future epidemic of thyroid diseases which is most odd because just about everyone I know in the Pacific has thyroid issues, so there's definitely a pattern emerging here and I think this now-released info will finally galvanise us into action.

This is early days here, folks, and I think this is going to end with us all demanding an apology from France for what they put us through, and maybe reparation for what we are now going through on the health front.

If I'd known back then what I know now, well, ... no actually, I wouldn't have done anything differently.  Remember what a grim-faced little Proto-Emo I was, forever desk-slamming and door-slamming and giving speeches to anyone who'd lend even half an ear, never shutting up about Nuclear Testing in the Pacific. 

And remember what a creepy little jerk I was back in High School and how I'd read Georgette Heyer novels during French class and, if the teacher protested, I'd say I was exercising my right to be Gandhi and this was my Passive Resistance and did she really want to "join forces with the evil people of the world" by trying to stop me. And also how I'd spend Maths classes reading about the previous American and British Nuclear Tests so I'd have some historical background to what the French were then doing, but that was really because I hated Maths.

And remember that High School Speech Competition I entered simply in order to spread the word and get others to join me in my personal protest and how I heard later that the judges had fought about me, with one lot wanting to award me the prize and the other lot calling me "a loose cannon", and how ultimately the prize went to that girl with the lovely smile who gave her speech about the importance of presenting yourself properly to the public.

And, hey guys, remember "Atom A-GO-GO"? That concert we put on at the Civic Centre to raise money for Rainbow Warrior's Peace Mission to Muraroa Atoll?  And remember just how GREAT it actually was; how almost by accident it came together like magic and we were all just amazing!

So, no, I wouldn't have done anything differently ... except maybe be less confrontational and do more about winning everyone over so they'd stop condemning me and join in with me and hate what I was hating and in the same ways I was hating.

Although, I'm sure, now that these documents are released and everyone knows what was actually going on, that personal histories are being rewritten and the folks who yelled at me back then are now claiming to be my loudest and most vocal supporters. 

Or even that they were me.

I'm shocked at how often that happens; how, throughout my life, the things I do and am condemned for are later so frequently appropriated by others and most often by those very folks who screamed at me the loudest.  Like, remember those shows I did with the Aboriginal kids in Outback Australia back in the mid '80s? Are you aware of how many folks who condemned me back then now have those very shows on their Curriculum Vitae. Yup, dozens of folk, most frequently my most vocal critics, are now out there claiming to be me, to have done what I did; to have written, directed and produced those very shows that I put on without any money, support and with a great deal of opposition, but which, in the end, turned out to be wildly successful - although the money we raised was stolen and we all know by who, although we couldn't do anything about it!  (Thankfully, they were jailed shortly afterwards although not for their crime against us!)

My mother wasn't quite right, you know, with her line "Make sure your inner compass always points to True North." She meant by that to always do what you know to be right, no matter how strange and outre it seems at the time. And she said that people would always end up following you and supporting you if your cause was true.

It definitely wasn't in her case.  She was condemned for the good she did in the world. And really, all that happens is that folks end up hating you, and when you're finally proved right, instead of apologising they just say "Oh, get over it!"  Or else your words and deeds are later appropriated and someone else ends up with the benefits that should be yours.

Gosh, this was meant to be a rant against the French and it's ended up being against the entire world.  I think I should stop now and get back to reading those documents.  And, yes, I'll pass on any more good stuff I find. See you later.