Hong Kong i suppose, its about time

My commitment to this thing is appalling. During the day i want to write, i think about what i will write about and how i will say it but then i open it up and its all gone and the prospect is too daunting. But I'm quite far behind now, so i shall tell ye about Hong Kong.

Which is hard because i was there for a month so i did a lot of things and went a lot of places and thought a lot of things but i dont think its long enough to have a grasp on city, the longer i was there, there more i realised that i understood nothing. Hong Kong, i could safely say though, is a city like no other, uber modern, wealthy and quite luxurious, well designed, well planned and well organised but crowded and hot and sticky and slow moving and often quite sinister. The purpose of the city is money and at times that is very obvious. What made it so interesting I suppose though was the fusions that it embodied; east and west, ancient and futuristic, contemporary and traditional. Cathy lives at one of the universities, which is new and high tech and sponsored by billionaires but in the middle of it there is a 200 year old village whose inhabitants, im assuming, still live in largely the same way that they have for years, communally with wild dogs and a smell of soap. The university just built around it and leaves the village in peace.

Well, mostly. One night after a fair bit of drinking we were convinced by Cathy's brother Will that the best possible thing we could do at that time (around midnight) was go into the village, find the wild dogs who barked and chased and most probably bit, and let Will shoot them with his air rifle. So we did. Having been chased by wild dogs before, i wasnt too keen, in fact i was terrified and held on tightly to Georgie the whole time. We didnt find any dogs but that didnt stop everyone pissbolting everytime we heard a dog bark. On leaving the village we found that someome must have closed the gate after we had gone in as it was padlocked and we were locked in. Luckily for us this sort of thing had obviously happened before and next to the gate there was a big whole in the wire so after some ungraceful climbing and with some fricken amazing bruises newly acquired, we were out.

I think my favourite thing about Hong Kong though was having a month with Cathy and Georgie. Being best friends in high school, its been five years since we have had any decent amount of time together, so it was amazing being there with them. And we travelled a little bit too, Cathy and I went to Tibet and then the three of us had a weekend in Macau, another autonomous province of China and probably the strangest place i have ever been. Like Hong Kong is a former British colony, Macau is a former Portuguese one and Macau looked like a Chinese Portugal. Macau is also the only place in China that gambling is legal so it has become a sort of Vegas for China, complete with Vegas style casinos. I think the wierdest point for me was when we were in an Irish pub inside the Venetian hotel, a Vegas style casino made to look like Italy, in the middle of Macau, a province of China, which looked like Portugal. The artificiality of it all was fun for a while until we discovered that outside of casinos there was nill all nightlife in Macao and Macao casinos are awful places to drink and not gamble at.

We had a few odd nights out, Hong Kong has incredible bars, some big, plush ones, some with incredible views, some enormous, sports bars, wine bars, pretty much all there is but what is lacking is nightlife, or perhaps we didnt find it. Everywhere we went there were white men in their forties and on their arms Chinese girls in their twenties. This was heightened when we went into Wan Chai which is the place i'm pretty sure Cold Chisel had in mind when they wrote 'there aint nothing like the kisses of a jaded Chinese princess, im gonna hit some Hong Kong mattress all night long'. It was like everywhere else, forty year old white men and twenty year old Asian girls except that the clothes were skimpier and everyone gave us funny looks, the women of 'get the fuck out of here im working' and the men of 'are they? aren't they?' im guessing. we didnt stay long in Wan Chai.

Well thats all im gonna write about tonight i think, I'm tired. I ended up staying ten days longer than i had originally planned in Hong Kong cos i had such a great time and i was so confortable there and with Cathy and Georgie that leaving felt like a forced tear and i suddenly found myself profoundly alone on arrival in London. But thats for another time.

Goodnight!

Tibet part 3

Ok I'm getting a little behind on these posts, i shall attempt to be more concise. Where i last left you where were in Lhasa, we left Lhasa on the 24th of July which happened to be the day that Ridley Scott's new project 'A life in a day' asked you to film your day, so we did.

This is it, its in very limited release because we arent very proud of it



So as you can see, we left Lhasa, drove halfway to Everest and i vomitted a lot. The part that i will most remember from that day though is not in that video. It was the second time I experienced the generosity of the Tibetan people. I was in the monastery with Cathy, feelin like shit and sitting down outside a temple while Cathy, being more able bodied, walked around. So i was sitting there and then suddenly decided i needed to vomit and so crouched on all fours on the floor. Nothing came out but I became very overwhelmed and started crying. I could see a few people looking at me and a couple of Tibetans came and sat close to me and watched. When Cathy came back the floodgates opened and i sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Now i couldnt see it because i was crying but Cathy could and apparently as we were sitting there all of the Tibetans that were approaching pulled out their prayer wheels and prayer beads and started praying for me. How beautiful is that! No one approached me but by the time it ended i understand that there was quite a crowd building. In ordinary circumstances i would have felt very humiliated crying in public, especially when being so obviously watched, but the warmth of these people made me feel so comforted and at ease that crying in the middle of a monastery, watched and surrounded my pilgrims felt very right and natural. Then it ended, a bunch of Chinese tourists came and started taking photos of the whole scene (I suppose it was kind of comical) and Cathy told them off but the pilgrims assumed she was telling them off and so dispersed. And thats about it.

We never got to Mount Everest, i felt mildly better the next morning but when we got to Tinggri at lunch time i decided that i wasnt willing to climb another 1000m and sleep at that altitude and, as it was illegal for me to be in Tinggri without my guide, Cathy was forced to descend with me instead of going on. I'm not sure I've ever felt as low as i did in those next couple of days. I was still unwell, Cathy and I werent speaking and we had nothing to do but to sit in a car for hours on end. I remember feeling incredibly guilty at having cost Cathy the main reason why she had come to Tibet at the first place and debating in my mind whether i could have pushed myself further and gone and then at the second moment knowing that my decision was sensible and justified and resenting Cathy for making me feel that it wasnt. Either way, it was shit. And then when we got back to Lhasa Cathy and I started venting our anger in the form of throwing packets of noodles and other various food items at each other in the hotel room and relations were vastly improved.

I still feel awful that my stupid altitude sickness cost Cathy Everest and i think i will only feel better about it when she does get there. I'm also fairly resolved to make it there now having come so close to it but i think ill approach it from the Nepal side, its not as high there plus Nepalese food is so much tastier.

Thus ends out Tibet trip. We had a slightly arduous journey home consisting of bus, plane, hours in transit, plane, hour in a cab accross Ghuanzjou, train, train. And then got home. Also my altitude sickness improved in leaps and bounds as soon as i got to Lhasa and my first breath of thick, dirty, smoggy China air was the sweetest breath i have ever taken. We take breathing for granted, in Tibet you really have to suck in every breath.

So I'm in England now but havent written a thing about Hong Kong, so i think my next blog entry will be from there.

Return from the lost horizon continued

Sorry, I've left this a while, I dont get long stints with a computer often because I'm staying with a friend's family in Hong Kong. But back to it

We were picked up at the station by our guide Norbu and having read that the tourism market in Tibet is catered extensively towards the Chinese and thus the majority of guides are Chinese, equipped to provide a superficial Chinese friendly view of Tibet, we were extremely pleased to discover that Norbu was Tibetan. Norbu was odd, I'm still not made up my mind of what I thought of him. Norbu was the son of a very wealthy Tibetan family, indeed his dad was a key player in the building of the China-Tibet road, his only care seemed to be himself and making himself more money to buy new gadgets/an Australian girlfriend. He would take us into really expensive stores and push us to buy really expensive things whilst not concealing the fact that he would make a commission from what we buy. He also talked constantly about the tip that we were expected to give him at the end, how much other groups had given him, what he wanted to buy with it. He was largely apolitical, he had friends everywhere, in all of the stores he took us into, all of the restaurants he took us into and even the Chinese guards that were stationed all over the place. When he asked him about political issues he gave us a Chinese line answer (the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet, he is allowed to come back in a spiritual context but not a political one). But he was also a lot of fun, he was young, loved to drink and smoke and was very corrupt, which made for a lot of very funny stories.

Norbu took us the first night to see the Potala Palace, which is kinda hard to miss. Sitting on top of a hill it is an enormous red and white palace that overlooks Lhasa. It used to be the home of the Dalai Lama and was built in the 5th century, it is now a museum filled, i am told, with religious relics. We opted not to go into it having heard negative reports all round and knowing the logistics of getting there were difficult, but that night we went to the public square opposite the palace to get a good view. It was kinda disturbing. There is a Chinese flag flying conspicuously atop the Potala and the square opposite is a monument to the Chinese takeover of Tibet complete with music, military displays and dancing fountains. It couldnt really be more symbolic. That was our first taste of the political tension that is covert but everywhere in Tibet.

Our second taste was a little more scary. On our third day in Lhasa we ditched Norbu for the morning in order to go back to the Jokhang. The Jokhang is the spiritual centre of Tibet, a fifth century temple that is still buzzing with life and fervour, it is still the most holy spot in Tibet and so pilgrims from all over the place come to pray at it and then make kora (three circles around a holy path) at the Barkhor surrounding it. Norbu took us there the day before and we were transfixed by it, the sights and smells were intoxicating and the people praying were just incredible to watch, all standing out the front of the Jokhang praying in an incredibly physical way with absolute dedication. But as happens when you are on a tour you are rushed through it all and Cathy and i decided we needed to go back to the Jokhang and just sit and take it all in.


We were also so awed by these pilgrims that we were desperate to interact with them, we wanted to give them something, Norbu suggested bottles of water. So we went that morning, armed with bottles of water, to the Jokhang. We were sitting out the front watching the pilgrims pray when an tiny old woman in colourful traditional dress came over to greet us. We offered her a bottle of water but she gestured instead to a packet of peanuts, we tried to give it to her but she wouldnt take it, instead she made us open the packet and have one each before she would take one and then she sat down with us and ate. After a while she reached for my hand, took off one of her silver rings and put it on my finger. I was overwhelmed, this woman, evidently not a wealthy women, who didnt even know my name had just given me a precious piece of jewellery taken from her own finger. I didnt know how to accept this gift and so took off one of my necklaces and gave it to her. At this moment everyone in the Jokhang started looking at us, all of the pilgrims, the monks and most importantly, the Chinese guards. Giving a pilgrim a gift breaks with the norms of tourist-tibetan interaction in a rather large way it would seem. A monk came over to sort out what was going on and somehow established that we had just exchanged gifts and hurriedly moved the lady on. After this the Tibetans stopped staring at us and indeed became quite taken with us, one man came over and started to show Cathy how to pray but the Chinese police never stopped watching us and were now starting to circle closely so we decided we needed to make a hasty exit. We then went and hid in a cafe and did some normal, approved tourist things, buying stuff and taking photos of pilgrims from a distance and so on, in order to wear off our fear of being watched.

This is the lady, I dont know how to rotate the picture.

I've just realised i have photos on this computer, i shall add some to accompany my tales. Hmm, they are taking a bit long. Maybe I'll do it another day

Returning from the last horizon

So this is the first of my travel blogs, I've been overseas for about three weeks now and have spent quite a lot of time in Hong Kong which i would like to write about at some time but i got back from Tibet yesterday and i want to get my memories/thoughts down while they are still fresh. Tibet was hard; physically, mentally, spiritually, politically, morally and intellectually. I'm quite sure i wasn't prepared for what i encountered there and I am now exhausted but I'm so glad a went and I'm very thankful for some of the things i encountered there.

I suppose i should start at the beginning (its a very good place to start). Cathy and I left for Tibet on the 19th, catching a train from Hong Kong into Guangzhou (China) then cabbing it across the city to the other train station and waiting outside KFC (which didnt sell chips, only chicken?!?) for an acquaintance of our travel agent's, who didnt speak a word of English, to find us and deliver us our Tibet permits. For obvious reasons the Chinese government aren't entirely comfortable with westerners visiting Tibet so this transfer of permits was somewhat under the table. After a little bit of worry because the lady hadn't turned up at the expected time and a couple of frantic calls to the travel agent, the lady found us and delivered us our permits and we were able to board the train to Lhasa. There is only one way to get into Tibet and that is from a mountain pass in the North and Guangzhou is south so the train crossed a large portion of China and took a somewhat arduous 56 hours.

The trainride, however, was an experience in itself, the scenery was extraordinary and changed vastly every few hours. We really got an idea of just how big, and how populated, china really is. We were the only non-Chinese on the train and so were a novelty and got stopped for photos at every station we stopped at. We made some wonderful Chinese friends on the train too. Tommy, the first friend that we made came and introduced himself to us when we were sitting in the corridor singing Paul Kelly songs and gave us bananas. He looked after us for the whole time, showing us how to fill out our health cards which were written in Chinese characters, giving us Chinese tea for altitude sickness (didnt work for me, more on that later) and acting as our translator in a number of circumstances. Then we met Joey, a little bit younger than Tommy but also a young uni student and so spoke a bit of English, he was an absolute sweetheart and helped us out when it turned out we had set ourselves up in the wrong beds in the wrong carriages because we couldnt read our tickets. We also made friends with some of the people in our berth who didnt speak English and who we lovingly nicknamed. Tubby singer was my favourite, he was a middle aged man who would sit looking out the window for hours on end and then, as if compelled by the scenery, starting singing these beautiful Chinese songs. Also in our cabin was Mr Magic, a very regal old man who had the most expressive face ever and was constantly bemused by our strange and often dramatic actions. We also had Da (we think thats what his name was) who had obviously come to Tibet to go trekking, was incredibly agile and we think hilarious, everybody else laughed at him constantly and im sure we would have too if we knew what he was saying.

My first bout of altitude sickness came on the third day on the train when we crossed a 5000m pass into Tibet, i woke up in the morning feeling weak and nauseous and continued to feel that way until about lunchtime when i had a good vomit infront of the whole berth. Sometime after that we were chatting in the berth with Tommy when one of the drivers came past and, excited at the prospect of wierdo white girls on his train, invited the three of us up to the driver's quarters to see the engine and have some watermelon. Tommy seemed pretty excited about this and i was really happy we could provide him some perks as he had given us so much. The drivers were hilarious. They psychoanalysed us, decided that i was introverted and Cathy extroverted. They also offered us cigarettes, we had made the decision that smoking at altitude was going to be a very very bad idea so we refused but they told us it was actually good for you because it helps you breathe in oxygen (dubious) and so we shared a few cigarettes with the train drivers at 4700m. We got off the train that evening and were picked up by our guide but i've written enough for today already so the rest of the tale will have to wait.

The long and the short of it

So i havent written for a while, ive been a bit distracted, i moved home, school work got heavy and i'm leaving in eight days, also i havent done anything interesting enough to write about. But this week i encountered two things which i liked, both shown to me by my lovely friend Josh which had a sort of parallelism that deserved to be juxtaposed. The first is a video




The second is this passage from Les Miserables

The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How to do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation? The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity, a terrifying vision for the mind. Between living things and objects there is a miraculous reiationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. Light does not carry the scents of earth into the upper air without knowing what it is doing with them; darkness confers the essence of the stars to the sleeping flowers. Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or of Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose. A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossom; a nebula is an antheap of stars. There is the same affinity, if still more inconceivable, between things of the mind and material things. Elements and principles are intermingled; they combine and marry and each increases and completes the other, so that the material and the moral world are both finally manifest. The phenomenon perpetually folds in upon itself. In the vast cosmic changes universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper's dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there, swaying and writhing, turning light into a force and thought into an element; disseminated yet indivisible, dissolving all things except that geometrical point, the self; reducing all things to the core which is the soul, and causing all things to flower into God; all activites from the highest to the humblest - harnessing the movements of the earth and the flight of an insect - to the secret workings of an illimitable mechanism; perhaps - who can say? - governing, if only by the universality of law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the circling of infusoria in a drop of water. A machine made of spirit. A huge meshing of gears of which the first motive force is the gnat and the largest wheel the zodiac

I'm sorry, its long but i couldnt leave any part of it out, its so beautifully written. The bigness of the first video makes me feel small but Victor Hugo's passage points out the bigness of the small things and the interconnection between the big and the small. It makes me feel, as Kimya Dawson would say, grounded, humble and one with everything. In fact, here is another video - i couldnt find i video clip for her Kimya Dawsons song 'i like giants' but here is a cute animation



And finally, i was going through a box of old photos in my room and i found this.



This was taken on the Young Endeavour on 2005, i didnt take it, someone else on my trip did but i've forgotten who, the quality is bad because i scanned it from a picture that i printed from the internet, sorry. It makes me so excited to travel again, i cant wait to disappear into the horizon into the world that is so big and yet so small. Arrgggh eight days! I intend to keep this blog running as a travel blog while i'm away, with any luck the next post will be coming to you from Hong Kong.

The hidden benefits of Amnesty

A few weeks ago I wrote a series of angry letters to all of the people/companies that i felt were acting without integrity towards me. I wrote one to Ian Chubb, the vice-chancellor of ANU complaining about the current downsizing of the undergraduate schools of Arts and Social Sciences. I should write more about this subject but others do it better, basically the schools are being amalgamated, teachers are being dismissed in favour of hiring more researchers, less classes are being offered and resources in general are getting reallocated to postgraduate departments, and all without consultation with undergraduate arts and social sciences students. The second letter i wrote was to Woroni, the ANU student newspaper, who drafted a story on the 'Save the Humanities Campaign' but pulled it at the last minute out of fear (im guessing) of Chancellery, my letter questioned why they werent covering the story seeing that the Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald and ABC Radio were, and what allegience they had with Chancellery that could keep them from publishing a story that is so obviously relevant to the ANU student body. The final letter i wrote was to the exchange company that arranged for my family to host a dutch exchange student for a total of five months and then never bothered to find her a family for her remaining seven months, thus leaving her with nowhere to stay but with us.

I'm learning now just how successful writing letters can be. While my letter to Chubb was part of a bigger letter writing campaign and hasnt been delivered yet, my letter to Woroni was published in the most recent edition with a note saying that coverage of the campaign would be included in the next issue. I also received a prompt response from the editors when they got my letter promising coverage of the campaign. The exchange company also responded quickly and a week after sending the letter, my family got a call from the company telling them they had found Dutchy a new family, every member of my family had been calling the exchange company to complain for months.

What astonished me more though was how much i enjoyed writing the letters. I loved it! Sitting on my high horse casting disapproving glances and the corrupt, lowly charlatans below me. What is more, it came ridiculously easy. I sit staring at nothing for hours when im writing essays, trying to find the right word or phrase that will translate the messy sentiment in my head into something legible. but when i was writing letters, phrases like 'i demand' and 'i condemn' were popping up left, right and centre.

It led me to thinking about how i got so good at criticising people in written form. I could take it, and do, as part of my current mission to be more assertive, it is easier to assert myself in writing than in person. But i also think i could thank Amnesty International for my new found skills. I started campaigning for Amnesty when i was in year 11, copying letters from their website and rewording them or taking pointers and writing them myself. Six years of practice now and i think i can thank Amnesty not only for my letter writing skills but also for the idea of advocacy, Amnesty writes letters advocating for others who cant do so for themselves, on the general idea that wrongdoings should be stood up against. Perhaps Amnesty can take a role in my mission of self assertion; in learning how to advocate for others i have learnt how to advocate for myself.

On another note, can one advocate for oneself? Or does advocate mean representing the interests of someone else? I shall look up.

On another different note, here is JK Rowling discussing some other hidden benefits of Amnesty (among other things). Its long, but shes good

Hey blog,

Im feeling a little tired and blue today. A slight hangover, a lack of sleep, guilt from unfinished readings and weather that cant decide if its cold or hot has left me feeling flat and dreading the prospect of a midnight finish at work tonight. So, here is some stuff that made me smile this week

- The kid sitting behind me on the bus who borrowed his mum's phone in order to call spiderman. Spiderman was on another bus, on his way to the zoo!

- Posters from the 'Save the Humanities campaign at ANU



- the man smoking a pipe outside the street theatre

- this Jonathan Boulet video clip



- The sexiness of Robert Plant









- and Sexy rats