Skipping rope and Myanmar

It's quite nice how young children anywhere in the world enjoy themselves. In a restaurant last week in Mong Kok, the young boy juggled a plate with three jellies making his way back to the table where his mother, father and younger sister sat. Of course he had to try and bite the jelly before sliding into the booth.
Two young girls skip rope outside a refugee camp in Bangladesh. [Photo courtesy of Andrew Birj, Reuters]. The girls play like any other children world wide. Except they are from the Rohingya minority group in Myanmar.
Now meet Jake. He's a young student from Myanmar. He's doing his undergraduate in journalism. He's living on campus and completing six courses this semester. During his semester break he will go back home to visit his parents. They own a small plantation with rubber trees. I haven't got his photo as he doesn't want to be identified. He's from the Mon state in Myanmar.
The Myanmar government, run by a military Junta, will hold elections next month. The first elections in 20 years on 7 November 2010. There is political repression and systematic violence against any dissenting voice in Myanmar. Under Electoral Laws enacted in March 2010, no political prisoner can take part in the elections or hold membership in any political party. Also the former political leader, Aung Sang Syu Kee, will be released from house arrest about 16 November.
If Jake was to be identified and his name and image were to be connected to the new reports on freedom in Burma, it is more than likely that he would be jailed for a lengthy period.
The Buddhist monks of Myanmar protested against the military Junta in November 2007. And the suppression of human rights is real, visit the amnesty international site for background on the human rights abuses.
In Myanmar there are 135 ethnic minority groups. With many of the ethnically-specific political parties also having an armed wing.
Last month the Military Ruler of Myanmar, Senior General Than Shwe, visited China to be congratulated by President Hu Jintao. The Military General was afforded a state reception in Beijing.
Perspective is easy for me to highlight here. But it is only through the good work of investigative journalists that we uncover the unsavoury truths in daily life and public institutions. We need more young journalists trained and skilled like Jake. His education and experience will lead to far more important truths.
See the Amnesty International report for information on Myanmar and the coming elections or visit Irrawaddy.org.
No poetry today, unless you have a suggestion? Is there anything you would like to include?

Boys and tunes

Young men are dumb.

Young men without the steadying influence of young women are dumber.

Young men from Hong Kong who have left Mum at home are way dumber.

The immaturity of the Hong Kong students seems to be typical but also contradictory. They study hard, but I don't see evidence that they have a considered opinion to offer a tutorial or a Professor when asked a good question. If you wander through the library of an afternoon and count the number of students who are drooped over their books in slumber you realise that they do a lot of night work. But is it worthwhile? There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the work done late at night when tired, does not adhere to long term memory.

There is no empirical evidence to support the assertion that they are dumb. But the 2am nights when the young men on the floor run yelling down the corridor is draining.

Next time I see the young men in the library slumped over the desk at 2pm, I'm tapping them on the shoulder. The first question will be about a Philosophy of Technology whether it is warranted. The second question will be whether Karl Popper's withering criticism of Karl Marx's thoughts on historical dialeticism was warranted. I know how they will look at me.

There is a typhoon on its way, the floor security have hoisted the red / white sign, typhoon warning 1, When the number gets closer to 8 it means they batten down the hatches.

Also see The Eel's Susan's House. Great social commentary and not a dumb boy in sight.

I photographed this couple on the way to the Tseun Wan line. [This appeared in September, but I didn't refer to the actual economic theory on his t-shirt.] He wears the black swan t-shirt. Look up Nassim Nicholas Taleb's theory on financial economics. It doesn't once mention dumb boys. And she is very proud.

How is this food?

Seven weeks since I slept with my partner

Seven weeks since I've driven a car

Seven weeks since I've eaten with a knife, fork and spoon [I eat with chopsticks and soup spoon]

Seven weeks since I had a bath [only showers here]

Seven weeks since I've worn a jumper

Seven weeks since I've had tea from a pot

Yesterday I bought some Leicester red cheese at Taste in Festival Walk, Kowloon Tong. The first cheese I've had since 22 August, except for the cheese on the pizza at Delifrance when I met with Jeff. Jeff lives in Kunming, Yunnan province and speaks both Mandarin, Cantonese. He wanted to eat something different than the rice and noodles that are the main stay of his household.

I bought a bagel to go with the cheese as the bread here is somewhat different.

They also sell Corn Flakes, and with a Twinings Tea [English Breakfast tea bags] it is a good breakfast, although I do enjoy the congee with salted pork and preserved eggs. And the congee lasts tl afternoon easy. So I sometimes fit the old Colonial tastes. And I also get the Trappist Dairy milk from New Zealand. I'll have to have a look at how many Trappist monks, let alone dairy's there are in NZ.

Anyway tonight I am definitely going out for some rice. It's a staple and has been in our household for years. Love it. Mifan. 米饭.

In one of the large stores here they sell this packaged cheeses in squeeze-me tubes. I didn't buy the hot cheese fish sausage.

Signs and freedoms

This post is meant to be read following the Lui Xiaobo Nobel Peace Prize.

Just opposite the Hong Kong Baptist university campus is a large compound. A large sign in Hanzi script hangs over the driveway. It says, I think:

Wiithout the people, there's no people's army

without the people's army, the people have nothing.

The letters are gold, embossed on a red background.

The People's Liberation Army quarters in Hong Kong was once used by the Royal Hong Kong Regiment. The quonset huts are still in place, rusting near the green Hydrangeas. They must have been a nice place to be on the hot, humid Hong Kong summer.

The PLA now has a standing army of 2.3 million with 1.6 million in the Army, and a defence budget of $480 billion Yuan for 2009. The Hong Kong regiment is from the Guanzhuo military regiment, which stands at 180,000 personnel. And on a rotational bases they are deployed to Hong Kong.

The students at Tiananmen Square in July 1989 had banners claiming, No Choice! Freedom!

Interestingly current President Wen Jiabo was on the truck platform prior to the quelling of the student strike. As was Liu Xiaobo. He dedicated his Nobel Prize to the lost students. They were on the seventh day of a hunger strike.

There liberty was cut short, quite dramatically.

To also enjoy the Chinese Beijing Opera in a mash-up, see http://www.youtube.com/ and search for Chinese Beijing opera and beat it. Good for a laugh.

Living a moral life

Friday 8 October Lui Xiaobo [刘晓波] was recognised and named 2010 Nobel Peace prize winner. He is a coauthor of the Charter 08, released on 10 December on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. the Charter outlines basic ideas that the authors ask the Chinese Communist Party and ruling authorities to build into a constitution. These include: Freedom, Human Rights, Equality, Republicanism, Democracy, and Constitutional Rule.

During the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, Lui was advocating for a peaceful removal of students from the square prior to the army's intervention.

The group advocated for 19 changes to Chinese society to enable a national government, citizen's rights and social development.

For his part in Charter 08 Lui is serving time in a prison about 200 kms north of Beijing. He was arrested in 2008 and sentenced on 23 December 2009 to 11 years imprisonment.

Go to the New York Times [see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/chinas-charter-08/]. There's a full translation. It's good reading.

This is far more important to a lot of Chinese students in Hong Kong than their mid term papers due in the next few weeks. Interesting enough when the news hit, if you were searching through Baidu [a Chinese search engine] you didn't find much at all.

Fathers and tattoos

This is mostly not about me. On 4 October I found out that my dad, my father, John, had passed away. I hadn’t seen him since the early 1990s when he came back to Australia to visit Sydney. He needed to gain details of his Australian citizenship for an application for a Green Card in the United States. He was teaching at a university in Pennsylvania at the time. He held a Doctorate of Philosophy. He was teaching Mass Communication and Journalism.
My sons and I played soccer at Bradleys Head near Taronga Park Zoo. We broke two of his ribs.
My sister in California emailed me to call her. I don’t have a phone. So I emailed back. She told me, “John has passed away.”
I was sitting in the library reading foreign relations and the Chinese understanding of their situation in an increasingly hostile world. I went to an empty room and cried.
My first email was back to my sister [in Mandarin she is called meimei, little sister]. I simply said, I cried.
Then I unfolded, crumpled.
All I could think of was a poem by ee cummings. “I carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart) i am never without it(anywherei go you go.”
I never understood how hard it was to be a father until Jenne and I had Stefan. He was born in Bathurst on 7 December 1981. He was a small blonde haired baby. I cried then too.
John came to visit us in our small apartment in the busy Bathurst Street. It was before he moved to the United States to teach. He drove down from Toowoomba in his old Mercedes.
Being a father is a lot of work. I have never known how to work through some difficult problems at times and have not always taken the right course. There’s no manual.
When I was young my father would play Prokofiev's elegant music for Peter and the Wolf. Everytime the three horns played the theme for the wolf, my father would yell and snarl at us – I have a younger and older brother – and we would scream in horror and delight.
Another poem that comes to mind is by Sylvia Plath, “Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles.”
When my daughter, Greer, was born at Wollongong Hospital, I was asked by the midwife to take her chubby body and wash her. I thought I knew how to do this. I held her lying on her back in my left hand while I soaped her and sluiced the warm water over her greasy body. She smiled at me. And Floated. She was born on 26 July on the seventh floor overlooking Wollongong Harbour.
I’m in Hong Kong to study Mandarin. Which is quite difficult. Many Hong Kong Chinese show great respect to their ancestors. They provide offerings and burn money and other things to help the Ancestor in their after life. They also name their children with the family name first.
I carry Lachlan, after a former Governor of NSW, Philip from my father’s family, Norwood from my mother’s side and Harris, my father’s family name.
My second son Nat, was born on 11 September in 1984. He was born at Manning River District Memorial Hospital. He was a round smiley baby with folds and a smile that infected all others in the room. The one photo that is constantly on our fridge is one of Nat and Stefan; Nat is smiling and grasping for the camera. Not realising that he should not grab at the picture taker. His face is one big cheer.
I haven’t talked with my father for more than a decade and yet I couldn’t think of him without completely dissolving.
I visited the International Office to make a call home and speak with my partner Jenne. And I cried.
At home we still use the old 1956 World Atlas – it still features old names for Peking, and you could probably find Prussia if you looked hard enough.
I don’t know what my father did when he first held me. Did he cry? Did he wonder how I would be when I was 10. Or did he think – as I have realised – that this is a wonderful and miraculous life, but you are alone a lot.
And one last poem, this is from John Donne, an irascible bastard from 1635. A great poem about waking with his lover on a sunny morning:
She's all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ;
compared to this, All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
This always reminds me of my partner Jenne.
Do fathers have tattoos to remind them of their fagility and their life travails? Sometimes life gives you tattoos, on your heart, on your body. You carry them with you. Only a few people can see the beauty in the work.

Old colonial Hong Kong and t-shirts

Today I spent four hours walking around the older parts of Sheung Wan, Central, and Soho, finishing in the Ling Heung tea house. A nice treat.

I notice more and more the beggars, the young people with profound disabilities, the young with Downs Syndrome who are being led around by brother or sister, and the men and women in their forties who have suffered a stroke; they walk delicately with walking stick, with one side of the face and body melting to the ground in a sad smile.

You also notice the inappropriate English proudly out front across the breasts or chest. Not quite Chinglish. But nearly.

Hand up my hand

Room up my room;

ARMY: Fingercroxx;

10 finger girl;

Nothing lose, nothing gain;

Sunshine happy day;

Smile happy day.

And the mature women wearing the bright pink Disney Ariel t-shirt. Shanghai is now asking all people not to wear pyjamas while outside on the street.

In the older part of Hong Kong Central -- Sheung Wan, Central and Soho -- the older markets will be gone in a few years. Old tea shops, shops selling stamps carved in stone, locksmiths, metallurgy shops, fresh wrapped hairy crab. And fruit and vegetables, with small restaurants offering meals of every style. Wonderful and fragrant. There are a good number of growing artist's venues in the Soho area. Very chic, with wine and cheese shops too. Imagine enjoying a runny Pont l'Avec with a fragrant white from Saint Emilion in Central, Hong Kong. Globalisation at its best.

Two images today. The two German students are enjoying a look at the fresh vegetables in the street market in Sheung Wan. And the second: sui mei, har gau, fresh shrimp with a quail egg, and pork liver. And strong cups of pu'er hong cha. At the Ling Heung tea house in Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong, this is an extraordinary way to finish the historical walk of older central Hong Kong.