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.

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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