Wishing all my Townsville friends the-best-that-can-be-hoped-for during their upcoming Cyclones Anthony and Yasi. And we all know that the-best-that-can-be-hoped-for is that they both swing around and wipe out Bowen instead.
Mind you, since Bowen is forever being wiped out by cyclones originally heading for Townsville, maybe it's not so nice to wish this on them AGAIN!!!
But what other towns on The Cassowary Coast and The Great Green Way would we choose to have wiped out instead? Baby Jane is in Innisfail so that's definitely out. Besides, they still haven't properly recovered from Cyclone Larry in 2006. Cairns? If I didn't have friends there I'd say Cairns for sure because it's so glitzy and "Oooh, we're so more International than you!!!" We have friends in Cardwell too! So ... oooh, let's pick Tully!!! They've been lying for over 30 years about their weather so maybe it's only fitting that the Weather Gods get revenge!
And if you want to follow what's happening with this story: http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/cyclone
Good luck to all you guys! And since everyone I know in Brisbane and Toowoomba came through their recent floods unscathed, I'll break out my beautiful Kwan Yin and light a candle for you all as well!
Later: Oh dear, Kwan Yin and these candles I light in front of her are very powerful indeed. Cyclone Anthony swung around and wiped out Bowen - that poor dear little town - so hated by cyclones they always swerve away from Townsville to destroy it instead.
And now it looks like Yasi is swinging upwards to wipe out Cairns ... only it's so big and so powerful, they're saying it will hit Cairns as a Category 5, but will impact Innisfail as a Category 4, and Townsville as a Category 2 ... so there's no way that Bowen is going to get that instead of Townsville!
Baby Jane is saying that she's looking at the map of Cyclone Yasi as it descends on them from the Coral Sea, and it's actually bigger than the State of Queensland!
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Dame Mary Edwell-Burke
This is really quite sad. I'm currently trying to find out what happened to that wonderful old oil painting of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna done by Dame Mary Edwell-Burke, which used to hang in the lobby of Fiji's Grand Pacific Hotel, back in the days before this elegant and luxurious hotel - the Pacific's version of Raffles - was acquired by the island of Nauru and slowly turned into a sad wreck of itself, until today it stands on the edge of Suva as a mould-covered Art Deco ruin; a heartbreaking shadow of past glory.
Photo by Jon Apted.
Although his version isn't all
weirdly pixilated like this!
Although his version isn't all
weirdly pixilated like this!
Now, you will have noticed that I have no link for Dame Mary Edwell-Burke and have to tell you the shocking news that this is because SHE DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO LINK TO!
OK, maybe that isn't so because I've only used one search engine: Fast Browser! Let me try to test the different search engines to see what they come up with:
Nothing on any of them except ... GOOGLE!!!!
Yup, once again Google has proved itself the best of all the search engines because it has five entries including this one of her paintings, and four more about her paintings being in various auctions. However, all it says about her in any of these sites is that she was born in Australia in 1894 and died in Fiji in 1988.
DAME MARY EDWELL-BURKE
(b. Australia 1894, d. Fiji 1988)
... and hope that someone sees it and thinks "Yup, I will have to do something about this!"
It has to be done because it's so wrong that she's gone! She was such an incredible character and such a great painter, I am really sad that she isn't still out there as some HUGE Feminist Icon. She certainly deserves it, this wacky dignified old Dame, wandering - al-la Paul Gauguin - throughout the Pacific practically from the turn of the century - the 20th century - onwards, never updating her clothes so always dressed like some latterday Gibson Girl, always in white, and just painting, painting, painting, capturing our Oceanic world and putting it out there for all the world to see.
It has to be done because it's so wrong that she's gone! She was such an incredible character and such a great painter, I am really sad that she isn't still out there as some HUGE Feminist Icon. She certainly deserves it, this wacky dignified old Dame, wandering - al-la Paul Gauguin - throughout the Pacific practically from the turn of the century - the 20th century - onwards, never updating her clothes so always dressed like some latterday Gibson Girl, always in white, and just painting, painting, painting, capturing our Oceanic world and putting it out there for all the world to see.
Seriously, she was so amazing WHY isn't she being remembered! I mean even Queen Elizabeth recognised her wonderfulness back in the day by honouring her with a Dame-hood! And now she's ... just GONE!!!
We can't just let her go. Can someone out there in the Art World or the Feminist World or the Pacific or even her family PLEASE give this mighty lady a cyber-presence, even if it's just her own Wikipedia entry? We cannot forget her contribution to our lives, and she really did contribute to ALL our lives, you know, and in such a big way too, because even as the Suffragettes were doing what they did to ensure women everywhere could do what they wanted to do, Dame Mary was "walking the talk" and out there in the world doing exactly what she wanted to do; taking slow boats and local transport, traveling alone through the most obscure and unknown parts of the world and PAINTING it!
So please start the ball rolling on remembering her contribution to the modern world and thus all our lives. And I'll start by putting my personal memories of her out there:
The first memory I have of her was when I was about four or five. We were somewhere ... I can't remember where it was - although it would have definitely been in Fiji - because I only recall a single image, which wasn't too far removed from this one:
Let me tease a little more out of this memory. OK, I'm getting something: blue-bottles! mangroves!
Right, it's not much past dawn, and I'd woken early and had gone for a walk alone down to the beach. But which beach? Were we camping on an island someplace? Or was it the health officers cottages at Nukulau? Or those cottages down in Lomeri?
Wherever and whenever it was, it was blue-bottle season - November? - when all these beautiful azure jellyfish invade our Pacific waters, and so I was running along the shoreline jumping on them because they always made such a delicious squelchy pop! And I continued popping and squelching right into a mangrove swamp ...
Right, it's not much past dawn, and I'd woken early and had gone for a walk alone down to the beach. But which beach? Were we camping on an island someplace? Or was it the health officers cottages at Nukulau? Or those cottages down in Lomeri?
Wherever and whenever it was, it was blue-bottle season - November? - when all these beautiful azure jellyfish invade our Pacific waters, and so I was running along the shoreline jumping on them because they always made such a delicious squelchy pop! And I continued popping and squelching right into a mangrove swamp ...
... when suddenly, looming up right in front of me, I saw ...
Yup, deep in a mangrove swamp in some unrecalled wilderness that's what I saw. The light hit strangely and the image was luminous and the figure frozen, looking hard at the painting in front of her! It was so surreal and astonishing, but then it moved and I gasped and backed away slowly ... then a mad dash back to wherever it was we were staying ... the cottages at Rukuruku on the island of Ovalau?
Give this Gibson Girl totally white hair
and entirely white clothing,
and that's almost exactly what I saw.
Yup, deep in a mangrove swamp in some unrecalled wilderness that's what I saw. The light hit strangely and the image was luminous and the figure frozen, looking hard at the painting in front of her! It was so surreal and astonishing, but then it moved and I gasped and backed away slowly ... then a mad dash back to wherever it was we were staying ... the cottages at Rukuruku on the island of Ovalau?
"There's a ghost!" I told my mother, pointing down towards the mangroves. "Down there! In the mangroves! It's a ghost!"
"Don't be silly, dear." my mother said fondly.
"No! It's a real ghost. Down there."
"What's it doing?"
"It's painting a picture of mangrove roots."
"Is this a very old fashioned looking ghost?" my mother asked calmly.
"Yes. It's like a ghost from last century and it's painting mangroves."
I hated being laughed at as a child, and, yeah, yeah, here my mother laughed uproariously and it made me very cross.
"That would be Dame Mary Edwell-Burke." my mother said eventually. "She's a famous artist. And she's very definitely still alive and staying just along there in that village. She likes painting in the early morning because the light is so good, so what you saw was obviously her simply looking like a ghost."
Since that actually made a lot more sense, I now accept this as my very first glimpse of Dame Mary Edwell-Burke. And since my first glimpse of her was when I thought she was a ghost, it's a strange co-incidence that I also mistook her for a ghost the last time I saw her too.
In between these two strange ghostly encounters, I met her several times over the years, at the odd exhibition mostly or a couple of times at her Fiji studio, which was, as I vaguely recall, a bure (Fijian hut) atop a hill that may or may not have been just along from the Naboro Prison Farm, on the land once part of Bailey's rubber plantation, a memory I'm willing to surrender in a heartbeat because I'm not at all sure if we occasionally dropped by on our way to Deuba or if we made deliberate journeys out to some other place to see her whenever she was in Fiji.
And my main memory of meeting her on these occasions is that she was an old grump who didn't like kids.
But my last memory of her? It was in about ... gosh, 1983? When Kele was here in HK last month, we talked about this and I was very sad that, although he remembers "The Kele and Denise Big Official Levuka Ghost Hunt", he has no recollection of 'the ghost' because it should have been a BIGGIE for him ... as it was for me!
Whatever year it was, I'd come home to Fiji for a holiday from university in Australia to discover that Kele, then about six or seven, was going through his ghost phase. He was fascinated by them and always wanted to talk about them and was cynical enough to want to see one with his own eyes. And no! He didn't want to see a Tau - the Fijian faceless spirit - because he wanted this ghost to be a good old fashioned European-style ghost, all white and drifting with his/her feet off the ground.
I remembered that I too had gone through a ghost phase when I was about his age and, like him, was desperate for proof one way or the other. I even had fond memories of sneaking out of my bedroom on moonlit nights during our holidays in Levuka, to spend long hours sitting on the "out of bounds because it's too dangerous" widow's walk on the roof of The Royal Hotel in Levuka ...
I remembered that I too had gone through a ghost phase when I was about his age and, like him, was desperate for proof one way or the other. I even had fond memories of sneaking out of my bedroom on moonlit nights during our holidays in Levuka, to spend long hours sitting on the "out of bounds because it's too dangerous" widow's walk on the roof of The Royal Hotel in Levuka ...
Not my photo of the Royal Hotel in Levuka,
but you can see the widow's walk in this one.
... watching out for The White Lady, the ghost of the wife of a missionary who had somehow fallen from grace - one of my first ever short stories when I was about ten was based around my imaginings of what she'd done to fall from grace, whatever that meant - who was reputed to haunt Levuka's Cricket Fields below.
Since this was the only ghost in Fiji I'd ever heard about that matched Kele's description, and because I wanted to give Kele happy ghost-hunt memories like my own, so, being very indulgent, I took him on a jaunt to the island of Ovalau for "The Kele and Denise Big Official Levuka Ghost Hunt" with the off-chance of seeing The White Lady with our own eyes.
Oh boy, thinking about this now, I have to say that entire jaunt was an adventure par-excellence, and well worth recording in here one day, however the only part of it that belongs in this story is our arrival at Levuka's Royal Hotel.
We arrived and were checked in by the Pattersons - dear sweet people I've known my whole life - and taken up to our room, where were told that the Hotel's regular afternoon High Tea was in progress downstairs. Kele went off to explore the century-old hotel - after being told to stay away from The Widow's Walk because it was too dangerous - but I was dying for a cuppa so made my way to the dining room.
I'd just hit the dark lobby and looked in towards the dining room when I saw an apparition dressed like an elegant lady from the Belle Epoch in Paris ...
Imagine this lady all in white
and very much older.
... who was sitting in the dining room with scones, little cakes and a pot of tea in front of her. The was a row of stained glass windows beside her and the light hit the figure with these unearthly colours and she was frozen in a reverie. I too froze on the spot, then frantically looked around for Kele, wanting to tell him the exciting news that The White Lady was actually sitting in the Royal Hotel dining room having High Tea.
Couldn't see Kele around so I raced upstairs to find him, but he was nowhere around, though I checked every place I could think of before I realised "Of course!" Since Kele was the same type of naughty imp we'd all been at his age, there was only one place where he'd be. And yes, there he was, coming down the stairs from the widow's walk, so I gestured frantically for him to come right away.
However, when we got downstairs again, she wasn't there; the ghost was gone! Kele was very cross with me for trying to fool him, so, wanting proof, I asked the Fijian waitress if she'd seen a ghost sitting at the table right there! And, yeah, yeah, the woman burst out laughing - I hate that - and said that it had been Dame Mary Edwell-Burke at that table, and that she always came in for High Tea whenever she was in town.
Gosh, didn't I feel such a burke!
So those are my memories of this great lady. And I do hope it's only the start of a great many from everyone else, because we genuinely cannot forget her! And we can't all have forever mistaken her for ghosts, so hopefully other people will have stories that are far more ... substantial.
Later: This is very very sad! I've just found out that Dame Mary Edwell-Burke is buried at Nasinu Cemetery (grave no. ND 236) and has no headstone!
An unmarked grave for such a Great Lady and such a Great Artist! This is a great wrong and something needs to be done to put that right! But how?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Laibach!
I think we should build altars and write hymns and psalms praising St Youtube, The Patron Saint of All Things Visual!
Honestly, it seems like there is no boon youtube won't grant us ... except maybe that really creepy press conference last week with Stanley Ho and Wife #3 ... although I'm betting that, within only a few more days, some nice person somewhere will put it up and thus we'll all be able to see once again what looks creepily like a poor sad old man, either senile or on drugs, obviously being suckered out of his billions by a scarily avaricious young trophy wife, and thus everyone who missed it first time around can stop kicking themselves and join in the on-going nth-degree analysis and discussion of each nano-second of that footage to work out what we think is really going on!
However, that is still to come! And, yes, we will be checking youtube OFTEN hoping to find it there, and, yes, we will post it here when it is! Since this latest Nancy Kissell retrial is behind closed doors, and such interesting real-life soap operas don't come around often enough for Hong Kong's taste, this is something we will be following avidly for many months to come.
However, that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell you how, once again, youtube delivered. And that really should be DELIVERED!!!
What happened was that, over a decade ago, I heard a song on the radio that left me awestruck with a loosely hanging jaw and a boggling mind. HAD to get it only ... well, I missed the name of the band and no one ever knew what I was talking about.
Then, yesterday, I was in youtube looking for something ... OK, OK, I was looking for the Stanley Ho footage ... when I accidently stumbled across something that made me go mmmm!, and exactly like an ADHD rottweiller I forgot what I was doing and went after this new rabbit and ended up ...
... tada!
... finding that song I went searching for all those years ago. And here it is:
I first heard this song - the Stones version naturally - back in High School and, totally nauseated by the usual "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I have Love in my Tummy" and "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" on Radio Fiji One, thought it was amazing! So clever and erudite and all that stuff missing from the bubblegum garbage that Radio Fiji One endlessly pumped into in my life!
Naturally this was before Morris Hedstroms got Fiji's first Import Record Bar where I discovered Leonard Cohen and David Bowie and John Lennon-without-Paul-McCartney and Moody Blues and Jefferson Airplane and Marianne Faithful and Patty Smith and ... well, you get the idea.
But anyway ... back to youtube and this amazing discovery:
Excited to finally have a name for that really dark and creepy version of the Stones classic, I spent yesterday hunting down all I could find on this Slovenian - SLOVENIAN!!! Who even knew that Slovenia had music!!! - rock band.
And once I got over the "OMG, Borat has put out a rock video!" and the "Do all Slovenians look like serial killers?", I was seriously impressed! And the more I found of their music the more impressed I was. Like, have a listen to this:
It's all so slick and sophisticated and erudite and wonderful, isn't it!, but coupled with that wonderful strange mispronouncements like "sleether as they pass"! Pure bliss!
But I found out they were most famous for this:
But decided, after only 30 seconds, that I wasn't very impressed and clicked it off, wondering if maybe the songs only worked if you knew the originals, so I dived again into youtube to hear the original Opus version of "Life is Life" ...
... and it was so ditsy, creepy and 'happy-clappy', I had to go back in to listen to Laibach's take ... and I listened to it all the way through and it built into something that completely blew me away ... and now I'm a massive fan!
But being a fan of a Slovenian rock band? Where is that even? The Balkans? And here I am, a Fijian living in Hong Kong, and I'm madly loving a Balkans band, and it just seems so perverse and off-beat ... but that's youtube for you. Saint Youtube makes global citizens of us all!
Honestly, it seems like there is no boon youtube won't grant us ... except maybe that really creepy press conference last week with Stanley Ho and Wife #3 ... although I'm betting that, within only a few more days, some nice person somewhere will put it up and thus we'll all be able to see once again what looks creepily like a poor sad old man, either senile or on drugs, obviously being suckered out of his billions by a scarily avaricious young trophy wife, and thus everyone who missed it first time around can stop kicking themselves and join in the on-going nth-degree analysis and discussion of each nano-second of that footage to work out what we think is really going on!
However, that is still to come! And, yes, we will be checking youtube OFTEN hoping to find it there, and, yes, we will post it here when it is! Since this latest Nancy Kissell retrial is behind closed doors, and such interesting real-life soap operas don't come around often enough for Hong Kong's taste, this is something we will be following avidly for many months to come.
However, that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell you how, once again, youtube delivered. And that really should be DELIVERED!!!
What happened was that, over a decade ago, I heard a song on the radio that left me awestruck with a loosely hanging jaw and a boggling mind. HAD to get it only ... well, I missed the name of the band and no one ever knew what I was talking about.
Then, yesterday, I was in youtube looking for something ... OK, OK, I was looking for the Stanley Ho footage ... when I accidently stumbled across something that made me go mmmm!, and exactly like an ADHD rottweiller I forgot what I was doing and went after this new rabbit and ended up ...
... tada!
... finding that song I went searching for all those years ago. And here it is:
I first heard this song - the Stones version naturally - back in High School and, totally nauseated by the usual "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I have Love in my Tummy" and "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" on Radio Fiji One, thought it was amazing! So clever and erudite and all that stuff missing from the bubblegum garbage that Radio Fiji One endlessly pumped into in my life!
Naturally this was before Morris Hedstroms got Fiji's first Import Record Bar where I discovered Leonard Cohen and David Bowie and John Lennon-without-Paul-McCartney and Moody Blues and Jefferson Airplane and Marianne Faithful and Patty Smith and ... well, you get the idea.
But anyway ... back to youtube and this amazing discovery:
Excited to finally have a name for that really dark and creepy version of the Stones classic, I spent yesterday hunting down all I could find on this Slovenian - SLOVENIAN!!! Who even knew that Slovenia had music!!! - rock band.
And once I got over the "OMG, Borat has put out a rock video!" and the "Do all Slovenians look like serial killers?", I was seriously impressed! And the more I found of their music the more impressed I was. Like, have a listen to this:
It's all so slick and sophisticated and erudite and wonderful, isn't it!, but coupled with that wonderful strange mispronouncements like "sleether as they pass"! Pure bliss!
But I found out they were most famous for this:
But decided, after only 30 seconds, that I wasn't very impressed and clicked it off, wondering if maybe the songs only worked if you knew the originals, so I dived again into youtube to hear the original Opus version of "Life is Life" ...
... and it was so ditsy, creepy and 'happy-clappy', I had to go back in to listen to Laibach's take ... and I listened to it all the way through and it built into something that completely blew me away ... and now I'm a massive fan!
But being a fan of a Slovenian rock band? Where is that even? The Balkans? And here I am, a Fijian living in Hong Kong, and I'm madly loving a Balkans band, and it just seems so perverse and off-beat ... but that's youtube for you. Saint Youtube makes global citizens of us all!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Japanese Irish Band!
Have you seen this? It's an Irish band in Nagasaki in Japan, that appears to have all Japanese members ...
... and which may or may not - hard to tell - be called Denise Murphy!!!
... and which may or may not - hard to tell - be called Denise Murphy!!!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Year of the Rabbit!
Our 2011 Chinese New Year begins at midnight 3/4th February, when the Big Red Cap Sifu at Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple ...
... sticks The Sacred Windmill on his head and - after many prayers and much chanting from the thousands of priests, monks and the tens-of-thousands-strong public - draws out the annual Fortune Stick, thereby predicting what will happen to us here in HK during The Year of The Rabbit.
Big, huh!!
No! Not so!
Not anymore!
It's a particularly nasty time in the history of this very important event. As I mentioned last year, what's happened is that despite this being OUR BUSINESS and no one elses, in 2010 those B**tards in Beijing got involved and thus this important annual ceremony has become all very political and nasty.
What this is about is that, since this Fortune Stick is right every year - it even picked the SARS crisis back in 2002, the tsunami, and the more recent 2009 finanical tsunami - everyone always trusts it and thus it's HUGE in Hong Kong's collective consciousness. However, this year we are currently at loggerheads with the Chinese Communist Party because we want them to JUST GO AWAY!!!
As I told you last year, those Beijing B**tards barged in and demanded the right to interpret the meaning of this Stick for us, and since CCP cadres are no Big Red Cap Sifus with the right pure motives to be unbiased and therefore correct ...
... and since their prediction for 2010 was "Hong Kong will obey the Communist Party of China" ...
... for the first time EVER our annual Fortune Stick caused no emotional response at all from the public. In fact, when the interpretation appeared in the newspapers, instead of the usual long and tortuous discussions on the possible meanings of each line and crazy interpretations of each nuance, no one mentioned it and just looked sour and angry as they immediately turned the page ...
... and everyone is just sick at the thought that this interference is likely to happen again this year.
It was incredibly stupid of Beijing. In fact, it was so far beyond stupid it made me wonder if the CCP had gone insane.
Obviously, since no one believes the CCP has anything remotely like good intentions, we all think another such nasty move from Beijing will actually kill off the importance of this event.
Yup, that's my prediction: more of this Mainland interference this year will indeed kill this very long, very old and Very-Hong Kong tradition. I hope they realise that!
Lillian Too, however, is still very trusted and so, without any faith and trust left in our Annual Fortune Stick, folks are turning to her books in numbers.
But the news from Lillian Too for 2011 is not good. She's predicting lots of Dangerous Yellows. Natural disasters! Political assassinations! Sabre-rattling! Lots more floods! (She predicted lots of floods for 2010 too.) If you'd like to read what she has to say, go HERE.
And the news for me personally is particularly bad since I'm facing down The Three Killings and have so many nasty Dangerous Yellows AND an Angry Great Lord Jupiter in my marriage ba gua, so I'm dreading The Rabbit. In fact, it's all so bad I doubt our marriage will survive, because I know that the last time I had such an afflicted chart, back in 1989, Keith and I ended up the year with such anger and animosity towards each other that it's a credit to both of us that we fundamentally liked each other enough to get over it.
Since we've been there before, we know what to expect - although in 1989 I wasn't also in line for Three Killings - and thus how bad it can get so we talked about this last night and shook hands, both agreeing that whatever happens to our marriage in 2011, on the night of the start of Year of the Dragon, we shall sit down together as friends, have a glass or two of wine and laugh about it.
However, several Chinese friends - and also non-Chinese friends - have suggested we get protective amulets to ward off all this inauspiciousness, and so - not entirely tongue-in-cheek - we are now hunting out "Allies and Special Friends" amulets while also researching more to discover what other auspicious ward-off-evils will help.
If you are also in this position, I should tell you that Lillian Too is the expert on this subject of what you need for whatever, and that she also sells the appropriate amulets on-line, but I should warn you that, since she takes all this very seriously, she only has high quality very expensive items, whereas you, like us, are most likely looking for cheap-cheap-cheap on the grounds that you're also only doing it because "it can't hurt"!
Thus, after an long and exhaustive hunt (OK, I lie! Anne told me about it.) I've just found a site that sells what you need cheaply. HERE.
... could easily make a fortune as a Super Model! An exceptionally low IQ surely wouldn't be a hindrance in that field, would it?
And this little darling, since she is actually 16 ...
... could spend the rest of her life as a child actor!
Gosh, look at that! We're so far away from today's topic of Year of the Rabbit, I have no hope of finding my way back again, so I'll just leave it for today with the thought "Can we all just skip The Rabbit and go straight to The Dragon?"
The Entrance Gate to
Sik Sik Yuen Sin Temple
Big, huh!!
No! Not so!
Not anymore!
It's a particularly nasty time in the history of this very important event. As I mentioned last year, what's happened is that despite this being OUR BUSINESS and no one elses, in 2010 those B**tards in Beijing got involved and thus this important annual ceremony has become all very political and nasty.
What this is about is that, since this Fortune Stick is right every year - it even picked the SARS crisis back in 2002, the tsunami, and the more recent 2009 finanical tsunami - everyone always trusts it and thus it's HUGE in Hong Kong's collective consciousness. However, this year we are currently at loggerheads with the Chinese Communist Party because we want them to JUST GO AWAY!!!
As I told you last year, those Beijing B**tards barged in and demanded the right to interpret the meaning of this Stick for us, and since CCP cadres are no Big Red Cap Sifus with the right pure motives to be unbiased and therefore correct ...
... and since their prediction for 2010 was "Hong Kong will obey the Communist Party of China" ...
... for the first time EVER our annual Fortune Stick caused no emotional response at all from the public. In fact, when the interpretation appeared in the newspapers, instead of the usual long and tortuous discussions on the possible meanings of each line and crazy interpretations of each nuance, no one mentioned it and just looked sour and angry as they immediately turned the page ...
... although it did result in the removal
of the HK flag from public buildings!
Notice this is just the Chinese Communist Flag
flying at the Central Library
and even the flagpost to hoist the HK Flag
has been removed;
an illegal act that deserves
a strong legal intervention.
... and everyone is just sick at the thought that this interference is likely to happen again this year.
It was incredibly stupid of Beijing. In fact, it was so far beyond stupid it made me wonder if the CCP had gone insane.
Obviously, since no one believes the CCP has anything remotely like good intentions, we all think another such nasty move from Beijing will actually kill off the importance of this event.
Yup, that's my prediction: more of this Mainland interference this year will indeed kill this very long, very old and Very-Hong Kong tradition. I hope they realise that!
Lillian Too, however, is still very trusted and so, without any faith and trust left in our Annual Fortune Stick, folks are turning to her books in numbers.
But the news from Lillian Too for 2011 is not good. She's predicting lots of Dangerous Yellows. Natural disasters! Political assassinations! Sabre-rattling! Lots more floods! (She predicted lots of floods for 2010 too.) If you'd like to read what she has to say, go HERE.
And the news for me personally is particularly bad since I'm facing down The Three Killings and have so many nasty Dangerous Yellows AND an Angry Great Lord Jupiter in my marriage ba gua, so I'm dreading The Rabbit. In fact, it's all so bad I doubt our marriage will survive, because I know that the last time I had such an afflicted chart, back in 1989, Keith and I ended up the year with such anger and animosity towards each other that it's a credit to both of us that we fundamentally liked each other enough to get over it.
Since we've been there before, we know what to expect - although in 1989 I wasn't also in line for Three Killings - and thus how bad it can get so we talked about this last night and shook hands, both agreeing that whatever happens to our marriage in 2011, on the night of the start of Year of the Dragon, we shall sit down together as friends, have a glass or two of wine and laugh about it.
However, several Chinese friends - and also non-Chinese friends - have suggested we get protective amulets to ward off all this inauspiciousness, and so - not entirely tongue-in-cheek - we are now hunting out "Allies and Special Friends" amulets while also researching more to discover what other auspicious ward-off-evils will help.
If you are also in this position, I should tell you that Lillian Too is the expert on this subject of what you need for whatever, and that she also sells the appropriate amulets on-line, but I should warn you that, since she takes all this very seriously, she only has high quality very expensive items, whereas you, like us, are most likely looking for cheap-cheap-cheap on the grounds that you're also only doing it because "it can't hurt"!
Thus, after an long and exhaustive hunt (OK, I lie! Anne told me about it.) I've just found a site that sells what you need cheaply. HERE.
So far, I've got myself these two:
"Allies and Special Friends"
The rooster on the right I picked up for pocket change at Wan Chai markets, while the Guardian Angel on the left is one made by the kiddies at Keith's school.
As you know, Keith's school is for mentally challenged children each with a range of other handicaps, but you may not know that it is also a Christian school, and so ... while they can't stop the kiddies believing in the most-Chinese idea of protective amulets, they can certainly change the nature of those amulets.
The different styles of amulets
the children make!
Angels, crosses and such!
And the kiddies have become so good at it, they even run workshops so other people can learn to make them as well.
Their amulet-making workshop!
And the other part of this thought is that since so many of these kids are profoundly handicapped having a skill like this will be a useful way of earning an income ...
... although I think this exquisite girl, almost six foot tall ...
Double-click to see how stunning she is!
... could easily make a fortune as a Super Model! An exceptionally low IQ surely wouldn't be a hindrance in that field, would it?
And this little darling, since she is actually 16 ...
One of the strange silent winsy-little "Indigo Children"
who appear to communicate through ESP!
Keith has taught so many he's got used to it
and is no longer stunned by their weird talents,
but they still shock me!
... could spend the rest of her life as a child actor!
Gosh, look at that! We're so far away from today's topic of Year of the Rabbit, I have no hope of finding my way back again, so I'll just leave it for today with the thought "Can we all just skip The Rabbit and go straight to The Dragon?"
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