Preponing a flight

Local airlines in Indonesia can be rather lawless. We bought our tickets to fly from Alor to Kupang last Monday with Transnusa (http://www.transnusa.co.id). The flight was scheduled at 13:00. I was all excited about the end of my trip. My anticipation had kept me awake for most of the night. The packing was done the day before. The fridge had been cleared. All bottled water was finished. Even my indoor-sandals were already packed. I was literally lying in bed, waiting for the sky to brighten up. We, however, got a call from Transnusa at 9:00 the same day telling us the flight was ‘preponed’ and had already came and left Alor (it left at 7:30). We must wait one more day and there would not be any compensation whatsoever. That really got me barking. They insisted that they had tried to reach us earlier on, which we later found out was a call at 7:00 (half an hour before the plane departed) and they just let the phone ring once. I was trying to pick up the phone then but the distance between me and the phone was more than one ring away.

We never found out what was the cause of the ‘preponing’. We went to the Transnusa office to show our annoyance and demand an explanation. Our only response was that the plane was rescheduled. That definitely violates the Grecian maxim of relevance. Frantisek’s speculation was that, in a back-door friendly country like Indonesia, it must be the case that some government officials (and their loving wives, children, uncles, aunts, friends) needed an urgent flight to leave Alor and they just bribed the airline into ditching all the other passengers. In that case, there is also no point in complaining because you would end up complaining to the very government officials who ‘stole’ your flight. Now we have a perfect circle that excludes commoners like us.

Joanno

Kupang

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We are finally in a place with a flushing-toilet and constant running water. We are now in the Maya Hotel in Kupang.

We left Kalabahi last night by a big ship, the Tatamailau. The reason for our mid-trip escape is very official. We have to leave Alor for a week to extend our about-to-expire visas in the provincial capital Kupang. The Tatamailau is something like a cruise ship (size-wise) without the facilities. If I were blind I would think I was inside a big dead fish, taking cues from the smell. The only facility was a restaurant, which was closed when we boarded. A member of the staff told us it was closed as it was too late. We got on at 6:30pm. My biological clock needs to be adjusted in this country. Luckily, we were well-prepared. Being more experienced with the Indonesian management style, we had brought 6 peanut butter sandwiches, 2 liters of water, 5 tomatoes, 3 bananas, a pack a cheese and a thermo of Earl Grey tea. We had our prepared food in our cabin (we bought first class tickets so we did not have to sleep in the corridor with a lot of strangers), which we shared with numerous tiny cockroaches. We managed to smash quite a few of them with my shoes as our post-dinner entertainment. There was also a spider in the shower, which I took the liberty to drown. I had accumulated quite a lot of frustration the last few weeks, so killing these insects in some violent ways delighted me substantially. Despite the presence of these unfortunate insects, the cabin was in fact agreeable, compared with how we lived for the past month. Our only complaint was the mattresses, which seemed to be populated with fleas. Both Frantisek and I were covered with tiny red spots in the morning. Unfortunately, the fleas were too small for me to aim. I slapped my body randomly and yet forcefully at some unbearably itchy moments, which might have caused a few casualties.

The Tatamailau did not provide breakfast for its first class passengers. The restaurant was of course closed, so no proper breakfast could be bought either. In Indonesia, shops were opened according to the mood of the staff, as well as their napping schedules. We finished our almost soggy bananas and went to the deck to join the crowds. Then the best thing on the cruise-ride happened: we saw a group of dolphins swimming next to the ship! I had only seen trained dolphins in Ocean Park before so seeing them wild in nature was a new experience to me.

Everyone was telling me Kupang was a horrible place (a dry, deserted place). But so far (we have been here for 7 hours) I found it quite alright. The hotel we are staying is clean (no fleas, no cockroaches, no spiders so far) and the TV works. We even have a view of the sea. The restaurant we went for lunch had most of the items in the menu and we were not sick after the meal. We went to the Catholic University for internet earlier on and the computers ran with acceptable speed. Even the ATM machine next to our hotel worked. I am almost happy. Frantisek said we are now in the best part of the town and I would have a more accurate opinion when we walk to the centre later. I am prepared to be disappointed in a few hours, but right now I am full with the hope that this city might function like a normal one.

Joanno

Life in Alor

We have been in Alor for about two weeks now. Our lives here are rather unstable as we alternate our stay in three different places in this island: Kalabahi, Takpala and Kolana.

Kalabahi: Kalabahi is the harbor city in Alor. The phrase ‘harbor city’ is definitely injecting glamour to the place which it does not deserve. Kalabahi is dirty, in the strong sense of the word. There is no organized garbage disposal so one either burns one’s garbage or buries it, in the case of metal. The remains of the burnt garbage get flushed down the road when the rain comes. It is now the dry season so the half-burnt garbage just rots in the road, contaminating the air with the smell of burnt plastic. The market is filthy with the uninviting smell of rotting fish, which are being dried in the open, with flies feasting on them. Hawkers sell their products on the ground, piled up on top a big piece of cloth or plastic. Most hawkers have red teeth, the resulting of the constant chewing of betel nuts, something they can’t live without. We stay in what used to be an SIL office. The house is one of the better built houses in this slum-like area, which is slightly comforting. The only constant worry is water, which only runs in average twice a week. As for food, it is not possible to get meat here except fish and we have almost become vegetarians, a consequence that both Frantisek and I are quite content with. We are stuffing ourselves with eggplants, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and different Chinese greens. In other words, we are doing fine food-wise when we are in Kalabahi. Both of us have only lost 2kg so far, which I consider to be an achievement.

Takpala: Takpala is the village where Frantisek used to stay when he did fieldwork before. We stay there with Papa Timo’s (the chief) family and I like them all (Mama Ameku, Dori, Orpa and Simon). Takpala is not so far from the Kalabahi (about 30 mins on a motorbike). People there normally eat really hard/old corn that would hurt your/my jaws. Sometimes if they can afford they would have rice, but vegetables are not always on the menu. The first morning there I got plain over-boiled rice for breakfast that almost made me puke. When we go there, we either bring our own grocery or we can ask Dori to go to the market to buy food for meals. The coffee there is really nice though. I was taught to grind the coffee with two big stones and I must say I quite enjoyed it. The chief’s family lives in a traditional house. It is a very comfy structure in such hot and dry weather. Frantisek and I also have our own small hut for ourselves which give us a bit of privacy. The hut is built on poles so when I turn in my sleep the whole hut moves. People in the village really like to talk and hang out. Sometimes, when socializing gets too heavy, I would go in and hide. In the beginning I was a bit weird out by the bathroom, which is basically open with a bamboo wall circling it (but not quite). There is a 30cm gap for going in and it has no door. But since there is never anyone around so that does not matter so much. There is a concrete container for water, which has to be filled by people fetching and carrying water from a well down the hill (takes an hour for a round trip, going downhill then going uphill). The villagers normally bring water up when they know we are around so we haven’t had the chance to fetch water yet. I don’t think I will survive the walk though. I walked uphill carrying nothing with arms swaying once and the heat almost killed me.

Kolana: I really dislike this place. I am scared of the thought of having to go back there and I have to next week. The route to get there from Kalabahi is rough. The whole trip takes about 6 hours because half of the roads are broken. We fell from the motorbike on our first trip there and a big piece of skin (bigger than a 2 Euro coin) on my leg was torn off. It did not look like an extremely bad wound right from the beginning but it got worse after the one-week stay in Kolana. In Kolana, people like to have their live stocks walking around. I was often surrounded by chicken and pigs when I was there. Due to the abundant amount of animal manure, there were loads of flies and they really liked my open-wound. They came often to sit on my wound. To keep the wound clean, I washed it with water often, but the water was really dirty as we found out later. The Kolana people take both washing and drinking water from the same well which is very close to the sewage from the toilets. I got diarrhoea from drinking cooked water. I was showering with such water for five days, several showers a day. My wound in the end got infected. It has got pus coming out and it has strangely gone deeper. We stayed with an old couple (Papa Isak’s family) and their daughter. The house was primitive, with neither proper walls nor floors. There were also mice walking on the beams near the ceiling all day long. At some point, I might want to name the mice, just to feel more like home there. People there are very ‘religious’ in the sense that they pray very often and they like to do really long prayers. The pre-meal prayers lasted for so long sometimes I thought I had missed the ending Amen and had in fact fallen asleep. Frantisek said people were scared and thus they prayed for so long. Praying was the only thing they could do in hunger and sickness. I found all these understandable but also hypocritical. Women had very low status in the village (as well as in the whole Alor I think). There was one time there were a bunch of village men coming to visit Papa Isak and we were sitting around at the back of the house and chatting, then Papa Isak all of a sudden asked me to make some tea to serve them, which I found outrageous. I am still and will always be annoyed by this. I was a guest in the house. He must be out of his god-damn mind to ask me to go and make him some tea. If he wants tea for himself and his fellow-male guests, he should go and make it himself. Normally he treated me politely so that ‘go and make tea bitch’ episode must be a slip, showing that deep down he thinks women are just lower animals. The other day I went to a small shop in the village with Papa Isak’s daughter to get some eggs. There was a drunken soldier there. His job is to guard the border on the mountain top but as I was told later, he is drunk at the coast most of the time. Once he saw us, me looking like a non-local, he came around and started talking to me. He began his conversation with the only three English words he knew. He yelled at me with the words ‘you go where’. He was standing way too close to be polite and he was later on asking me questions like whether I was married, where my husband was, why I was buying eggs and whether he could come around and have cakes. I could barely understand what he said as he was speaking Malay after his three-English-word introductory yell. However, it was clear he was being rude and was harassing me. I could tell that that guy was a bully from the scared smiles the villagers were putting on their faces. The scariest thing was that the villagers were simply looking. They knew I did not speak Malay and I was having a communication malfunctioning there, but no one was trying to help, not even Papa Isak’s daughter whom I was staying with. I have a feeling that people in the villagers in Kolana are just nice to you as you are bringing in a bit of income for them (taking them as informants, buying them food, fixing their houses, etc.). They will sell you off if they have to. I had some very primitive fear there. People there are at the edge, at some break-off point. They are too hungry. Some part of me feels sad about it but most of me just feel like escaping. I was simply not born to be a very kind person. I will leave the save-the-world business to the more talented people. It is hard to be kind when one’s life is threatened. But if one is only kind when one is safe and can spare it then such kindness bears no sacrifice. I think life is asking me to show some strength and I am all-set to disappoint it. I dislike the place, the people and the animals in Kolana and the water there makes me ill, the journey there is dangerous and yet we still need to go there next week. Frantisek said hating the place does not make it easier. He is brilliant in pointing out the obvious.

Joanno

Frantisek in Australia

Franstisek is now in the southern hemisphere. He wrote me a mail from the Melbourne airport saying he is now officially living in Australia. It feels weird that he is now living in Australia. The foreigness of the country/continent (being not Europe and not Asia) makes me feel like he is as far as outerspace. When I think about him I wonder if I should be looking at the floor instead of looking at the sky. I am very bad with orientation.

He will start working on Monday and what is left here (Hong Kong) for me to do is to pack everything in boxes and ship them to the new country. Since the university will cover most of the cost of the move, we plan to ship everything. It is nice to surround oneself with things that one likes and is familiar with. I have learned to be attached to inanimate entities since I left home for the first time. Even an old sock can fill me up with emotions now. Frantisek thinks I should be more discriminative in selecting the receipients of my sentiments and should also donate half of the clothes in my closet.

I am looking forward to my next trans-continental move. I thought my life will be more settled after my around-the-world schooling, but sometimes one should really be careful with whom one should date. Some choice might add a lot of miles to your life.

Joanno

Fatal wound

The play 'Fatal Wound' was staged sucessfully on the 17th, 18th and 19th of May. I was playing the lonely/depressed/sick woman role well, though my friends thought I was playing a schizophrenic woman who thought of herself as super-ugly and thus was reluctant to leave the house. I wasn't sure how my face had managed to mis-communicate such complicated feelings of oneself in the absence of any lines in my part.

One thing I did not expect to realise but did anyway was that I was totally night-blind. I bumped into a wall with my prop mirror once. Another time I was hit chest to chair by a girl who was walking towards me during scene change, with a chair. It hit right into my lungs since I wasn't really well-endowned in the breast-area. I also walked into several assistant stage-managers. They of course could see me, but they did not expect that I would walk right into their faces. In total darkness, people shall not assume.

Joanno

The Netherlands summer 2007

Frantisek finally defended his thesis! He is now a Doctor who can cure no one. He, however, got the chance to wear a ‘White Tie’ or informally referred to as the evening dress. The Dutch called it a ‘Rokkostuum’ I refer to it regularly as the penguin suit. It was a present he got for his defense. He, being old-fashioned and all, was absolutely thrilled by the present. In fact, before the defense, he had been telling me all types of excuses as to why he should not get a ‘White tie’. His obsession in repeatedly telling me all those reasons only showed that he really wanted one.

The trip to Holland was nice. We stayed with Boban and his two women. Lidija, his wife, is as beautiful as ever. She is also very funny at times, though you need to catch her off guard for her funniness. Dunja is now a very bossy 4-year old. If anyone dares to stand between her and the TV, she will pinch you real hard with her little fingers, which turned from pink to transparent when she used the force. I shall never irritate Serbian women.

Joanno

the poor half-eaten banana

I threw down half a banana. It hit the floor with a ‘thump’.

I was rehearsing the whole afternoon for the play ‘Fatal Wound’. My role is a patient who never goes out and is doing a lot of silly things to entertain herself at home, including singing ‘Dancing Queen’ and dancing to the tune with a banana. The tricky point about the scene is the following: On the one hand, the dance is not supposed to be pretty. It has to be slightly mad like what one would do when no one is looking. It is almost a requirement that I need to sing out of tune occasionally. On the other hand, I need to pretend that I am doing it for an audience as the patient is a bit of a hidden exhibitionist. In other words, the awkward moves have to be slightly, but only slightly, choreographic. On the third hand, there is no instruction as to how to do it. The only instruction I get from the director is that I need to express happiness during the banana-eating-singing-dancing event, or better euphoria. Truth be told, I seldom use bananas to give me euphoria, I have got a lovely boyfriend for the job. Anyway, I have no idea how to strike a balance between the seemingly contradicting requirements and to make it worse, I can’t dance! The director was not exactly polite and respectful in her way in treating the actors and actresses. I try to think of the verbal bullies as tactics to motivate the actors and actresses but now they just feel like, well, verbal bullies that only aim to hurt and insult. Considering I have spent more than 10 hours this week to rehearse, not counting the time I study the ABBA videos at you tube during my free time, and I am not getting paid anything out of this, I think I surely deserve better treatments. I wonder what I am gaining out of this, to be yelled at is hardly a gain and I can assure you I am definitely not masochistic.

I was annoyed. I threw down a half-eaten banana on the floor during rehearsal. It hit the floor with a ‘thump’.

Joanno

Boban and Dunja

Frantisku took a picture of Boban and his daughter Dunja when he was in Holland two weeks ago. We are going to stay with Boban and his two beautiful women (his wife Lidija and his daughter Dunja) in May for a week or so and I am really looking forward to it. I haven't seen Dunja for almost a year and I am emotionally prepared to be surprised by how tall she is now. The only problem is that she does not speak English/Cantonese and I don't speak Serbian. Czech is close enough to Serbian so Frantisku should have no problems.

Boban is a great friend who appreciates my general knowledge as plain and as deep as lines like 'one thing leads to another'. I pronunced that line as a deep thought yesterday and he crowned me the title of 'wittiness dispenser', however mockingly, I took it as a compliment. We used to live in the same house in Leiden during my first year in Holland. Being foreign, poor and bored, we often played Chinese checkers in pubs after work over a glass of beer for him and a cup of hot tea/hot chocolate for me. I also remember playing 'just a minute' (a BBC panel game which one has to speak for one minute on a topic with no repetition, deviation and hesitation) with him and Mark (another housemate) in the house one evening, when we had nothing to do but were just staring at each other in the very quiet living room. When we first moved to that house, we got no furniture and we did not want to spend money on it. One day when we were sitting at home, we saw our next door neighbors throwing out chairs, beds and tables. We went to pick them all up and after that day, our living room was furnished. We were all very delighted. Boban, Mark, Veronique and me also went to Paris in November 2001. I remember that trip only very vaguely because I was drunk (having wines all day long) and sleepy (only 4 hours a night max, and very cold) the whole trip. Boban said I was really nice to hang out with in that state, as opposed to when I am sober and awake. Those were real good times.

Joanno

A visit to the optometrist

I went to my optometrist today and had lots of fun. My optometrist is a girl, who I think is a few years younger than me. It might be a bit premature to call her my optometrist since that was the first visit, but I would book her again next time just for the laugh. Right in the beginning, she asked me whether my eyes had any problem, so I told her about the lasik surgery last July, the higher order aberration on right my eye and the recent inflammation on my right eye. She then wanted to know whether I saw flashes. I told her only if I turned my head very quickly in the dark, then I saw flashes. She just smiled, which could mean anything. But I was happy that someone was paying so much attention to my problems. Anyway, what I really wanted to ask her is whether she thinks it is a good idea to do an enhancement surgery on my right eye again, due to the higher order aberration, considering my vision now. It is in fact quite hard to describe one’s visual problem, as you are the only one who can ‘see’ it. Instead of describing my vision, I told her that when I look through my fingers or small holes, I see a lot clearer. When I cry, my vision is also much better. She said when less light would be admitted, the vision is better. That is probably true, if you think about pinhole glasses. I refrained from telling her the time I tried to clear my tear duct by cutting onions. I also did not tell her when I am upside down my vision is better. I can’t explain why I was upside down in the first place. After all, I wanted to appear to be normal to someone who has my personal details. At some point, she was trying to test my peripheral vision and was holding up different fingers at the side of my eyes and asked me to guess how many fingers there were. It was so hard not to cheat and by looking sideway, but I managed to discipline myself. It was very fun. I think kids would love this. There was also a point where she had to check my retina and asked me to look at her ears (not at the same time, but left first than right). The thing is that the room was quite dark and she had such small flat ears (they did not stick out), so it was very hard to focus on them. I felt my giggles bubbling up then, but I stopped them.

All in all, the visit was nice. The only bad news is that there is a part of my retina that is too thin, common to people with myopia (-9 for me), so there is a risk of a detachment. I guess I will need to burn it with laser. But since this does not involve cutting me open, I am not too worried.

Joanno

Michael Ondaatje

There was a time in my life during which I was mesmerized by Michael Ondaatje. I remember having an Ondaatje evening with Rachel Wojdak , somewhere in the year 2000. We shared our Ondaatje quotations the whole evening. I was really obsessive. I like his poems a lot more than his novels. Here are some of the quotes from his poetry collection:

Kissing the stomach
Kissing your scarred
Skin boat. History
Is what you’ve traveled on
And take with you

We’ve each had our stomachs
Kissed by strangers
To the other

And as for me
I bless everyone
Who kissed you here.

###

At such times – no talking
No conclusion in the heart
I buy postage
Seal this
And send it a thousand miles, thinking.


###

‘A sheet of water near your breast
Where I can sink
Like a stone’

Paul Eluard

Joanno

Check this out!

Those are my feet! If you want to see the two feet up close/in details, come and see the play.

http://www.championartsassociation.net


Joanno

Leaving Hong Kong

As I am typing this, I have lived in Hong Kong for 5 months and 15 days. 5 months and 15 days is quite a while if you consider that I haven’t managed to learn more than 20 Cantonese words; it is even longer, if you consider that the longest time that I have been in Asia (Indonesia) is seven months; and extremely long, if you remind yourself that Czech people have a natural tendency to stay at home and avoid adventures of any type. In fact, I have been missing sausages and good bread, as well as nice beer once in a while. The disadvantage of being a Czech villager is the ability to accommodate in any situation and avoid further adventures. So now, at the very edge of leaving again, I am wondering in which direction I am going to be homesick from now on. Would it be Holland, where I have spent last 8 years, or busy Hong Kong, or perhaps Czech?
I am heading to Holland on Friday, to travel in a circle from Leiden to Haarlem, Amsterdam, Nijmegen and Gouda to come back to Leiden again and then go home to Czech for Easter. All this traveling seems a bit too much of a challenge. The worries of a long travel staple up. I don’t like my passport and all those silly paperwork that certified people who protect us (usually with a gun) will look at, screening some secret files of mine checking whether I am who I am. I think if I become dement later, I just go to the police station or to an airport and let them tell me who I really am. At least, if my memory will not fail me in this matter.
On May 30th the learned committee will examine my thesis. They are going to share a bit of my headache from last four years and hopefully they are going enjoy them. After that I will go to Australia to start a new job and Joanna said that she would come too. You will probably read soon here more about how do we like it there.

Frantisku

Alor

Frantisek and I will be going to New Guinea for a conference in August (http://email.eva.mpg.de/~gil/wlp/). He, in particular, is very happy about it. Partly because he thinks this is a symbolic move, indicating that I am one step closer to agreeing to accompany him to Alor where he would be doing fieldwork later.

I am only half tempted. Being shallow and all, my concerns of going there are rather trivial in many people's eyes. My first worry is getting sick. He caught malaria and dengue fever at the same time the first time he went there. I am more allergic to insect bites than he does. I am not sure if this translates at all to the possibility of catching nasty mosquito-related diseases. I don't really fancy looking all yellow. I mean more yellow. My second concern is food. Whenever he went there, he lost tons of weight. I have to eat all the time. I have a really high metabolic rate. From what he said, he only had red rice and coffee for food when he lived there. I have an image in my head that I would get so hungry in Alor that I need to go out and shoot animals with a bow. Edward Wilson talks about ascending to nature, I wonder if I should take his advice so literally.

On the other hand, Alor seems to be a very beautiful place, quiet and away from civilization. It would be a nice place for me to do my routine daydreaming. It would, of course, be much nicer for him if I would be there, which is the main reason why I am even contemplating the idea of leaving civilization and start wiping my ass with banana leaves (or was he kidding me?). He also mentioned that if I go there, I can help in Sister Gisela's orphanage and maybe teach local kids English. These are all nice things to do, would be a nice break from sitting in my officer pondering why most modifiers in Chinese need to be nominalized first before modifying a noun phrase. Or is it? I am in fact quite addicted to the Chinese noun phrase. I hate making decisions. Frantisek, you are to be strangled.

Joanno

Handkerchiefs

The other day when I was on the MTR, I asked my little sister Louie to lend me a piece of tissue paper so I can blow my nose. She gave me just half a piece. She said she watched the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and from now on she would not be wasting paper anymore. If half is enough, one should only use half. True indeed, maybe I should go back to using handkerchiefs.

I have a very bad case of hay fever. When I was still in Holland, when the flowers started blossoming in spring, I would be continuously blowing my nose. I remember one day it was so bad that I could not even finish a sentence without blowing my nose once. My nose just kept dripping. You did not really want a social life when your nose was being so excited. The bad thing about constantly blowing one’s nose is that it is very bad for one’s skin. After a very short while, I would look like Hitler with a pink mustache. My solution in the beginning was to bring a handkerchief, which was softer. When this proved to be insufficient, I swapped to carrying a small towel around. One time, I was having a meeting with my former supervisor. In between exchanges of linguistic ideas, I took my yellow towel out, grabbed a corner of it and started blowing my nose in it. He mildly commented on the size of my ‘handkerchief’. When I think of it now, it must have looked really weird. Practical things are often not visually pleasing.

I was also quite doubtful about the maintenance of one’s handkerchief. I did not know how often one should wash it. I only had two handkerchiefs then and so washing it every day might render me handkerchief-less for some days. I sought advice from a male colleague about the issue during a drink. He was a handkerchief type of man. I asked him how often he washed his handkerchief. He was maybe slightly taken aback by such a personal question. But he kindly told me one did not need to wash it every day, maybe once every few days. But of course it also depended on how dirty it was. I guess I lack common sense.

Joanno

Siva and Cactus

Siva's wife Richa was having a stop-over in Hong Kong for a few hours today, so we met her up for dimsum. I did not know her that well but Siva is a great friend. He is my favorite Indian. I have very nice memories of him. It is a shame that I haven't seen him for so long. The last time I saw him was in Zurich, almost four years ago. He went to the ETH as a visiting scholar so I flew over from Amsterdam to spend the weekend there. It was in Novevmber, we went up to Mt. Rigi on a cable car. After we got off, we wanted to walk up a little bit more. We went inside the only kiosk there and asked for direction. The lady there kindly told us to abort the idea on the basis that there was a blizzard going on and we were wearing jeans.

It is always fun to hang out with Siva because he is very clumsy. When we were in Mexico for holiday, he walked into a cactus. It was not one of those pot-plant cacti. It was a huge one that was of the same height as a grown man, if not higher. He got spikes stuck in his jackets and some on his arm. How one can walk into a human-size spiky plant in bright day light is beyond me. Before we went to Mexico, we went to the Mexican Embassy in Vancouver to get our visas together and he legendarily tripped over a line. We were walking down the stairs. After the last stair, there was a line on the ground. With his very big eyes, he mistook the line for yet another stair. When the muscular arrangement of walking down stairs met the lack of stairs, the result was disastrous. Siva fell over and grazed his knee caps. I remember fondly of these enjoyable clumsy moments of Mr. Siva.

Joanno

Stellingen

(1) Dogs pee with their back leg up because they are worried about wetting it.
(2) A good Chinese restaurant should never use wooden chopsticks in paper bags.
(3) It is important to have bookstores for the illiterates.
(4) The smaller you are, the slower time goes.
(5) One only remembers what one remembers, thus, it is impossible to tell whether one has bad memory.


Joanno

Chinese New Year!

We spent the last week in China (Zhongshan) celebrating Chinese New Year. Staying there for a week guarantees a lot of over-eating. We went out every night for dinner, stuffing our bellies with oily goodies, which are typical for Chinese New Year, not to mention it is the year of the pig . In addition to eating, we also spent a lot of time doing nothing, which is really something.

Watching TV in China can be a scary experience because of the advertisements. Most advertisements are about medicines, ranging from the mundane type like hair growth shampoo to the absolutely horrifying type like vagina cleaning sticks. Things one would think should be confined within the walls of the doctors' office are being presented to you via your plasma TV screen. There are also magical pills that can make you smarter, see better, shoes that make you taller and underwear that makes ones wobbly bits disappear. The poor people are trying to cheat and sell whatever they can to become rich. The newly rich people are now worrying about their health and pre-mature death so much that they would buy anything to cure any potential disease that you tell them they might have. Not just for their health, they are also willing to pay a lot for their children's education. They are willing to bribe teachers in good schools to take their kids in and they are willing to pay for private tutoring however much it costs. The kids, being spoiled by their rich parents, cannot care less about their education. Everything seems to be a bit perverted to me.

Another thing that is a bit worrying is how wholeheartedly people are worshipping the more modern type of living style. For instance, no one cares about the old houses in the countryside. For those who have a choice, they simply abandon their old houses and live in the city in apartment blocks. Old villages, along with the old houses, are left to rot. The farmland is left to dry. The old people are left to die, on their own.

Not everything is negative, however. Despite of everything I have said, as far as I can see, everyone seems to be happy about their new found wealth and westernized life style. People are having higher living standard in general and more possibilities are opening up for the younger generation. We shall see patiently how the new China will unfold itself.

Joanno

DJ dream

A good friend of mine, German (the guy on the left), told me last night that we once went for a job interview together. The job that we both wanted was a Disc Jockey for Metro Radio Hong Kong. We were probably 16 or so. I have absolutely no recollection of that. According to him, the DJ who interviewed us was Ocean Chan.

http://www.rthk.org.hk/home/djprofiles/r2/r2_chanhk.htm

German even told me the question Ocean Chan asked me and my answer. According to him, Ocean asked me what the most memorable thing in my childhood was. My answer to her was putting body powder on the floor at home and to skid across. I was not taken in, as you can imagine, from the quality of my answer.

Those were the good old days, all-real-teeth and no wrinkles. The radio shows for teens/young adults then were always full of people with sexy cracky voices, feeding you emotions that you did not feel, opinions that you did not have, lifestyles that you could not afford. Life would be very different if I would have given a more exciting answer and got taken in as a trainee DJ. I would probably end up with a much bigger ego, a lot more clothes and a lot less sense.

Joanno

Fake eggs

If you have eggs from China in your fridge, immediately crack one open and check the followings (i) does the yolk melt quickly into the white? (ii) does the shell burn like paper? If the answers to both questions are 'yes', then congratulation, you have got yourself a fake egg.

Chinese people are born businessmen, and possibly the most creative type. God used mud to make humans, Chinese people use alum, gelatine, lactone, carboxymethyl cellulose, calcium choride, sodium alga acid, sodium benzoate, lysine, paraffin wax, calcium carbide and gypsum powder to make fake eggs. If you don't believe me, check this:

http://www.slashfood.com/2006/04/05/faked-eggs-in-china/

Why such hassle? It is of course money. Apparently, using a machine to make fake eggs reduces the cost in half in egg production. All those hens would be jobless soon. I wonder whether those fake eggs can be scrambled/poached/baked/fried/steamed? Would vegans eat fake eggs? This also adds a new dimension to the chicken and egg question.

Answer for the previous riddle: Oslo

Joanno