1) Young Kiwi’s love 2 phrases. It is understood by all that they can’t make it through a day without saying “Sweetass” or “Hey Bro”.
2) Strolling along the mean streets of downtown Cairns, I found a dollar store (or as they call it here in Oz – Reject Store) named “Singapore Charlie.” I was mildly offended.
3) Update from the Left-Out-In-Open Water article: Just in January of this year, a tour company suffered a similar black-eye to its biznass over the ever popular Whitsunday Islands sailing trip on Queensland’s coast. I remember reading about it in newspaper while working in Sydney. Essentially the yacht was damaged and started to take in water in the middle of the night in open water. The crew members all fled while leaving the snoozing backpackers onboard. Eventually all the backpackers were rescued by a helicopter crew the next morning. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night soaking in salt water in the open water. Great Success……..Not!
4) I am officially leaving Cairns this Sunday morning on a 16 hour Greyhound bus ride to Airlie Beach – gateway to the Whitsunday Islands for a 3 day 2 night sailing trip. I will be doing some classic cruising on the Enid Yacht. The Enid was first launched in 1961 and was fully restored in 2003. It is 19.2 meters long and has a capacity of 21 people. The package costs $495 with the sailing and 2 nights of accommodation on land in Airlie Beach the night before and after the trip. In addition, it also includes all the food onboard and the Fraser Island 3 day 2 night self-drive (4x4) and camping tour. I will be sharing the 4x4 with a few other travellers. Since there’s a fair bit of distance (several hundred kilometres in between the Whitsundays (Airlie Beach) and Fraser Island (Rainbow Beach), I’d make my own way down on a Greyhound one way ticket. On my way to Fraser Island, I will stop by the town of 1770 for some motorcycle-style cruising. I will be part of a guided mini-motorcycle tour (Scooteroo) for 3 hours at 1770. After 1770 and Fraser Island, I will make my way on the Greyhound further south towards Brisbane. I will stop at Noosa for a day visit to the late Steve Irwin’s Zoo (Australian Zoo) in Beerwah. (Holla back, Danielle of Kelowna.)
I have no plans after the zoo visit in Beerwah, but to head towards Brisbane for a few days before going further south along the coast to the famous Byron Bay on the state of New South Wales side. Byrone is a small beachy town known for its surfing. It’s one of Jack Johnson’s favourite surfing places when he’s in Oz. It’s also a pothead town where all the weed lovers chill out to Bob Marley while sitting, waiting, wishing Jack Johnson was having a free concert there.
After Byron Bay, I plan to hop back on the Greyhound towards Sydney where I will determine when I will leaving Oz for Taiwan then back home to Vancouver.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
In addition to .....in Cairns
1) Hey guys, check out this Toronto sun article my friend sent me (below or at . This only happened last weekend. I was doing the GB reef the same day these guys were saved. That’s fucked up eh? (the aussies must dislike the Americans a lot) Bet you Hollywood is making Open Water 2! I haven’t’ even seen the first one, and I intend to keep it let way. *Make sure you don’t let this happen to you when you come to the Great Barrier Reef, Jocelyn! (haha, I would’ve called you Jawz, but my enjoyment for the irony would be way too much.)
2) As for when I was snorkelling in the open water, I wasn’t worried about drowning, but I still hated swimming in the open water. Mostly it’s because the waves are choppy and hard to swim in. Sharks never even came into my mind because of my ignorance in disregarding it as a threat. I was more concerned with how good the tropical fish would taste deep fried with some plum sauce drizzled on top. haha
3) Another addition to white water rafting on the Tully River in Mission Beach, I say most people can do it without any experiences as long as they follow the guides instructions. The hardest job is steering the raft which is always done by the guides. So no worries. I tried steering and that was hard because I always over compensated by steering the raft too much to the left or to the right. So instead making 45 degree turns, I ended up steering the raft 90 to 180 or 360 degree turns. I did “donuts” on the water a few times simply because I overcompensated when steering the boat.
4) This really awkward Czech guy (who went to highschool and uni in California) started talking to me last night about a few random things like all travellers do. We got to talk about the 2 divers left out in the open water and then to South Africa and its infamous Shark-Cage Diving. Basically, the tourists are put into scuba gear and into a steel cage in the open water where the most aggressive African White Sharks hangout. The tour operators would then taunt the sharks with bloody meat outside of the cage where the hungry sharks would then kick in their destroy mode. You get the picture. All of this action for about $100 euros. I’d say that’s cheaper than medical-assisted euthanasia. Anyway, I think the concept is interesting but nevertheless demented as hell. What the tour operators are doing is essentially training the sharks to actively and routinely hang around the cages since there’s food for them. It’ll become a habit for the sharks and “somebody’s gonna get a hurt real bad” one day. On a sidenote, I just realized that this make the 2 left out in the open water for “only” 19 hours look like pussies.
Left-behind divers rescued http://www.thestar.com/article/429777
REUTERS
Scuba divers Alison Dalton of the USA and Dick Neely of Britain are winched out off the water May 24, 2008 after 19 hours floating off Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
May 25, 2008 12:17 PM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRISBANE, Australia – A British diver says he thought he and his American girlfriend would be eaten by sharks as they spent a night floating over Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The frightening ordeal for Dick Neely, 38, and Alison Dalton, 40, began Friday afternoon.
The couple had been diving on a reef, but when they resurfaced they found themselves 200 metres from their chartered boat and out of sight of its crew.
Neely said they tied their wetsuits together and huddled to share body heat during the 19 hours they spent adrift in 24-degree Celsius waters.
He told Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper "I truly thought we were going to die. Sharks were on our mind the entire time, but neither of us mentioned the 's' word. We just had to stay positive and calm to help each other through the ordeal and not think about being eaten alive."
The two were finally rescued by a helicopter Saturday off the eastern coast after an overnight air search. And the pilot who winched them from the ocean said Sunday they were in surprisingly good humour.
"Considering they were out there for 19 hours, they were in very good spirits when they got back," David Williams told Australia's Network Seven television. "They were cracking quite a few jokes about their ordeal."
The Sunday Mirror said Neely is from Swaffham, Norfolk, but recently lived on a boat off Phuket, Thailand, where he worked as a diving instructor.
Dalton, his girlfriend of nine months, is a qualified dive master from Sacramento, California, where she runs a bar, it said.
"I think we saved each other's lives," Dalton said. "This terrible experience had definitely brought us closer together."
Safety standards for recreational dive boat operators on the Great Barrier Reef were heightened after 1998 when a crew accidentally left behind American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan. The married couple are believed to have drowned or been eaten by sharks.
Neely said his shark fears were heightened by having seen the 2003 movie based on the Lonergan tragedy, "Open Water."
They declined requests for interviews Saturday and could not be immediately contacted Sunday.
2) As for when I was snorkelling in the open water, I wasn’t worried about drowning, but I still hated swimming in the open water. Mostly it’s because the waves are choppy and hard to swim in. Sharks never even came into my mind because of my ignorance in disregarding it as a threat. I was more concerned with how good the tropical fish would taste deep fried with some plum sauce drizzled on top. haha
3) Another addition to white water rafting on the Tully River in Mission Beach, I say most people can do it without any experiences as long as they follow the guides instructions. The hardest job is steering the raft which is always done by the guides. So no worries. I tried steering and that was hard because I always over compensated by steering the raft too much to the left or to the right. So instead making 45 degree turns, I ended up steering the raft 90 to 180 or 360 degree turns. I did “donuts” on the water a few times simply because I overcompensated when steering the boat.
4) This really awkward Czech guy (who went to highschool and uni in California) started talking to me last night about a few random things like all travellers do. We got to talk about the 2 divers left out in the open water and then to South Africa and its infamous Shark-Cage Diving. Basically, the tourists are put into scuba gear and into a steel cage in the open water where the most aggressive African White Sharks hangout. The tour operators would then taunt the sharks with bloody meat outside of the cage where the hungry sharks would then kick in their destroy mode. You get the picture. All of this action for about $100 euros. I’d say that’s cheaper than medical-assisted euthanasia. Anyway, I think the concept is interesting but nevertheless demented as hell. What the tour operators are doing is essentially training the sharks to actively and routinely hang around the cages since there’s food for them. It’ll become a habit for the sharks and “somebody’s gonna get a hurt real bad” one day. On a sidenote, I just realized that this make the 2 left out in the open water for “only” 19 hours look like pussies.
Left-behind divers rescued http://www.thestar.com/article/429777
REUTERS
Scuba divers Alison Dalton of the USA and Dick Neely of Britain are winched out off the water May 24, 2008 after 19 hours floating off Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
May 25, 2008 12:17 PM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRISBANE, Australia – A British diver says he thought he and his American girlfriend would be eaten by sharks as they spent a night floating over Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The frightening ordeal for Dick Neely, 38, and Alison Dalton, 40, began Friday afternoon.
The couple had been diving on a reef, but when they resurfaced they found themselves 200 metres from their chartered boat and out of sight of its crew.
Neely said they tied their wetsuits together and huddled to share body heat during the 19 hours they spent adrift in 24-degree Celsius waters.
He told Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper "I truly thought we were going to die. Sharks were on our mind the entire time, but neither of us mentioned the 's' word. We just had to stay positive and calm to help each other through the ordeal and not think about being eaten alive."
The two were finally rescued by a helicopter Saturday off the eastern coast after an overnight air search. And the pilot who winched them from the ocean said Sunday they were in surprisingly good humour.
"Considering they were out there for 19 hours, they were in very good spirits when they got back," David Williams told Australia's Network Seven television. "They were cracking quite a few jokes about their ordeal."
The Sunday Mirror said Neely is from Swaffham, Norfolk, but recently lived on a boat off Phuket, Thailand, where he worked as a diving instructor.
Dalton, his girlfriend of nine months, is a qualified dive master from Sacramento, California, where she runs a bar, it said.
"I think we saved each other's lives," Dalton said. "This terrible experience had definitely brought us closer together."
Safety standards for recreational dive boat operators on the Great Barrier Reef were heightened after 1998 when a crew accidentally left behind American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan. The married couple are believed to have drowned or been eaten by sharks.
Neely said his shark fears were heightened by having seen the 2003 movie based on the Lonergan tragedy, "Open Water."
They declined requests for interviews Saturday and could not be immediately contacted Sunday.
Random Thoughts in Tropical Cairns
1) I forgot to mention an interesting conversation I had with the Americans I met, from Chicago, on the snorkelling trip. As predictable as I am, I asked the redhead girl, Megan, who she’s supporting for the next US president. While she didn’t give me a straight answer, she did say this: “I’m not sure if we are ready for a black president.”
Thinking to myself, what does it matter that he’s black or whatever colour he is?! Perhaps I’m a bit too idealistic. Perhaps I am just biased because I am a proud supporter of Mr. Obama. I understand that it means a lot to America for its potential 1st black prez, but whatever happened to the merit of best person for the job? I read the following on the globe and mail the other day:
“Obama is, of course, the ultimate game changer, a man who, if elected president, would reinvent the conversation in every household in America and enable each black child to see himself differently. (“Who's that?” the child would ask, staring at the television. “That's the president.”) How do you top that for America feeling good about itself?
With a 71-year-old man who thinks it's okay to hang around in Iraq for another few decades? I don't think so.
With a 60-year-old woman who comes close – but not, it seems, close enough – to being the bold and exhilarating female leader of her generation?”
I actually asked the American girl what she meant by “we.” I asked her if she meant “we” as in the American people in general or she’s speaking for her and her friend. I am especially interested to know her perspective being a white American girl from Chicago (Obama’s hometown) who just happens to be in Australia for her post-secondary education. She confirmed that she meant the American people in general. I didn’t push the subject any further, since I could tell she was feeling a bit uneasy with the topic. However, I am still interested to know who is she’s going for in the election. I stated my case to her that I’d vote for Obama not because he’s black, but I think he’s larger than life persona, character, and also what he represents – change. Picking McCain only means more of the same or “serving G.W. Bush’s 3rd term,” as some would call it. I also stated that I wouldn’t vote for Clinton not because she’s a woman, but that Obama is just a better choice of the 2. But again, it’s America. You would think that it’s impossible for the republicans to be elected again for the 12 years straight. However, this is the same country that voted Bush in twice and chose an action film star as its governor of “Garleefourneeya.” (Sorry, Arnold, your performance in The Kindergarten Cop was indeed elementary at best.)
Some may highlight Obama’s lack of experience in politics in comparison to Clinton and McCain, but it’s a risk I am willing to take even that I’m not an American. (That’s how desperate USA needs a change of direction.) In addition, Obama arguably already has more experience in becoming the head of state than the current president. Things can’t possibly go down any further; there could only be one way – that is up.
2) A friend pointed out the other day that I seem to be meeting a lot of female travellers here in Australia. I didn’t even realize it until she mentioned it. Come to think of it, I have met a fair number of lone female travellers from all over the world since I’ve been in Oz. And most of the time, they initiated the conversation with me, not the vice versa. (Mostly because I am such a hot stuff eh? Can’t really blame them.) I tend to do my own thing and not really step out of my realm in meeting other lone travellers whether they are males or females. (Perhaps I really should step out more. I just find it extremely awkward to just say, “oh hey! You are from France? I have been there!” Now what? Where does the conversation go then?)
As a backpacker, the conversation generally revolves around 3 things: where have you been? Where are you going? And how long are you staying there/here? After which, I then become a socially-inept person. Hahaha
Met a German girl today randomly on a street corner while we both waited for the light to cross the street. She said to me, “hey you are staying at Njoy, right?” I replied, “yeh, how did you know?” “I saw you earlier this morning on your computer,” she answered. Then the conversation just kept going as we were both going to the same direction. As it is for most people I have just met, the awkwardness at the beginning usually doesn’t sit very well with me or them at times. You know that stage where you are just feeling each other out and simply trying to read each other? That was exactly what we were doing to each other. We parted ways as I was going to find work and she was going to the city.
3) Second day looking for work in Cairns and I am already very discouraged. I think I am just spending the next few days doing a bit of something and a lot of nothing here since I paid for the accommodation already. It is still raining a lot here; torrential rain, too. For example, the rain goes hard for 4 minutes, then it stops for half an hour and then rains again for another 5 to 15 minutes. And then it goes again like a broken record. No wonder that there’s no water shortage here in Northern Queensland as it is the wettest place in all of oz. Good thing is that even with the rain, it is still about 20 to 24 degrees.
*Update since I wrote this part: Instead of looking for work, I went to the beach about 30 minutes north of Cairns (Palm Cove) with a German and English girl. (I only met the English girl this morning in the kitchen of the hostel after she commented how good my breakfast smelled to her. Quite random really. We talked for a bit and I invited her to the beach with the German girl and I.) Though it was overcast for most part of the day, we just sat on the beach and tanned for a bit. Just to give you an idea of how harsh the sun is here in Oz. All 3 of us got burnt in 10 minutes (oh could I mention the fact that it was overcast again?!) The UV index was at 7 with the strongest being 8.
4) Went to a night market here in Cairns tonight. It was really barely a night market for its tiny size. I can literally walk around the corner and the market is over. Everybody working there were all Japanese travellers catering to a large amount of Japanese tourists along the east coast of Queensland. While walking around all the different kiosks, all the Japanese merchants constantly greeted me in Japanese and started promoting their products to me in Japanese right away. They only stopped as soon as I told them that I am not Japanese, at which point they apologized religiously. I saw a few pretty neat things: Kangaroo jerky, crocodile jerky, emu jerky and of course the good old beef jerky. Heck, there were even some koala and kangaroo shaped pastas. Haha.
I bought nothing, but did get a neck/shoulders/back massage (15 bucks for 25 minutes), since my neck, shoulders and back were just super tight from the previous 3 days of activities. Funny thing is that there were 8 massage kiosks at the night market and they all advertise as “Chinese style” massages, but all the masseuses were all South Koreans (most of them travellers on a working holiday visa like myself.) The South Korean guy that worked on me has been in Oz for almost 3 years now. To my surprise, he doesn’t really like Oz that much since he thinks it’s quite boring here. He’s looking forward to go back to South Korea. I asked him about his travels around Oz and he hasn’t been to Tasmania or Ayers Rock nor the west coast around Perth. He’s been working most of the time, no wonder he finds it boring here. I know the feeling of being stuck in a rot.
5) Found out that there’s a place called “Edmonton” just south of Cairns today. I thought that was pretty funny. There’s a Toronto just north of Sydney. No sightings of Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, or Montreal yet.
Also found out today that “Award wage” means minimum wage.
6) After the snorkelling trip the other day, I felt pretty funny. I thought it was just me, but after talking to a few people whom I met randomly. They, too, confirmed the same feeling I had. Even hours after the trip, we still felt as we were on the boat. I had the same feeling of flowing around in the waves of the sea. It was quite strange.
7) Also forgot to mention something interesting about the tropical northern Queensland. On the way to the north of Cairns, it’s common to see sugarcane fields along the side of highways. I thought that was neat. As for the way south towards Mission Beach, one could often see banana tree patches along both the side of the roads.
8) I feel so comfortable with my laptop. I can write whatever I want, whenever I want and it’s just a very pleasant feeling. To a certain extend, writing feels like healing to me, if that makes any sense at all. Whether I am a good writer or not is an entirely different story. Haha
9) What the heck is Kardinal Offishall doing in Kanye’s “American Boy” music video? This is the same guy that spit the lyrics: “[a Canadian guy] pretending you are a Yankee, but you are not a Yankee” in the song – The Last Standing Soldier – with Bedouin Soundclash. I guess he did go to Ryerson.
Thinking to myself, what does it matter that he’s black or whatever colour he is?! Perhaps I’m a bit too idealistic. Perhaps I am just biased because I am a proud supporter of Mr. Obama. I understand that it means a lot to America for its potential 1st black prez, but whatever happened to the merit of best person for the job? I read the following on the globe and mail the other day:
“Obama is, of course, the ultimate game changer, a man who, if elected president, would reinvent the conversation in every household in America and enable each black child to see himself differently. (“Who's that?” the child would ask, staring at the television. “That's the president.”) How do you top that for America feeling good about itself?
With a 71-year-old man who thinks it's okay to hang around in Iraq for another few decades? I don't think so.
With a 60-year-old woman who comes close – but not, it seems, close enough – to being the bold and exhilarating female leader of her generation?”
I actually asked the American girl what she meant by “we.” I asked her if she meant “we” as in the American people in general or she’s speaking for her and her friend. I am especially interested to know her perspective being a white American girl from Chicago (Obama’s hometown) who just happens to be in Australia for her post-secondary education. She confirmed that she meant the American people in general. I didn’t push the subject any further, since I could tell she was feeling a bit uneasy with the topic. However, I am still interested to know who is she’s going for in the election. I stated my case to her that I’d vote for Obama not because he’s black, but I think he’s larger than life persona, character, and also what he represents – change. Picking McCain only means more of the same or “serving G.W. Bush’s 3rd term,” as some would call it. I also stated that I wouldn’t vote for Clinton not because she’s a woman, but that Obama is just a better choice of the 2. But again, it’s America. You would think that it’s impossible for the republicans to be elected again for the 12 years straight. However, this is the same country that voted Bush in twice and chose an action film star as its governor of “Garleefourneeya.” (Sorry, Arnold, your performance in The Kindergarten Cop was indeed elementary at best.)
Some may highlight Obama’s lack of experience in politics in comparison to Clinton and McCain, but it’s a risk I am willing to take even that I’m not an American. (That’s how desperate USA needs a change of direction.) In addition, Obama arguably already has more experience in becoming the head of state than the current president. Things can’t possibly go down any further; there could only be one way – that is up.
2) A friend pointed out the other day that I seem to be meeting a lot of female travellers here in Australia. I didn’t even realize it until she mentioned it. Come to think of it, I have met a fair number of lone female travellers from all over the world since I’ve been in Oz. And most of the time, they initiated the conversation with me, not the vice versa. (Mostly because I am such a hot stuff eh? Can’t really blame them.) I tend to do my own thing and not really step out of my realm in meeting other lone travellers whether they are males or females. (Perhaps I really should step out more. I just find it extremely awkward to just say, “oh hey! You are from France? I have been there!” Now what? Where does the conversation go then?)
As a backpacker, the conversation generally revolves around 3 things: where have you been? Where are you going? And how long are you staying there/here? After which, I then become a socially-inept person. Hahaha
Met a German girl today randomly on a street corner while we both waited for the light to cross the street. She said to me, “hey you are staying at Njoy, right?” I replied, “yeh, how did you know?” “I saw you earlier this morning on your computer,” she answered. Then the conversation just kept going as we were both going to the same direction. As it is for most people I have just met, the awkwardness at the beginning usually doesn’t sit very well with me or them at times. You know that stage where you are just feeling each other out and simply trying to read each other? That was exactly what we were doing to each other. We parted ways as I was going to find work and she was going to the city.
3) Second day looking for work in Cairns and I am already very discouraged. I think I am just spending the next few days doing a bit of something and a lot of nothing here since I paid for the accommodation already. It is still raining a lot here; torrential rain, too. For example, the rain goes hard for 4 minutes, then it stops for half an hour and then rains again for another 5 to 15 minutes. And then it goes again like a broken record. No wonder that there’s no water shortage here in Northern Queensland as it is the wettest place in all of oz. Good thing is that even with the rain, it is still about 20 to 24 degrees.
*Update since I wrote this part: Instead of looking for work, I went to the beach about 30 minutes north of Cairns (Palm Cove) with a German and English girl. (I only met the English girl this morning in the kitchen of the hostel after she commented how good my breakfast smelled to her. Quite random really. We talked for a bit and I invited her to the beach with the German girl and I.) Though it was overcast for most part of the day, we just sat on the beach and tanned for a bit. Just to give you an idea of how harsh the sun is here in Oz. All 3 of us got burnt in 10 minutes (oh could I mention the fact that it was overcast again?!) The UV index was at 7 with the strongest being 8.
4) Went to a night market here in Cairns tonight. It was really barely a night market for its tiny size. I can literally walk around the corner and the market is over. Everybody working there were all Japanese travellers catering to a large amount of Japanese tourists along the east coast of Queensland. While walking around all the different kiosks, all the Japanese merchants constantly greeted me in Japanese and started promoting their products to me in Japanese right away. They only stopped as soon as I told them that I am not Japanese, at which point they apologized religiously. I saw a few pretty neat things: Kangaroo jerky, crocodile jerky, emu jerky and of course the good old beef jerky. Heck, there were even some koala and kangaroo shaped pastas. Haha.
I bought nothing, but did get a neck/shoulders/back massage (15 bucks for 25 minutes), since my neck, shoulders and back were just super tight from the previous 3 days of activities. Funny thing is that there were 8 massage kiosks at the night market and they all advertise as “Chinese style” massages, but all the masseuses were all South Koreans (most of them travellers on a working holiday visa like myself.) The South Korean guy that worked on me has been in Oz for almost 3 years now. To my surprise, he doesn’t really like Oz that much since he thinks it’s quite boring here. He’s looking forward to go back to South Korea. I asked him about his travels around Oz and he hasn’t been to Tasmania or Ayers Rock nor the west coast around Perth. He’s been working most of the time, no wonder he finds it boring here. I know the feeling of being stuck in a rot.
5) Found out that there’s a place called “Edmonton” just south of Cairns today. I thought that was pretty funny. There’s a Toronto just north of Sydney. No sightings of Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, or Montreal yet.
Also found out today that “Award wage” means minimum wage.
6) After the snorkelling trip the other day, I felt pretty funny. I thought it was just me, but after talking to a few people whom I met randomly. They, too, confirmed the same feeling I had. Even hours after the trip, we still felt as we were on the boat. I had the same feeling of flowing around in the waves of the sea. It was quite strange.
7) Also forgot to mention something interesting about the tropical northern Queensland. On the way to the north of Cairns, it’s common to see sugarcane fields along the side of highways. I thought that was neat. As for the way south towards Mission Beach, one could often see banana tree patches along both the side of the roads.
8) I feel so comfortable with my laptop. I can write whatever I want, whenever I want and it’s just a very pleasant feeling. To a certain extend, writing feels like healing to me, if that makes any sense at all. Whether I am a good writer or not is an entirely different story. Haha
9) What the heck is Kardinal Offishall doing in Kanye’s “American Boy” music video? This is the same guy that spit the lyrics: “[a Canadian guy] pretending you are a Yankee, but you are not a Yankee” in the song – The Last Standing Soldier – with Bedouin Soundclash. I guess he did go to Ryerson.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Tully River Rafting & GBR Snorkelling
The pic above: my rafting team. look at the bright yellow wet suits! we meant biznass!Staying another week until this coming Saturday to find some work. If I couldn’t find any work, then I’d just starting going down the east coast towards Sydney.
Friday – Raging Thunder Xtreme Rafting at the Tully River (Extreme!) ($221)
Went to the famous Tully River in Mission Beach for some white water rafting the other day and I am still sore from it 2 days after. Not only my back, legs, shoulders, arms, and abs are all sore, but also my feet and ankles are, too. It was really a full body workout.
I was with 5 others in my raft. 2 Irish (guy/girl), 1 Italian guy, 1 English girl, and 1 Dutch girl. Our guide was a Kiwi from Auckland named Paul. (It was a pretty good group since all of us were over the age of 24 on the raft.) We started the day early at 7am with a 2 hour drive to the Tully River near Mission Beach south of Cairns. The weather couldn’t have been any better for the whole day – drizzle and heavy rain fall at times. (In fact, other than the first 2 sunny days in Cairns, periodic rainfalls have been welcoming me with open arms since. I have been here for 5 days now.) I was so glad that I rented a wet suit for rafting.
So we got on the raft and went over all the basic commands and techniques required to survive an exciting yet safe white water raft trip. Off we go and facing all of 46 rapids within the 14 kms course of the river. While most of the rapids graded around 2 to 4 (with grade 5 being the most difficult rapids according to the Int’l River Grading System.), there were a few grade 5 rapids. We weren’t allowed to go through the grade 5’s since the insurance company doesn’t really like it.
One of the most notable grade 5 rapids was appropriately named as “The Washing Machine.” This one was so dangerous that it almost means certain death if one were to fall out of the raft into the rapids. It’s like a small waterfall (3 feet drop) but the currents flow in a circular motion which would tumble a rafter like a ragdoll over and over and over again. If one were to fall into The Washing Machine, they’d be brought over and under water continuously until the person runs out of energy and drowns. To save such a person in the WM, a rope is tossed towards the person being washed by the rescuer while hoping that the person in the water would be lucky enough to hold onto the rope and dragged out of the WM by the rescue crew. The merciless WM is too dangerous for the rescue crew to enter the water for rescue.
Even though this was not my first time rafting in white water I was still pretty nervous (in a good way though). *My first rafting experience was last October in Northern Thailand. Anyway, I remember that I was pretty stressed for the first half of the day on the river. My jaw was so sore from clinching tightly together. However, by the afternoon, I was very comfortable in the raft.
Since I chose the Xtreme rafting over the regular one, we got to do a few more interesting things along the way downstream. For example, we got to jump off a few rocks into the pool of water below. One of the rocks was named “Jaba the hut” because it looked like the movie character. (did I spell Jaba the hut correctly? Sorry, not a star-war fan.) We got to swim in between the rapids in the calm pool of water. I just floated with my feet pointing downstream since it was the safe way of swimming in the river (to avoid banging your knee into the hidden rocks below the water.) I did get a shiner on my left knee once swimming towards the raft once and I didn’t even knee the rock that hard. Thanks to my bruise-like-a banana genes, I now have a battle scar to prove that I did the Tully with a bang.
Another notable rapid is right next to the Washing Machine (we went over this one rather than the WM for obvious reasons.) affectionally known as The Guide’s Revenge. Basically the raft guides usually tip over the raft and everyone would fall into the rapids in which they’d be sent below the water for about 7 seconds before being spit out by the rapid back onto the surface. I opted out on this one because it was a bit too xtreme for my liking. There was a hidden danger in this “exercise.” When being pulled down into the water by the rapids, the forces generanted from the pressure can be enough to pop one’s eardrums, if he/she didn’t equalize the pressure by blowing out his/her nose while underwater.
Therefore, to summarize, I wimped out.
Last but not the least, I am not known for my gutsiness, but white water rafting is just soo much better than any other adrenaline-rushing sports I have done in the past. I guess being a weak swimmer, at best, just added to the thrill. I much prefer being in a vehicle of some sort (ie. Raft) in comparison to say……on ski’s or snowboards.
Random:
1) There was an American dude on our trip, but on a different raft. He’s in the US air force and has been posted at Guam for the last 2 years. He was constantly being made fun of by all the guides for his being a pansy in the water. I felt pretty bad for him since people just assumed that he’s a tough guy because he’s a soldier. (Apparently he’s a in-the-office type of solider.) With that being said, he didn’t help himself out when he freaked out about a tiny little leech on his foot.
On a different note, I knew he was American right away when he opened his mouth. He’s accident is undeniably American. Along with that accent, he proudly sported a Badgers’ shirt from his hometown – Wisconsin.
2) The Kiwi guide couldn’t remember my name for the longest time, so he constantly referred to me as “Canada.” However, by the end, he remembered me as Sushi Steve for my sushi joke.
3) I have some pics of us rafting in PDF form which I can show my friends when I get back. The Irish guy is coming to Vancouver this Fall to become a Helicopter pilot. So this won’t be the last time we see each other.
Saturday – Passions of Paradise snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef ($135)
Less than 16 hours after rafting in fresh water, I was in the salt water snorkelling the GBR. I guess you could say that the GBR should be the top highlight of my trip in Oz next to Ayers Rock. And the reef was very interesting. I still couldn’t believe that I have now done the GBF and I can now put it onto my “travel resume.”
Fobidden City and the Great Walls of China, double check!
Xi’an Terra Cotta Warriors, check!
Angkor Wat, check!
Taj Mahal, check!
Veranasi Ghets on the Ghanges, check!
Sydney Harbour, check!
Great Ocean Road, check!
Ayers Rock, check!
Tully River Rafting, check!
GBR, check!
For comical factor, Niagara Falls, Uncheck!
Anyway, another early morning started at 7:30am with a 2 hour boat ride to the GBR, particularly “Michaelmas Cay” and Paradise Reef. Michaelmas Cay (pronounced Mi-kayl-mas) is an important island, breeding ground and reef area for several types of birds. It’s supposed to be an area of unspoilt reef and coral cay. I don’t have much to compare to in terms of reef so I can’t say what it’s like to the other reefs around the world. But since this is THE place to see reef, the others might not be comparable to the GBR. I will see when I go to the Whitsundays for some more sailing and snorkelling. (If I read it correctly yesterday, the GBR stretches over 2300 kms of the sea along Northern Queensland’s coastline. Cairns is just one of many places to access the GBR.
I spent about 2 hours time at the reef around Michaelmas Cay and saw many different types of tropical fish such as the Giant Trevalli’s and parrot fish. Some people on our boat to have reported seeing sea turtles. I didn’t see them, but the giant trevalli’s were indeed giant. They were almost half the size of me and swam under the ocean like birds flying in the sky. It was def a neat sight to see, even if it was only for a brief moment.
The English girl and I took a few pictures while down in the reef. We rented an underwater digital camera for the job, though she pretty much hogged the cam most of the time. I was a bit disappointed at some of the pics taken by her since they were only green and blue. When I did get the camera, I switched it to underwater mode and the red, orange and yellow colours really showed on the pictures. (After all, isn’t the underwater mode for scuba diving and snorkelling?)
Anyway, I tried to not let it bother me, instead just taking some mental pictures of all the interesting stuff I saw. No need to sweat over something on holiday right? As I tried to make myself feel better. After lunch, we out for another “proper snorkel”, as the English would call it. *I had no idea what that meant until the English around me explained that when they say something is really “proper”, they mean that it’s really good. Eg. That was a very proper swim – translates to a very good swim. (Prior to that, I was thinking what? As oppose to an improper swim? Like swimming naked?)
I snorkelled around the Paradise Reef for about an hour. Unlike Michaelmas Cay, Paradise Reef was in the open water. It is also known as a bombora or bommie. (A bommie is an isolated patch of offshore reef.) We just jumped off the ship into the ocean like we’d if we were scuba diving. I must say there weren’t as many big fish around here, but the reef were way more interesting.
That’s about it. I have to say that I prefer rafting over snorkelling and scuba diving. I am looking forward to go for more rafting when I go back to Canada.
Random:
1) Met these 2 Americans from Chicago while on the ship. They were pretty cool. The girl is studying in Oz at some university and the guy is just visiting her for a week. Interesting people, even though they thought I sounded more American. I wasn’t sure if I should take that as a compliment. (On a second thought, I shoulda just spun it around and compliment them by saying that it’s just they sound more Canadian. Damn, I am good. Somebody hire me for PR.)
2) While in Alice Springs last week, I noticed a basketball center that looked like a scene straight out of any old school bball gym in Indiana. It was basically like a warehouse/shed but with windows on top, bleachers on the side, and old shiny wooden floors. Hard to imagine such place exists in Alice Springs. In addition, there was also a squash center that’s only used for squash. I thought that was random. Just today in Cairns, I saw a table tennis center which is only used for just that. Never seen that either, they must really like their table tennis here.
3) Some more Aussie lingo’s:
Joey – a baby kangaroo
Dag – affectionally or “mildly” abusive term for an unfashionable or socially inept person.
Yabbie – freshwater crayfish
*By the way, has anybody noticed the quality of my writing has deteriorated badly for a long time now? All of the blog entries take quite a bit of time and sorta cuts into my time for other stuff. But I still choose to do it since it’s becoming more than a hobby to share what I have done with my friends. To reserve some extra time for myself, I have tried to hurry up when writing a blog entry, the result is compromised quality of writing and things I had accidentally left out or forgotten to mention.
Friday – Raging Thunder Xtreme Rafting at the Tully River (Extreme!) ($221)
Went to the famous Tully River in Mission Beach for some white water rafting the other day and I am still sore from it 2 days after. Not only my back, legs, shoulders, arms, and abs are all sore, but also my feet and ankles are, too. It was really a full body workout.
I was with 5 others in my raft. 2 Irish (guy/girl), 1 Italian guy, 1 English girl, and 1 Dutch girl. Our guide was a Kiwi from Auckland named Paul. (It was a pretty good group since all of us were over the age of 24 on the raft.) We started the day early at 7am with a 2 hour drive to the Tully River near Mission Beach south of Cairns. The weather couldn’t have been any better for the whole day – drizzle and heavy rain fall at times. (In fact, other than the first 2 sunny days in Cairns, periodic rainfalls have been welcoming me with open arms since. I have been here for 5 days now.) I was so glad that I rented a wet suit for rafting.
So we got on the raft and went over all the basic commands and techniques required to survive an exciting yet safe white water raft trip. Off we go and facing all of 46 rapids within the 14 kms course of the river. While most of the rapids graded around 2 to 4 (with grade 5 being the most difficult rapids according to the Int’l River Grading System.), there were a few grade 5 rapids. We weren’t allowed to go through the grade 5’s since the insurance company doesn’t really like it.
One of the most notable grade 5 rapids was appropriately named as “The Washing Machine.” This one was so dangerous that it almost means certain death if one were to fall out of the raft into the rapids. It’s like a small waterfall (3 feet drop) but the currents flow in a circular motion which would tumble a rafter like a ragdoll over and over and over again. If one were to fall into The Washing Machine, they’d be brought over and under water continuously until the person runs out of energy and drowns. To save such a person in the WM, a rope is tossed towards the person being washed by the rescuer while hoping that the person in the water would be lucky enough to hold onto the rope and dragged out of the WM by the rescue crew. The merciless WM is too dangerous for the rescue crew to enter the water for rescue.
Even though this was not my first time rafting in white water I was still pretty nervous (in a good way though). *My first rafting experience was last October in Northern Thailand. Anyway, I remember that I was pretty stressed for the first half of the day on the river. My jaw was so sore from clinching tightly together. However, by the afternoon, I was very comfortable in the raft.
Since I chose the Xtreme rafting over the regular one, we got to do a few more interesting things along the way downstream. For example, we got to jump off a few rocks into the pool of water below. One of the rocks was named “Jaba the hut” because it looked like the movie character. (did I spell Jaba the hut correctly? Sorry, not a star-war fan.) We got to swim in between the rapids in the calm pool of water. I just floated with my feet pointing downstream since it was the safe way of swimming in the river (to avoid banging your knee into the hidden rocks below the water.) I did get a shiner on my left knee once swimming towards the raft once and I didn’t even knee the rock that hard. Thanks to my bruise-like-a banana genes, I now have a battle scar to prove that I did the Tully with a bang.
Another notable rapid is right next to the Washing Machine (we went over this one rather than the WM for obvious reasons.) affectionally known as The Guide’s Revenge. Basically the raft guides usually tip over the raft and everyone would fall into the rapids in which they’d be sent below the water for about 7 seconds before being spit out by the rapid back onto the surface. I opted out on this one because it was a bit too xtreme for my liking. There was a hidden danger in this “exercise.” When being pulled down into the water by the rapids, the forces generanted from the pressure can be enough to pop one’s eardrums, if he/she didn’t equalize the pressure by blowing out his/her nose while underwater.
Therefore, to summarize, I wimped out.
Last but not the least, I am not known for my gutsiness, but white water rafting is just soo much better than any other adrenaline-rushing sports I have done in the past. I guess being a weak swimmer, at best, just added to the thrill. I much prefer being in a vehicle of some sort (ie. Raft) in comparison to say……on ski’s or snowboards.
Random:
1) There was an American dude on our trip, but on a different raft. He’s in the US air force and has been posted at Guam for the last 2 years. He was constantly being made fun of by all the guides for his being a pansy in the water. I felt pretty bad for him since people just assumed that he’s a tough guy because he’s a soldier. (Apparently he’s a in-the-office type of solider.) With that being said, he didn’t help himself out when he freaked out about a tiny little leech on his foot.
On a different note, I knew he was American right away when he opened his mouth. He’s accident is undeniably American. Along with that accent, he proudly sported a Badgers’ shirt from his hometown – Wisconsin.
2) The Kiwi guide couldn’t remember my name for the longest time, so he constantly referred to me as “Canada.” However, by the end, he remembered me as Sushi Steve for my sushi joke.
3) I have some pics of us rafting in PDF form which I can show my friends when I get back. The Irish guy is coming to Vancouver this Fall to become a Helicopter pilot. So this won’t be the last time we see each other.
Saturday – Passions of Paradise snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef ($135)
Less than 16 hours after rafting in fresh water, I was in the salt water snorkelling the GBR. I guess you could say that the GBR should be the top highlight of my trip in Oz next to Ayers Rock. And the reef was very interesting. I still couldn’t believe that I have now done the GBF and I can now put it onto my “travel resume.”
Fobidden City and the Great Walls of China, double check!
Xi’an Terra Cotta Warriors, check!
Angkor Wat, check!
Taj Mahal, check!
Veranasi Ghets on the Ghanges, check!
Sydney Harbour, check!
Great Ocean Road, check!
Ayers Rock, check!
Tully River Rafting, check!
GBR, check!
For comical factor, Niagara Falls, Uncheck!
Anyway, another early morning started at 7:30am with a 2 hour boat ride to the GBR, particularly “Michaelmas Cay” and Paradise Reef. Michaelmas Cay (pronounced Mi-kayl-mas) is an important island, breeding ground and reef area for several types of birds. It’s supposed to be an area of unspoilt reef and coral cay. I don’t have much to compare to in terms of reef so I can’t say what it’s like to the other reefs around the world. But since this is THE place to see reef, the others might not be comparable to the GBR. I will see when I go to the Whitsundays for some more sailing and snorkelling. (If I read it correctly yesterday, the GBR stretches over 2300 kms of the sea along Northern Queensland’s coastline. Cairns is just one of many places to access the GBR.
I spent about 2 hours time at the reef around Michaelmas Cay and saw many different types of tropical fish such as the Giant Trevalli’s and parrot fish. Some people on our boat to have reported seeing sea turtles. I didn’t see them, but the giant trevalli’s were indeed giant. They were almost half the size of me and swam under the ocean like birds flying in the sky. It was def a neat sight to see, even if it was only for a brief moment.
The English girl and I took a few pictures while down in the reef. We rented an underwater digital camera for the job, though she pretty much hogged the cam most of the time. I was a bit disappointed at some of the pics taken by her since they were only green and blue. When I did get the camera, I switched it to underwater mode and the red, orange and yellow colours really showed on the pictures. (After all, isn’t the underwater mode for scuba diving and snorkelling?)
Anyway, I tried to not let it bother me, instead just taking some mental pictures of all the interesting stuff I saw. No need to sweat over something on holiday right? As I tried to make myself feel better. After lunch, we out for another “proper snorkel”, as the English would call it. *I had no idea what that meant until the English around me explained that when they say something is really “proper”, they mean that it’s really good. Eg. That was a very proper swim – translates to a very good swim. (Prior to that, I was thinking what? As oppose to an improper swim? Like swimming naked?)
I snorkelled around the Paradise Reef for about an hour. Unlike Michaelmas Cay, Paradise Reef was in the open water. It is also known as a bombora or bommie. (A bommie is an isolated patch of offshore reef.) We just jumped off the ship into the ocean like we’d if we were scuba diving. I must say there weren’t as many big fish around here, but the reef were way more interesting.
That’s about it. I have to say that I prefer rafting over snorkelling and scuba diving. I am looking forward to go for more rafting when I go back to Canada.
Random:
1) Met these 2 Americans from Chicago while on the ship. They were pretty cool. The girl is studying in Oz at some university and the guy is just visiting her for a week. Interesting people, even though they thought I sounded more American. I wasn’t sure if I should take that as a compliment. (On a second thought, I shoulda just spun it around and compliment them by saying that it’s just they sound more Canadian. Damn, I am good. Somebody hire me for PR.)
2) While in Alice Springs last week, I noticed a basketball center that looked like a scene straight out of any old school bball gym in Indiana. It was basically like a warehouse/shed but with windows on top, bleachers on the side, and old shiny wooden floors. Hard to imagine such place exists in Alice Springs. In addition, there was also a squash center that’s only used for squash. I thought that was random. Just today in Cairns, I saw a table tennis center which is only used for just that. Never seen that either, they must really like their table tennis here.
3) Some more Aussie lingo’s:
Joey – a baby kangaroo
Dag – affectionally or “mildly” abusive term for an unfashionable or socially inept person.
Yabbie – freshwater crayfish
*By the way, has anybody noticed the quality of my writing has deteriorated badly for a long time now? All of the blog entries take quite a bit of time and sorta cuts into my time for other stuff. But I still choose to do it since it’s becoming more than a hobby to share what I have done with my friends. To reserve some extra time for myself, I have tried to hurry up when writing a blog entry, the result is compromised quality of writing and things I had accidentally left out or forgotten to mention.
I got served!
The following msg was emailed to me after my previous post titled "cairns flight and night". my friend from melbourne wrote to me just the other day. i first met her in thailand scuba diving together last october.
Hey stevo
some interesting adventures your having by the sounds of it. just to be a pedantic aussie I wanted to correct you on a few of your "aussie" facts:
1. QANTAS is not spelt with a 'U' - stands for Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Service
2. The mini cyclone that you saw is called a 'willy willy' and can be seen all around oz, particularly on dry hot days
3. Snakebites are made with pomegranate syrup (not blackcurrant) called Grenadine enjoy the great barrier reef! are you going out to one of the pontoons? and be warned, the boat trip out to the reef was the most seasick I have ever been. It's like 2 hours of getting slammed at high speeds (kinda like that crazy day in thailand but for hours on end). Hope you don't spew ;)
Love you long time, Sas
*hahaha, ok, she didn’t actually write “love you long time.” I just added it for wishful thinking! Sorry Sas!
Hey stevo
some interesting adventures your having by the sounds of it. just to be a pedantic aussie I wanted to correct you on a few of your "aussie" facts:
1. QANTAS is not spelt with a 'U' - stands for Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Service
2. The mini cyclone that you saw is called a 'willy willy' and can be seen all around oz, particularly on dry hot days
3. Snakebites are made with pomegranate syrup (not blackcurrant) called Grenadine enjoy the great barrier reef! are you going out to one of the pontoons? and be warned, the boat trip out to the reef was the most seasick I have ever been. It's like 2 hours of getting slammed at high speeds (kinda like that crazy day in thailand but for hours on end). Hope you don't spew ;)
Love you long time, Sas
*hahaha, ok, she didn’t actually write “love you long time.” I just added it for wishful thinking! Sorry Sas!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Cairns Flight & Night
pic above: best Aussie invention ever. u get every drop out of it, unlike the pouch ones.1) Checked my bags in at the Alice Springs airport and I was thoroughly impressed with the patio area at the airport. It was actually kinda weird to check your bags in and wait outside at a patio to board the plane. I could see my plane from the patio with desert scenery. To you guys, it may not be a big deal, but it was just so intriguing for me to see that: Airport in a desert, all I could think about was the movie “Jarhead.” I have seen that movie 3 times (all by chance) and I like it more every time I have seen it. Best quote of the movie is at the end: “We are still in the desert.” - A soldier’s mentality after returning home from the war.
The flight from Alice Springs to Cairns only took about 2.5 hours and it was THE best flight ever! Costing about $236 for the flight, I was not expecting a complimentary meal, but courtesy of Quantas Airlines – I got some curried rice. This was way better than the other 3 budget airlines (Jetstar, Virgin Blue and Tiger Airways). Besides the food, the French guy and the English girl whom I met at the hostel in Alice Springs were also on the same flight as me so we just sat together and hung out. We talked a lot of shyte and just acted like dumbasses the whole time. Everything was shits and giggles. I took photos of the sky from the air plane and the other 2 played musical chairs on the plane. The plane must have been less than 50% full. At one time, the 3 of us all had our own rows.
Not knowing where I was going or staying for the night once the plane had landed in Cairns, I followed the English girl to the hostel she booked and got the last bed available which just happens to be her room as well. We met up with the French dude later at a bar called The Wool Shed and it was just an amazing time. I haven’t had that much fun at a bar full of young people since university. The atmosphere was great mostly because of all the travellers and the warm weather just made it even better. Met up with the Irish girl whom I have known since I got to Australia in November. Though we have worked/travelled separately, I have met up with her at every place we have been to (Sydney, Melbourne, Tassy and now Cairns.) I met up with her because she was leaving the next morning to go down the east coast towards Brisbane and eventually back to Melbourne then Perth before doing her SE Asia trip. Her and her older sister did 2 weeks on the Magic Bus in New Zealand just now. I have always had a good time with her so I will miss her after she leaves because I will most likely never see her again.
On a different note, the bar staff really know how to get the crowd going, too. There was a world championship of gold fish racing. 8 gold fish in total with each representing a country. I can’t remember all of the gold fish’s “names and nationalities”, but here it is:
1) USA – George W Fish
2) Japan – Inedible Sushi
3) Ireland – Paddy
4) Canada – Ganja
5) Australia – Nemo
6) England – Fish Spice
7) Holland – can’t remember
8) Sweden – can’t remember
Canada made it pretty far, but lost it in the semi-finals to the eventual winner – Paddy. Noteworthy: Ganja set a new track record of 2 seconds in the first round.
2) Didn’t really do much today, but I was able to book not 1, but 3 tours for the next 3 days in a row. I was still in a state of shock/excitement about 1 hour after booking those trips. Starting tomorrow:
Thursday – Jungle Tours Cape Tribulation for the rainforest and some walks ($140)
Friday – Raging Thunder Xtreme Rafting at the Tully River (Extreme!) ($215)
Saturday – Passions of Paradise snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef ($135)
I haven’t spent that much money in such a short period of time for a while now. Come to think of it, it’s quite insane to be going from the arid desert to the tropical north-eastern Australia coast all within a week. From visiting the world’s biggest rock to the world’s biggest reef. From red desert dirt to blue and clear ocean water. From sleeping next to the desert animals to swimming with the sharks. From watching the moonlights over the desert to seeing its reflection on the ocean. From the desert to the tropical rainforest. From eating kangaroos and camels to eating croc’s.
I am still shaking now from signing myself up for the rafting and the great barrier reef. They are both something I have been wanting to do for a while, but to actually sign up and paid for it just gives me the same feeling I had a few days before I left Canada for this big trip. It’s that nerve-wrecking/exciting/scary feeling. Better yet: “Oh I am so gonna do that when I get there.” To “Wow, I am actually going to do this?! That’s crazy!”
*Meeting up with another English girl whom I met last week in Melbourne at the Neighbour’s Night thing. She’s going home next week to start her career as a doctor.
Northern Queensland Tropical Rainforest
Cape Tribulation = Captain James Cook and his 17 men were forced to berth their ship in the late 1870’s after the reef damaged it. 6 weeks after the tribulation, they left this point for Hawaii. Captain J. Cook died while landing in Hawaii when the indigenous Hawaiians speared him.
Saw a pretty cool sight on the way to Cape Tribulation – endless fields of sugar cane. Can somebody smell rum? Yum! I had previously been to a temperate rainforest in Sydney and backhome in Canada, but this is just not the same. While this tropical rainforest isn’t like the one in the Amazon, but it was still truly an interesting experience to see this part of Oz – a lush tropical rainforest. However, the tour itself was pretty dodgy. Started out the day at a Wild Life Sanctuary which wasn’t bad since I got to see some Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabies, various birds, and even a Tree Kangaroo. (All pics on facebook) Learned that Barramundi’s (a type of fish in Oz similar to Perch famous for its delicious flesh.) Too bad that, like any tours, the visit was too hurried. We then stopped by Mossman Gorge which was pretty crap, any gorges and rivers around Vancouver would be a lot more impressive. Our guide seemed to be enjoying the gorge more than us since she was smoking the reefer.
Actually, I am starting to wonder if I even need to mention the crappy parts of the tour, which is over half. It was a pretty waste of money! Haha, but I wanted to let you (my friends) know that not everything here in Oz is fandy dandy. I guess I gotta take the good with the bad.
We then stopped for lunch at a roadhouse. The food wasn’t bad however, I have to whine more about the hygienic standards of foodservice establishments here in Oz or should I say the lack of. While it’s not terrible, but the operators def need to clean up their act, literally.
After lunch, we took a 5 km 1 hour boat cruise down the river to see some infamous Croc’s. We saw about 6 Crocodiles within the hour and I gotta say it was pretty interesting to see them in the wild. What I found even more interesting were the mangroves. There are over 70 types of mangroves all over the world and Oz’s got 36 types of them, including the most common one also found in the Everglades in the swamps of Florida. I took so many pictures of the mangroves that the boat driver/guide described me as another mangrove geek like the ones from the Univ of Queensland. I just find mangroves to be super intriguing. Think vegetations that live in the saltwater. Wow.
RANDOM:
1) Met another English girl today during the tour. Pretty cool person. We talked about her tattoo, inspired by a book called “Falling Leaf”. A Chinese girl’s story about growing up in a family where the stepmom and biological father mistreated her. This also reminds me of another book titled “Wild Swan” which I also gotta check out once I get home.
2) While at the desert last week in Alice Springs, there was a mini cyclone which went in front of our bus across the pavement. The only reason why we could even see it was because of the red sand swirling around slowly in a circle on the pavement. I thought that was neat. Where else would you see mini red sand cyclones?
3) The English and Irish have introduced me to this new drink called the “Snake Bite.” Basically, it’s half lager half cider with a shot of blackcurrant syrup. I thought it was a bit sweet for my liking, but it’s popular amongst the college kids in the UK. On a different note, I have met soo many brits that some of them have started to annoy me. Some of the English I have met are just as arrogant as the Americans, if not worse.
4) It’s been also quite annoying to have to pay for condiments at food outlets here in Oz. The fish and chips here don’t come with ketchup (excuse me, they call it red tomato sauce here) or tartar sauce. One has to pay for the condiments here. I find that extremely annoying, since it’s like ordering a pizza and having to pay extra for the pizza sauce.
The flight from Alice Springs to Cairns only took about 2.5 hours and it was THE best flight ever! Costing about $236 for the flight, I was not expecting a complimentary meal, but courtesy of Quantas Airlines – I got some curried rice. This was way better than the other 3 budget airlines (Jetstar, Virgin Blue and Tiger Airways). Besides the food, the French guy and the English girl whom I met at the hostel in Alice Springs were also on the same flight as me so we just sat together and hung out. We talked a lot of shyte and just acted like dumbasses the whole time. Everything was shits and giggles. I took photos of the sky from the air plane and the other 2 played musical chairs on the plane. The plane must have been less than 50% full. At one time, the 3 of us all had our own rows.
Not knowing where I was going or staying for the night once the plane had landed in Cairns, I followed the English girl to the hostel she booked and got the last bed available which just happens to be her room as well. We met up with the French dude later at a bar called The Wool Shed and it was just an amazing time. I haven’t had that much fun at a bar full of young people since university. The atmosphere was great mostly because of all the travellers and the warm weather just made it even better. Met up with the Irish girl whom I have known since I got to Australia in November. Though we have worked/travelled separately, I have met up with her at every place we have been to (Sydney, Melbourne, Tassy and now Cairns.) I met up with her because she was leaving the next morning to go down the east coast towards Brisbane and eventually back to Melbourne then Perth before doing her SE Asia trip. Her and her older sister did 2 weeks on the Magic Bus in New Zealand just now. I have always had a good time with her so I will miss her after she leaves because I will most likely never see her again.
On a different note, the bar staff really know how to get the crowd going, too. There was a world championship of gold fish racing. 8 gold fish in total with each representing a country. I can’t remember all of the gold fish’s “names and nationalities”, but here it is:
1) USA – George W Fish
2) Japan – Inedible Sushi
3) Ireland – Paddy
4) Canada – Ganja
5) Australia – Nemo
6) England – Fish Spice
7) Holland – can’t remember
8) Sweden – can’t remember
Canada made it pretty far, but lost it in the semi-finals to the eventual winner – Paddy. Noteworthy: Ganja set a new track record of 2 seconds in the first round.
2) Didn’t really do much today, but I was able to book not 1, but 3 tours for the next 3 days in a row. I was still in a state of shock/excitement about 1 hour after booking those trips. Starting tomorrow:
Thursday – Jungle Tours Cape Tribulation for the rainforest and some walks ($140)
Friday – Raging Thunder Xtreme Rafting at the Tully River (Extreme!) ($215)
Saturday – Passions of Paradise snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef ($135)
I haven’t spent that much money in such a short period of time for a while now. Come to think of it, it’s quite insane to be going from the arid desert to the tropical north-eastern Australia coast all within a week. From visiting the world’s biggest rock to the world’s biggest reef. From red desert dirt to blue and clear ocean water. From sleeping next to the desert animals to swimming with the sharks. From watching the moonlights over the desert to seeing its reflection on the ocean. From the desert to the tropical rainforest. From eating kangaroos and camels to eating croc’s.
I am still shaking now from signing myself up for the rafting and the great barrier reef. They are both something I have been wanting to do for a while, but to actually sign up and paid for it just gives me the same feeling I had a few days before I left Canada for this big trip. It’s that nerve-wrecking/exciting/scary feeling. Better yet: “Oh I am so gonna do that when I get there.” To “Wow, I am actually going to do this?! That’s crazy!”
*Meeting up with another English girl whom I met last week in Melbourne at the Neighbour’s Night thing. She’s going home next week to start her career as a doctor.
Northern Queensland Tropical Rainforest
Cape Tribulation = Captain James Cook and his 17 men were forced to berth their ship in the late 1870’s after the reef damaged it. 6 weeks after the tribulation, they left this point for Hawaii. Captain J. Cook died while landing in Hawaii when the indigenous Hawaiians speared him.
Saw a pretty cool sight on the way to Cape Tribulation – endless fields of sugar cane. Can somebody smell rum? Yum! I had previously been to a temperate rainforest in Sydney and backhome in Canada, but this is just not the same. While this tropical rainforest isn’t like the one in the Amazon, but it was still truly an interesting experience to see this part of Oz – a lush tropical rainforest. However, the tour itself was pretty dodgy. Started out the day at a Wild Life Sanctuary which wasn’t bad since I got to see some Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabies, various birds, and even a Tree Kangaroo. (All pics on facebook) Learned that Barramundi’s (a type of fish in Oz similar to Perch famous for its delicious flesh.) Too bad that, like any tours, the visit was too hurried. We then stopped by Mossman Gorge which was pretty crap, any gorges and rivers around Vancouver would be a lot more impressive. Our guide seemed to be enjoying the gorge more than us since she was smoking the reefer.
Actually, I am starting to wonder if I even need to mention the crappy parts of the tour, which is over half. It was a pretty waste of money! Haha, but I wanted to let you (my friends) know that not everything here in Oz is fandy dandy. I guess I gotta take the good with the bad.
We then stopped for lunch at a roadhouse. The food wasn’t bad however, I have to whine more about the hygienic standards of foodservice establishments here in Oz or should I say the lack of. While it’s not terrible, but the operators def need to clean up their act, literally.
After lunch, we took a 5 km 1 hour boat cruise down the river to see some infamous Croc’s. We saw about 6 Crocodiles within the hour and I gotta say it was pretty interesting to see them in the wild. What I found even more interesting were the mangroves. There are over 70 types of mangroves all over the world and Oz’s got 36 types of them, including the most common one also found in the Everglades in the swamps of Florida. I took so many pictures of the mangroves that the boat driver/guide described me as another mangrove geek like the ones from the Univ of Queensland. I just find mangroves to be super intriguing. Think vegetations that live in the saltwater. Wow.
RANDOM:
1) Met another English girl today during the tour. Pretty cool person. We talked about her tattoo, inspired by a book called “Falling Leaf”. A Chinese girl’s story about growing up in a family where the stepmom and biological father mistreated her. This also reminds me of another book titled “Wild Swan” which I also gotta check out once I get home.
2) While at the desert last week in Alice Springs, there was a mini cyclone which went in front of our bus across the pavement. The only reason why we could even see it was because of the red sand swirling around slowly in a circle on the pavement. I thought that was neat. Where else would you see mini red sand cyclones?
3) The English and Irish have introduced me to this new drink called the “Snake Bite.” Basically, it’s half lager half cider with a shot of blackcurrant syrup. I thought it was a bit sweet for my liking, but it’s popular amongst the college kids in the UK. On a different note, I have met soo many brits that some of them have started to annoy me. Some of the English I have met are just as arrogant as the Americans, if not worse.
4) It’s been also quite annoying to have to pay for condiments at food outlets here in Oz. The fish and chips here don’t come with ketchup (excuse me, they call it red tomato sauce here) or tartar sauce. One has to pay for the condiments here. I find that extremely annoying, since it’s like ordering a pizza and having to pay extra for the pizza sauce.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Rocked!
Pic above: The Japanese girl and I toasting in front of Ayers Rock at sunset (check out the moon!)Day 1: Left the hostel at 6am with 19 other travellers (majorities were from England, surprise surprise! 3 Danish kids. 3 Japanese girls. 1 Korean guy and 3 other Cdns from Alberta, BC, and Quebec.) 4 hours on the bus and finally we got to our first stop, Kings Canyon. We trekked for 3 hours around the sandstone domes and the cliff walls. I reckon the canyon was actually the highlight of the trip. The girl from Montreal said she really liked it in comparison to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. The cool thing is that we got to walk around, in and on the rim of the canyon. Oh did I mention that it’s a free entry for the canyon? I opted out for taking a dip at a small pond in the canyon since the water was really cold. We made a few more stops along the way for petrol and snacks at the roadhouses before reaching our 1.2 million acre campsite for the night. The full moon made it difficult to see all the stars while sleeping in our swag sleeping bags around the bonfire, but it was still pretty cool. (oh and yes, it does get very cold at night in the desert.)
Day 2: After breakfast at 6am, we made our way to Kata Tjuta National Park for a short hike along the Valley of the Winds (The Olgas). It was pretty interesting to see the rock formations at this place, since it wasn’t sedimentary but a combination of solid rocks embedded in red sand and mud over a long time. (Interesting fact: A aerial view of the national park would reveal that the rocky landscape actually forms a straight line since they were formed from forces underground.)
Made our way to the Aboriginal culture center where we learned about the world’s oldest living culture. However, there wasn’t really much to be learned about the aboriginal culture. The center was quite small and it appeared that the main message it had for the tourists was Not to Climb Uluru (Ayers Rock) for sacred reasons. (Uluru was named by UNESCO as one of the few World Heritage Sites for both its cultural and natural values.) There was even a book of letters from all over the world with tourist’s saying that they had various misfortunes after they took a small rock from the national park. Most of them sent the rocks back to rid the so-called curse. *I had no idea about the misfortunes along with the removal of rocks from the park, but I wasn’t about to take anything really. I thought the red dirt on my shoes was more than enough proof that I had been there.
It was 5pm and we arrived at the designated sunset viewing area for Uluru along with another 100 of tourists (yeh, I prepared myself for that since I was warned by other ppl whom had been there before.) We had some beers and our dinner right at the viewing area while watching the sunset and taking pictures. It was really amazing to see the sight of Ayers Rock changing colour. We spent the night at the campsite again where we just chatted for a few more hours, mostly about british TV shows since they were all pommies.
Day 3: Saw the sunrise at 7am at yet another designated sunrise area with the same tourists we saw the night before. It was time to do the Uluru base walk, which is basically walking around the entire rock in 2 hours. The weather was good, so the climb to the top was open, but nobody from our group opt to climb it. We saw some other tourists started climbing it and I think the consensus is a mixed feeling. Everyone knew the significance of the world’s largest rock to the indigenous community and its people, therefore nobody wanted to climb it, but everybody also wanted to climb it since they saw other people doing it. Out of respect, I wouldn’t climb the thing and it’s also that the climb can be dangerous. Over the years, 35 people died climbing it and hundreds of others got injured from the strong winds and falling.
On the way back to Alice Springs, we stopped by a Camel Farm for an optional camel ride. I again, opt out on riding any camels. I tried riding an elephant in Thailand, but felt like crap after the first 3 minutes for riding it.
RANDOM:
1) Tried Camel steak at a restaurant here last night. It was actually pretty tasty. The texture was like beef, but more gamey like lamb. I will need to try Kangaroo’s sometime. I cooked it once into a stew and it was crap, so I gotta go to a restaurant for it sometime. On my list of things to do along the east coast of Queensland: Try Croc meat.
2) There’s this western bar called “Bojangle’s” downtown Alice Springs and it was pretty cool to see the saloon styled bar with the swing doors. That’s really outback! Hahah
3) Everyone warned me about the aggressive flies at Uluru, but we hardly had any flies at all during my trip mostly because the weather has started to cool now we are entering into the “fall/winter” season here at about 23 to 27degrees.
4) During our many stops at different roadhouses along the way, it was really funny for me to see various types of Asians working there. I saw some Chinese, Koreans and Japanese travellers working at petrol stations/roadhouses and the Camel Farm. How the heck did they find these jobs? I have no clue for where to look. I have heard soo much about Asian travellers working at the most peculiar locations throughout Australia and it is quite interesting. These guys are hardcore! They make me look like a “Slackpacker” for working in the cities. Their views and experience of Oz would def be more different from mine.
5) The Danish kids: yeh there were young enough to be called kids. (max about 20 years old?!) It was both funny and weird for me and the others on the tour group with them. They pretty much only talked to each other in Danish and ignored the rest of us. They weren’t rude, but just soo absorbed in the conversations with each other the whole 3 days. No joke, they woke up and started talking in Danish right away until the very moment they went to sleep at night daily x 3. I had the “luxury” to speak to one of them on the first day and their English were all very good. The Danish girl I talked to asked me about Canada (or more like shocked me with her questions about Canada.) She asked me if there were Koala’s and Kangaroos in Canada and what season is it right now in Canada. (Yup, I am not even gonna say anything on my blog right now.) I tried my very best not to laugh while answering her questions. And unlike the others would do, I wasn’t rude to her ridiculous questions at all because I have been in that situation before where I asked beyond-than-dumb questions. I give her credit for showing interest in Canada. At least she’s trying right?)
6) While at the rock, met a lot of French Cdns all from Montreal’s West Island. Didn’t talk much to the English Canadian kids, but they were from Elmira, Ontario, Kamloops, BC, Squamish, BC and some UBC kids with their UBC shirts. The French Cdns were proud to show their support for the Calgary Flames and Pittsburgh Pens with the teams shirt on.
Alice Springs Chillin'
Pic above: Me and the ‘Zard at the Reptile Center (http://www.reptilecentre.com.au/). Yup, the lizard was finger lickin’ good!Got to AS on Thursday afternoon and got a free shuttle transfer from the airport to the hostel. Alice Spring is 30 minutes behind Melbourne and Sydney’s time zone or only 2.5 hours ahead of Perth and East Asia’s time zone (China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea..etc). Population: 27,000.
Being deprived of lunch, the Japanese girl and I headed into town to grab a quick bite in the dry heat of Northern Territories as it was about 25 degrees at 6pm. I was just loving the weather since I haven’t had such weather since Sydney?! This also brings me to thinking about the arid landscape and environment while flying over the great red center into Alice Springs. I couldn’t stop looking outside of the window while on the plane.
I saw nothing but tiny shrubs in the midst of endless sea of desert and rocks. (paradox anyone?) Thinking to myself, “Wow, I am finally in the real outback of Oz.” Holla back the Croc Hunter!
The atmosphere around town is totally relaxing and I just love it (well, at least for a few days.) There’s really not much to do around town and I have yet to come across the token Chinese restaurant. Actually the town and its surrounding remind me a lot of Whitehorse, Yukon. Everything about it: The atmosphere, the people (as both has got a lot of First Nations or Aboriginals), and the population (Whitehorse’s got 25,000). Alice Springs is Whitehorse less the hills and with more flatlands of red sand/dirt. *I just can’t help looking at the aboriginals much like I would with the First Nations back home and the Mori’s in New Zealand. Though I haven’t been to NZ, but there are a lot of Kiwi’s and Mori’s in Australia. I just find the facial features of the aboriginals and Mori’s to be so distinctive and interesting. Everything from the shape of their eyes to the nose, hair and the lips. (No, I wasn’t staring at them but managed to squeeze in a few peaks when they weren’t looking.)
While on looking from the sky, the vast flat lands of Southern Australia towards the Northern Territories, it also reminded me of my flight from Bangkok to Phenom Penh, Cambodia. The similarity is that both lands are completely flat except that Cambodia’s got all floodplains with probable landlines in them.
Didn’t do much on the first night after dinner, had a beer at the bar and I was surprised to see that everybody working behind the bar and kitchen were Chinese from Hong Kong. There were a few young Chinese girls in their early twenties. I started to wonder if they live here or just traveling like me and happen to stop in AS to work. Of all places, why working in Alice Springs. I guess the question is valid even for me.
I morphed into the small town relaxing mode and just watched some Gordon Ramsey’s fiery 2nd season of Hell’s Kitchen on TV in the court yard. The temperature didn’t really start dropping sharply until late into the night. And just like the town’s slow ambience, the TV programming also complimented that. Well, actually in all of Australia, some of the TV programming such as the 2nd season of Hell’s Kitchen (and I don’t know others since I haven’t really watched much TV’s here) are only being aired here in Oz. Consider that the 4th or the 5th season is probably coming out soon in North America. I felt like I was in a time warp. Back to the Future Oz style and it’s only appropriate that another Canadian from Vancouver should star in it.
On Friday, the Japanese girl and I met another Canadian girl whom sat next to me on the plane from Melbourne. The 19 year old from a small town (St. Paul) 2 hours east of Edmonton accompanied us to the AS Reptile Center for a crawling good time.
To my disappointment, the center was quite small, but nevertheless interesting in terms of the reptile varieties offered. There were many native Aussie snakes, goannas, lizards, skinks, geckos, and even a sea snake, fresh water turtle, and a salt water croc from Darwin. Heck, the late Croc Hunter himself, Stevie Irwin, had been here in 2003 and left a few autographs. RIP Stevie and your crazy ways. On a different note, I was shocked to learn that many Aussies aren’t very proud of Steve Irwin because they think that he portrays a stereotypical Aussie with the way he presents himself on the show. To those haters, I say, “It’s ok, Stevie. Canada and I would take you and your American wife! You alright, mate. You are far more interesting than the young Aussies in Canada on the ski slopes with their oversized sunglasses, iPod’s, and a can of Kokanee.”
Anyway, at the end of the reptile center visit, I got to hold on to a few lizards, but wimped out on having the green python, Olive, placed around my neck. I didn’t mind looking it or touching it, but to place a “snake scarf” around me is just weird.
RANDOM FACTS ABOUT ALICE SPRINGS:
1) The Todd River has pretty much dried up and only fills occasionally during the year. AS boast the world’s ONLY boat race which would be cancelled if there WAS water in the river. Here’s the pitch: The boat race is held with boats with hollowed-out bottoms. A team of 4 members stand inside the boat and run as quickly as they can to the finish line in the dried up riverbed. If you still can’t grab the concept, just picture the Flintstones. See? So simple!
2) There are over 7000 wild camels roaming around Northern Territories at present. Their population exploded after they were abandoned with invention of cars. The camels were first brought over from the Middle East to Adelaide then further up to explore Oz’s red center. Our driver from the airport to the hostel joked that we, the tourists, should help out the cause in reducing camel populations by consuming more camel steaks and sausages.
3) The small town Canadian girl was quite surprised when I told her I was Canadian, too. Her hometown, St. Paul, has a modest population of 7000 with “hicktowns” of about 1000 people around her town.
4) While leaving the airport in Melbourne, I flew with the budget Tiger Airways. Just how budget was it? Well, the check in counters weren’t even in the main domestic terminal, but about 200 meters away beside it in a shed-like building. However, the “shed” was still somehow better than New Delhi’s “international” airport in India. For a national capital’s airport, Delhi’s was more like a rundown Greyhound station than an airport.
Something to Talk About
I thought I’d like to share this with you like I have with much of my blog materials whether they are travel-related, socio-political or just personal. I wouldn’t call the following a breakthrough, but definitely a realization. I hope you’d enjoy reading it as much I did talking to my gay friends in Melbourne and then re-live it again while writing this. As usual, comments are always welcome:
I met up with the gay couple during my last night in Melbourne. I first met them randomly, appropriately, on my first night in Melbourne at a Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown, so it’s only appropriate that I’d see them again before I leave.
I had previously talked about them on my blog and have since them hung out with them quite a few times. Why chilling out with the gay couple? Because they were always fun to hang out with and I’ve always had very stimulating conversations with them about anything and everything. Especially the professor whom always had something interesting to tell me whether if it’s about a particular type of fish, the ecology, or let’s say Vietnamese Pho noodles.
The couple profile: Singaporean/Chinese Aussie who’s also an ecology professor at a local university in town and an Irish Aussie from a small town just outside of Melbourne who’s just recently quit his job at a major airline. Both in their mid-30’s.
Anyway, we met up for some beers and just talked about the tentative plan for the rest of my trip around Oz. Since the ecology prof is quite a scientist, he told me a lot about the reptile center in Alice Springs and interesting insect such as the Honey Pot Ants. Basically the Honey Pot Ants are also known as Bush Tuckers. Bush Tuckers are just any edible things in the outback (Tucker = Food in Aussie slang).
Honey Pot Ants are ants with huge bums full of sugary liquid. Their main job is to get fed by the worker ants and store all that sweet and sticky gel in their tummy to be used later on for themselves and other ants in the colony through regurgitation when the food source becomes scarce. The local aboriginals have long eaten the honey pot ants as a source of food amongst other things in their diet. The honey pot ants are just like normal ants, but with a bum that’s the size of a small grape that’s full of sugar. One would eat them by simply picking the ant up by its head and bite its “grape bum” off. Yummy!
On a different note, the conversation then turned into my plans for “when I grow up” and my plans for after I get back to Canada. “To be honest, I have no idea about what I’m gonna do for when I go home,” I said to them. They asked me the simple and ever dreaded question of, “what do you WANT to do?”
I told them about my intentions in becoming a travel show host or perhaps get into the NGO field (I have a few other plans as well, but all of them are just rough ideas. Nothing concrete.), but I am concerned that it may not be a career since I most likely won’t be able to save up for a house or simply support my parents once they get really old.
Knowing that the professor of Chinese descent would understand the conflicting values of being a Chinese immigrant raised in Western society, I went on to express my concerns in not knowing if I should follow my dream and do what I want to do instead of doing something safe and secure that I think my parents would want me to (keywords: I think).
The couple and especially the Chinese Aussie echoed me in terms of my thoughts on this. He related to me through his time spent overseas teaching at universities in Finland and Massachusetts. According to him, living and working abroad in the US had really raised his awareness not only about the world, but also about himself. He had become more comfortable with himself as a person and also in terms of his sexuality. It was while abroad he decided that he’d come out and tell his ever-traditional Chinese parents about him being gay. (It’s true, I have found that I think about different things even more now that I’ve been traveling alone for so long. It’s about being alone in an foreign environment for extended period of time when you have to deal with others and yourself. I have learned soo much more about myself than I knew before. Have I changed much? I wouldn’t say so since the core me is always gonna be the same, but it’s the different facets of my life which has been more polished. I reckon that colleges, Uni’s, or work can’t teach you that stuff even if you paid your tuitions/dues.)
Breaking the news: He expected for the worst from his parents and went beyond to only telling one of them first instead of breaking the news to both, since he thought that might be easier on them. He told his father first and his father responded with, ‘Well, can you get that “fixed” by a doctor?’ 24 hours later, his dad had a miraculous change of attitude and supported him. In the end, both parents took the news surprisingly well and responded with, “don’t tell your mom/dad. Let me talk to her/him.” (Not to generalize the whole Chinese culture and in any other cultures, but I guess very traditional parents and their take on homosexuality would be similar to G Bush’s policy for gays in the US military – Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.)
Through his own life story, he basically realized one thing about his relationship with his parents in a traditional Chinese household of a western society: My own preconceived expectation for my parents’ reaction or more or less the rejection (towards my sexuality) was actually more of a roadblock than the reaction actually is. Basically, the irony is that I was expecting my parents to be very narrow-minded, when in fact I was what I didn’t want them to be. I didn’t even give them a chance while longing for their support in my coming out.
The End.
I found this conversation with the gay couple to be very liberating in a sense of relationship building, if not educating. If anything, I have learned that I need to communicate with my parents more and better. Be more patient and really listen to them while expecting to be heard.
Looking back my last night in Melbourne with them, I wish I had discussed what I discussed with them prior to the last night. I also wished that we had hung out even more. But I guess sometimes, it’s not about something happening more or took place earlier, but more so that I should be happy that it even happened. While I am not religious, but it’s hard not to consider that there’s really such a thing as destiny.
I met up with the gay couple during my last night in Melbourne. I first met them randomly, appropriately, on my first night in Melbourne at a Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown, so it’s only appropriate that I’d see them again before I leave.
I had previously talked about them on my blog and have since them hung out with them quite a few times. Why chilling out with the gay couple? Because they were always fun to hang out with and I’ve always had very stimulating conversations with them about anything and everything. Especially the professor whom always had something interesting to tell me whether if it’s about a particular type of fish, the ecology, or let’s say Vietnamese Pho noodles.
The couple profile: Singaporean/Chinese Aussie who’s also an ecology professor at a local university in town and an Irish Aussie from a small town just outside of Melbourne who’s just recently quit his job at a major airline. Both in their mid-30’s.
Anyway, we met up for some beers and just talked about the tentative plan for the rest of my trip around Oz. Since the ecology prof is quite a scientist, he told me a lot about the reptile center in Alice Springs and interesting insect such as the Honey Pot Ants. Basically the Honey Pot Ants are also known as Bush Tuckers. Bush Tuckers are just any edible things in the outback (Tucker = Food in Aussie slang).
Honey Pot Ants are ants with huge bums full of sugary liquid. Their main job is to get fed by the worker ants and store all that sweet and sticky gel in their tummy to be used later on for themselves and other ants in the colony through regurgitation when the food source becomes scarce. The local aboriginals have long eaten the honey pot ants as a source of food amongst other things in their diet. The honey pot ants are just like normal ants, but with a bum that’s the size of a small grape that’s full of sugar. One would eat them by simply picking the ant up by its head and bite its “grape bum” off. Yummy!
On a different note, the conversation then turned into my plans for “when I grow up” and my plans for after I get back to Canada. “To be honest, I have no idea about what I’m gonna do for when I go home,” I said to them. They asked me the simple and ever dreaded question of, “what do you WANT to do?”
I told them about my intentions in becoming a travel show host or perhaps get into the NGO field (I have a few other plans as well, but all of them are just rough ideas. Nothing concrete.), but I am concerned that it may not be a career since I most likely won’t be able to save up for a house or simply support my parents once they get really old.
Knowing that the professor of Chinese descent would understand the conflicting values of being a Chinese immigrant raised in Western society, I went on to express my concerns in not knowing if I should follow my dream and do what I want to do instead of doing something safe and secure that I think my parents would want me to (keywords: I think).
The couple and especially the Chinese Aussie echoed me in terms of my thoughts on this. He related to me through his time spent overseas teaching at universities in Finland and Massachusetts. According to him, living and working abroad in the US had really raised his awareness not only about the world, but also about himself. He had become more comfortable with himself as a person and also in terms of his sexuality. It was while abroad he decided that he’d come out and tell his ever-traditional Chinese parents about him being gay. (It’s true, I have found that I think about different things even more now that I’ve been traveling alone for so long. It’s about being alone in an foreign environment for extended period of time when you have to deal with others and yourself. I have learned soo much more about myself than I knew before. Have I changed much? I wouldn’t say so since the core me is always gonna be the same, but it’s the different facets of my life which has been more polished. I reckon that colleges, Uni’s, or work can’t teach you that stuff even if you paid your tuitions/dues.)
Breaking the news: He expected for the worst from his parents and went beyond to only telling one of them first instead of breaking the news to both, since he thought that might be easier on them. He told his father first and his father responded with, ‘Well, can you get that “fixed” by a doctor?’ 24 hours later, his dad had a miraculous change of attitude and supported him. In the end, both parents took the news surprisingly well and responded with, “don’t tell your mom/dad. Let me talk to her/him.” (Not to generalize the whole Chinese culture and in any other cultures, but I guess very traditional parents and their take on homosexuality would be similar to G Bush’s policy for gays in the US military – Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.)
Through his own life story, he basically realized one thing about his relationship with his parents in a traditional Chinese household of a western society: My own preconceived expectation for my parents’ reaction or more or less the rejection (towards my sexuality) was actually more of a roadblock than the reaction actually is. Basically, the irony is that I was expecting my parents to be very narrow-minded, when in fact I was what I didn’t want them to be. I didn’t even give them a chance while longing for their support in my coming out.
The End.
I found this conversation with the gay couple to be very liberating in a sense of relationship building, if not educating. If anything, I have learned that I need to communicate with my parents more and better. Be more patient and really listen to them while expecting to be heard.
Looking back my last night in Melbourne with them, I wish I had discussed what I discussed with them prior to the last night. I also wished that we had hung out even more. But I guess sometimes, it’s not about something happening more or took place earlier, but more so that I should be happy that it even happened. While I am not religious, but it’s hard not to consider that there’s really such a thing as destiny.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Last Days in Melb
Pic above: Cape Woolamai on Philip Island 2 hours South East of Melbourne.
1) Late April, one Indian cabbie got stabbed and was only released from the hospital after 2 weeks. Young, 23 and studying in Australia, he was not anticipating to be hurt by one of his patrons. A great outcry amongst the cabbie community, particularly the Indian cabbies got what they wanted from the Victoria gov’t for installing dividers in the taxi’s like the ones in NYC. This marked the 6th major attack since the beginning of 2008. Various minor attacks and racially motivated assaults of cabbies have not been taken seriously by the Victorian Police. The cabbies blocked Melbourne’s busiest intersection, Flinders and Swantson for more than 19 hours to get most of their demands met by the Transport Minister.
2) Met an ex-winery worker a month ago, he told me that they had a large number of Cambodian works on the estate for years. I asked him if these Cambodians were legal or not, he replied, “I don’t know, but I am not sure if I wanna know. All I know is that they were very hard workers.”
3) Met some random Korean girl who’s hanging out a lot with this Aussie guy. The Aussie guy just spent 5 years abroad in all different places. He just came back from China after a year of teaching English in Chengdu and Beijing. Speaks full Chinese and some Japanese/Korean. The Korean girl also speaks not bad Chinese.
He introduced me to some Taiwanese girl and both the Korean and Taiwanese girl found it intriguing that I am from Canada but also Taiwanese. Pretty weird. Gotta love the Asian girls. The Taiwanese girl proceeded to refer me as “the monk” because she thinks I look like one with my hair cut. Her English was actually quite good, I have met a few Taiwanese along the way, and their english are either really good or the opposite. No in betweens!
As for the Korean girl, she proceeded to use her limited English in conveying her dislike for the air from China. According to her, the polluted and sandy air from Northern China drifts to Korea and she’s not a fan. Her exact words were, “I hate China and I hate China air”. Haha…….I thought that was pretty funny.
This marked the first time for a long time since any Asian travelers in Oz actually engaged me in a conversation. I find them generally stare at me trying to figure out where’s this guy from, but never approach and ask me. Although I am guilty of the same thing, but I can usually tell if they were East Asians or South or SE Asians based on their features and also accents or the language they were speaking at the time.) *However I still have a hard time telling the difference between a Swedish, German, Austrian, Finnish and Dutch.
4) My Italian roommate (from Venice) has been real funny. He tries to be so precise describing to me his feelings and emotions every time he sees me and before he goes to bed all without using any perceive words. He also uses a lot of figure of speech that are not usual to me or basically made up, yet still able to get his msg across to me. I find it extremely interesting to hear him talk mostly because I know what he’s trying to say, but in a very comical way (aside from his hand gestures and singing-style of talking).
5) Boy, do I got a story for you about this African American I met 2 nights ago. I thought it was quite random since American travelers are almost somewhat of a rarity here, let alone an African American from Hawaii.
Some sleezy Aussie next to me introduced him to me jokingly, “He’s from America, too!” I cringed a bit, but knew he was trying too hard to be funny. The 34 year old American dude and I chatted for a bit in front of 2 Aussies and an English girl. (I think his presence really offended the English girl, for what comes out of his mouth more than his nationality.)
Once he’d found out that I was from Vancouver, he went ahead and pronounced that he also lived in Vancouver (Yaletown) and that one of his best buds in Vancity was also Chinese. (Should I hi-5 him at this moment? I was thinking no.)
I asked what brought him to Oz of all places and he gave me 2 letters (CP) which expresses his “fondness” for white women. Almost immediately after he said that, he quickly added, “And they love me.” (which mostly to me was to re-assure himself. Somebody smell a dish of insecurity cooking? Who ordered a supersized dose of ego-booster?!)
Of the whole time he had his shades on for the 30 minutes and refusing to remove them after the girls asked him to take them off. His explanation: “I am cool.” (which is pretty ironic since the answer itself is pretty lame.) He then went on to talk about women in a very degrading way thinking that he’s pretty coy and funny, which then offended the English girl greatly. (I didn’t do much in terms of defending my English friend since I was just soo absorbed in the whole mess of things thinking to myself, “wow dude, you are not doing your fellow country men a favour by talking like this. If anything, you just reinforced the stereotypes of both Americans and African Americans.”)
Finally, my English friend let him have it. She pretty much told him off in the nicest way possible (if there is such way.) in a nice and prim English accent. Hahahha. Surprisingly, the American guy shut up and left after a few minutes seeing that he wasn’t welcome here. The sleezy Aussie left with him, apparently opposite do not always attract!
24 hours later, the American guy apologized to the English girl with a weak excuse that he was in a bad mood. Good effort though, not many guys would even think about apologizing.
6) Rented a car yesterday from work and drove 2 hours to see some penguins on the beach on Philip Island with my Dutch and Japanese friends. As a major tourist attraction other than the Great Ocean Road near Melbourne, the island boast the world’s smallest penguins affectionly known as the “Little Penguins.” They can also be found in NZ and right along Melbourne’s Port Philip area along St. Kilda’s piers. They come back inland from the sea every night at dusk. The biggest of them gets to about 30 cm tall but most about 20 cms and smell like chickens. If you ever been to a chicken farm, you know what I am talking about.
30 minutes and $20 towards conservations later, we saw probably about less than 70 pens in the bitter cold even though the night before over 778 penguins came in. (I am thinking that that number is most likely the total number that came in all over the island along the beaches.) It was def a weird but interesting feeling to see the Little Penguins.
They wobble around on land because they don’t have joints in their legs and seem to always stare into the blank space for a long time. Sad thing is that no pictures were allowed to be taken of the Little Penguins. Flash from the cameras blinds them, but no-flash photography or camcorders weren’t allowed either. Now I just got the funny feeling of seeing them embedded with me for life now. Ha!
However, the most memorable part of the day has gotta be our treks to a bunch of igneous rock (granite) formations (see picture above) called The Pinnacles at Cape Woolamai. We took soo many jumping pictures there. It was awesome.
Random:
1) I noticed that all the gas station doors open quite slow here in Melbourne. I am guessing it’s an effort to reduce robbery? I came up with that theory since I couldn’t explain it otherwise. One literally has to walk right up against the glass door and wait for 5 seconds for it to start opening slowly but surely. My tendency is to look straight up into the sensor to see what’s wrong with it. I am guess if they installed a camera there, which they didn’t, it would be very effective to capture the face of the robbers. Me soo smart!
2) Throughout my working times in Oz, my supervisors from all my jobs always refer to my schedule as “roster” not schedule. And they constantly “take the piss out of me” (making fun of me) for using the word – schedule. They thought “schedule” sounds “too serious”. (Thinking to myself, WTF? It’s work…it’s supposed to be serious. Work is not like a sports team………that’s a roster!)
3) After the same English girl, mentioned above, prompted me to go out to “Neighbour’s Night” I finally attended in shame. Lol for those of you who haven’t heard of “Neighbour’s”, it’s like the Aussie version of “Days of Our Lives.” The show is not available in Canada and oh my, we shall be ever grateful for it. However, our other commonwealth friends aren’t soo lucky as they all get it in the UK and New Zealand. (Note: I feel like an idiot, but I am really lacking in the history and world knowledge department. I had no idea what UK of GB includes more than just England. UK of Great Britain includes 4 countries: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northen Ireland. Another English girl broke my miserable dream thinking that the UK = just England.)
Anyway, with the personal embarrassment aside, “Neighbour’s Night” is like a bar night out with a fan base of mostly English girls meeting a few of the actors/actresses from the show. I pretty much only went out because it was my English friend’s last night in Melbourne before she flies to Perth. At the end of the night, I must say it was more fun that I thought it’d be. I paid absolutely no attention to the soap opera “stars” instead met some pretty cool people whom I might be meeting up in Cairns or somewhere along the east coast of Queensland.
4) Found a nationalist website in Beijing called “anti-CNN.com”(http://www.anti-cnn.com/)
Pretty funny and soo stereotypical of some of the Chinese locals pointing their dismays with the Western media and finger-pointing. While some have grounds, others are just plain attacks with foul taste. As it says on the website:
“This website is established to expose the lies and distortions in the western media. The site is maintained by volunteers, who are not associated with any government officials.
We are not against the western media, but against the lies and fabricated stories in the media. We are not against the western people, but against the prejudice from the western society.”
5) Along the highway in the State of Victoria, there are emergency phones every few kms or so and the coolest thing about them is that they are all supported by solar power from the solar panel on the top of the phone pole.
More interestingly, all along the coastal highways of Oz, they were always sectioned with say “A12” for the section of the beach, in case of emergency. Therefore one could identify where he or the accident is located along a particular part of the beach. I thought that was pretty smart especially for a coast line that’s known for its shipwreck throughout its early history. As Australia’s nation anthem (Advance Australia Fair) suggests, Oz really is “a girt by the sea.”
6) Loving this song at the moment:
“Love Song” by Sara Bareilles (American girl from Cali whom started her career with Maroon 5. This song is mos def Maroon 5esque)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gn9g_KjaVc or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AbFcFCnsHY&feature=related
Oh, let’s not forget Kanye’s “American Boy” either.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Everybody Likes Kanga?
From what I have seen and heard, Australians and Canadians are somewhat similar in terms of the constant debate over their respective cultural identities or the lack of so to speak. Just to provide 3 examples:
1) Both countries have had talks about ridding the Queen on their coins. Every now and then when there’s an election or some kinda political/socio-economical/cultural movement, there’s been a talk of the removal.
2) Both countries have had apologized and continued to compensate their indigenous groups for various wrong-doing’s.
3) Both countries arguably suffer from the ever dreaded “Inferior Complex”, with each attempting to partially establish its own identity by the simple process of elimination – identifying themselves as who they are NOT. i.e. Australia ISN’T England and Canada ISN’T the US, yet both are so similar to the comparison. Both countries have got a chip on their shoulder.
Anyway, there was a big backlash in Australia in 1996 after the closing ceremonies for the Atlanta Summer Olympics (Intro to the next summer olympics of Sydney 2000). In the video below, there were some Australian kids riding on bicycles while strapped to inflated rubber kangaroos. The dissents’ case: “We don’t understand what do kangaroos have to do with the Australian culture?! It’s so stereotypical of how the outsiders perceive Australia. We didn’t do ourselves a favour by further playing up the stereotype.”
Random:
1) My friend, Jeff, got me real interested in the event which took place 40 years ago aka “Mai 68.” The most notable image associated with the event is accompanied with the French phrase, “Sois Jeune Et Tais Toi” or “Be Young and Shut Up”. The “failed” movement by the students and 2/3rd of France’s work force lead to impactful result – replacement of conservative morality (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) with liberal morality (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) which continues to shape today’s France. (paraphrased from wiki) For more info:
2) Thought this was a pretty funny fact: Canada has the “most” number of Democratic Superdelegates in the world outside of USA – 2. Both in resides in Toronto.
3) Been reading up on the presidential election in Zimbabwe and I honestly can’t fathom how things are operated in that country or in Africa for that matter. As the Brits would say, “I’m absolutely gutted by the events unfolding.” Somebody’s gotta help them out. Nobody deserves to live like that.
1) Both countries have had talks about ridding the Queen on their coins. Every now and then when there’s an election or some kinda political/socio-economical/cultural movement, there’s been a talk of the removal.
2) Both countries have had apologized and continued to compensate their indigenous groups for various wrong-doing’s.
3) Both countries arguably suffer from the ever dreaded “Inferior Complex”, with each attempting to partially establish its own identity by the simple process of elimination – identifying themselves as who they are NOT. i.e. Australia ISN’T England and Canada ISN’T the US, yet both are so similar to the comparison. Both countries have got a chip on their shoulder.
Anyway, there was a big backlash in Australia in 1996 after the closing ceremonies for the Atlanta Summer Olympics (Intro to the next summer olympics of Sydney 2000). In the video below, there were some Australian kids riding on bicycles while strapped to inflated rubber kangaroos. The dissents’ case: “We don’t understand what do kangaroos have to do with the Australian culture?! It’s so stereotypical of how the outsiders perceive Australia. We didn’t do ourselves a favour by further playing up the stereotype.”
Random:
1) My friend, Jeff, got me real interested in the event which took place 40 years ago aka “Mai 68.” The most notable image associated with the event is accompanied with the French phrase, “Sois Jeune Et Tais Toi” or “Be Young and Shut Up”. The “failed” movement by the students and 2/3rd of France’s work force lead to impactful result – replacement of conservative morality (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) with liberal morality (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) which continues to shape today’s France. (paraphrased from wiki) For more info:
2) Thought this was a pretty funny fact: Canada has the “most” number of Democratic Superdelegates in the world outside of USA – 2. Both in resides in Toronto.
3) Been reading up on the presidential election in Zimbabwe and I honestly can’t fathom how things are operated in that country or in Africa for that matter. As the Brits would say, “I’m absolutely gutted by the events unfolding.” Somebody’s gotta help them out. Nobody deserves to live like that.
Afrika
I have 2 friends whom were traveling in South Africa recently. I just happened to come across this article on the globe and it just caught my attention like a moth to the light. I thought this is both interesting and important to know.
While reading this article, I felt sick to my stomach and powerless to say the least. I can not understand how people can treat each other this way. I sound righteous when I say that this type of things shouldn’t have occurred in the first place. I am stunned, but instead of turning away from the TV or whatever info that’s available in any mediums simply because they are depressing, I kept reading. The ugly truth can be sickening, but I can not afford to ignore it.
On a different note, I used to think that “neutral” countries are something to be appraised of, but come to think of it, being neutral IS really picking a side! Essentially, by doing nothing, one’s picking a stance. You wouldn’t let a blind person cross the street when the light is red, would you? Exactly!
*Please note, I remember watching a program briefly here in Aus about the inefficiency and corruptions in the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission.)
**The second article after is more of an editorial. Interesting concept of “celebrity-colonialism”. While there’s a lot of criticism, but no constructive solutions were offered.
What's bred in the bones
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Globe and Mail of Saturday, October 20, 2007
May 9, 2008 at 4:30 PM EDT
MAFIKENG, SOUTH AFRICA — They thought it was a fool's errand. When South Africa's Missing Persons Task Team headed to Post Chalmers, an old farm in the Eastern Cape, back in July, none of its investigators believed they would find a thing.
Security agents working for the apartheid-era government had used the farm at least twice. They brought kidnapped black anti-apartheid activists there - including, in 1982, Siphiwo Mthimkulu, 22, on crutches because he had been tortured in jail for much of the previous year - interrogated them, shot them, doused them in diesel fuel and dumped them in bonfires. Or so they told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
But 20 years had passed since the last known crime was committed there, and since then the vast farm had been used as an abattoir. What were the odds of finding any identifiable trace of the five dead men? Slim to none.
But the killings had been so savage that the team members felt they owed it to the families of the slain to find some scrap of proof of how they died, and some fragment of their remains. One of apartheid's most malignant effects was the information it denied black South Africans: People disappeared, and it could be years before their anxious mothers or husbands knew if they had been murdered, imprisoned or exiled. Some still don't know.
“At the very least we had to try,” said Madeleine Fullard, who heads the team.
And so they drove 12 hours into the heart of the dry and desolate Eastern Cape, toting a miniature tractor. They shovelled off layers of gravel that covered the farm yard, and began to dig, searching for signs of a fire. On the first day, nothing. The second day, nothing. It was tedious work in an icy wind.
At the end of the third day, just as the team was beginning a morose conversation about having failed, they caught sight of a burn. When fires are made on open earth, the soil discolours and hardens like clay, an effect that can be seen years later.
Claudia Bisso, the forensic archeologist on the team, began to excavate the fire site. Soon, however, it appeared that the burn was simply the remains of a long-ago campfire.
“We were giving up - we were just about leaving,” Ms. Fullard recalled. But when they took a last scrape at the site of the fire, they caught sight of a thick black seam of dense charcoal. Ms. Bisso resumed digging.
“We nearly missed it: another two centimetres and we would have missed it,” Ms. Fullard recalled with a shudder.
Within minutes, Ms. Bisso had found shards of burnt bone. But was it human? Then they found a phalange, the fourth small bone of the fourth finger. Soon a vertebrae. Then a bullet. Ms. Bisso unearthed a burn area three metres square. Stunned, the team members silently carried buckets of blackened soil, charcoal, melted metal, bone shards and burnt tire fragments away from the pit.
Ms. Bisso is not superstitious. She has spent her entire professional life with bones and bodies and in graveyards; she does not spook and she doesn't go in for the unearthly.
“But I will say it: Those men wanted to be found. They were not going to let us leave without finding them.”
JUSTICE UNDONE
When South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded its work in 1998, it had a list of 477 people who were still missing. Their families had come before the commission and reported their disappearance, but their fates, and the whereabouts of their remains, were still unknown.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands more cases whose families had chosen not to go to the TRC, but who have never received the bodies of their lost children. President Thabo Mbeki, for example, had a teenage son who disappeared, amid rumours he followed his father into exile.
The TRC recognized the families' desire to have, at least, the bodies back, and recommended that the new democratic government set up a team to try to solve the apartheid-era mysteries and return the bodies of those who disappeared to their families.
Ms. Fullard, 42, is a petite blonde historian who grew up in a white liberal household in Cape Town. She felt alienated and lonely until, in her teens, she discovered the coalitions of civic organizations that were fighting apartheid. She became a dedicated campaigner - she vividly remembers marching in the streets to protest the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Mthimkulu. When the TRC was founded, she got a job as a researcher, taking on the task of piecing together some of the most grim and bloody events that were committed in the name of protecting white privilege - her privilege.
She was with the TRC from its first days until the last report was written, and then she took the list of 477 to the new National Prosecuting Authority and set up shop as an investigator in a cramped Pretoria office soon overflowing with paper. Relying at first on funding from human-rights organizations, she managed to assemble a small team. She hired Tshiamo Moela, now 29, who was doing research for Khumulani, a charity that campaigns for retribution for apartheid victims. (He speaks all 11 of South Africa's official languages and is a crack logistician.) And she set out to recruit Nozizwe Mohale to join them, too.
Ms. Mohale is also a veteran of the fight against apartheid. She followed her father, a guerrilla, into exile in Swaziland; as a teenager she joined the armed wing of the African National Congress - Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the Spear of the Nation - and rose through the ranks of the guerrilla movement until she was privy to much of its intelligence against the apartheid state.
After the transition to democracy, Ms. Mohale headed an office in the ANC tasked with helping fighters integrate into civilian life. Ms. Fullard went repeatedly to see Ms. Mohale seeking information on this mission or that operative, until she persuaded her to join the team.
Ms. Mohale understands why Ms. Fullard needs her, for her connections and her credibility. Otherwise, she said, “The families say, ‘It is the whites who killed our children and now the whites who are investigating.' “ But Ms. Mohale has, in her 18 months in the job, come to an intimate understanding that these cases are not always as straightforward as black victim, white perpetrator. These days, she finds herself asking probing questions of the very people she once trusted with her life. Her probing is not always welcome.
DIRTY WORK
The day after the team found the first remains at the Post Chalmers farm, their supervisor arrived at the site – Anton Ackermann is one of South Africa's leading prosecutors, and a veteran of trials of former state agents. He took one look around and said to the team, “I know how these guys worked. Check the septic tank.”
Ms. Fullard was astonished; she had not even realized they were working near a septic system. But they quickly traced the farm sewage system and dug out the top of the tank. When they pried off the lid, they were hit with the stink of sewage - and the powerful reek of 25-year-old diesel.
Over the next several weeks, they scooped out 20,000 litres of raw sewage in buckets, sieved through it for solid matter and dried the material. Again, they found burnt bone fragments, plus pieces of charred tire, a bunch of keys and a watch strap.
They invited the victims' families to come and see the work, and soon the elderly mothers and now-grown children of the five dead men had joined in, gently fingering through the dried sewage to find the teeth and bones of their sons and fathers.
In the end, the team amassed more than 250 kilograms of burnt material, and Ms. Bisso began the long, painstaking process of separating it into charcoal, metal, soil and human remains. She could tell from the shape of the vertebrae that most of the remains are those of young people; she could not tell, yet, how many. “There are definitely three, and very probably more.”
The team was shaken by their discovery at the farm, by the evidence of how horribly the dead were treated. “Burning them would have been a hectic job, said Ms. Fullard: “Why not take them out into the hills and bury them, or let the animals eat them? To roast a body you've got to turn it - the smell, the popping, the crackling, and my God, the smoke.” She shuddered.
The primary goal of this team is humanitarian, to return the missing to their families. But the bones and teeth they found at Post Chalmers are more than lost human remains. They are definitive evidence of lies. The security agents who committed the murders at the farm told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in their amnesty applications that they burnt the bodies and scooped the ashes into sacks, then dumped them in a nearby river.
As soon as Ms. Bisso read the TRC transcripts, she was suspicious of that claim: “I read the testimony and I said, ‘No, you would not have ashes. It takes a long time to burn a body and overnight you don't get just ashes, you have chunks of bone. And it would be too hot to put it in plastic bags the next morning.”
Now, in the boxes of burnt matter, she has proof: The bodies were burnt with tires, not just wood. They were broken up with a metal implement. And the ashes were never taken to a river, but dumped in a septic tank.
“I have waves of real fury around the septic tank, real clenched-teeth moments of anger,” Ms. Fullard said, with the quick rage that is fed by her work, and often leaves her lonely these days. “I do have fantasies of taking [the agents] and dunking them in the septic tank: ‘Tell the truth!' But at the end of the day all we can do is curse their fates, show they were liars and make sure the families get the remains.”
FRAGILE PACT
In fact, she can do more than that. The condition for amnesty from the TRC was total, truthful disclosure. Three of the security agents who were given amnesty in the first set of Post Chalmers killings have since died, and the fourth is ill. The team has sent an emissary to ask if he would like to make a true disclosure of what happened before he dies. Behind that invitation lies the threat of revoking his amnesty, and possible prosecution.
Four other agents were involved in the second killings. They were denied amnesty because their accounts differed too much to be judged truthful, but they were never prosecuted. Now, the South African government may have evidence to try them tried for the crime, 20 years later.
That idea may appeal to the families of the murdered activists, and there is a vocal community of apartheid-victim groups in South Africa keen to see more trials for crimes under white rule. But there are just as many voices raised in warning against reopening these cases.
“It is a serious thing - we have two rights, as it were, competing,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who oversaw the TRC, in an interview in his office in Cape Town last week. “The families want to know what happened, why and so forth, and they have a perfect right to that knowledge. And then there would be those on the other side who would say, ‘This thing is fragile, be careful.'”
Thirteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is a nation transformed, and yet the gulf between black and white remains enormous. The bulk of land, wealth and resources remain in white hands; unemployment is still more than 50 per cent and many black citizens, living without electricity, piped water or solid roofs, feel the promise of black rule has been hollow.
“What has changed? For the average, ordinary citizen, very little,” said Yasmin Sooka, a former TRC commissioner who now advocates for victims. “Reparations have been miniscule and from a very small group of people. In terms of real meaningful redistribution, what's actually happened? Almost nothing.”
At the same time, whites feel shut out of government, and are dismissed as racists if they complain about the outrageous rates of violent crime.
When Adriaan Vlok, the former minister of state security, was convicted in August of trying to assassinate a former guerrilla, now a cabinet minister, there was a national uproar. Many people, particularly Afrikaners, said that revisiting these cases would undermine whatever steps had been taken toward reconciliation. They called it a “witch hunt” and accused the ANC government of undermining the interim constitution that guided the transition to democracy.
The risk inherent in these prosecutions, say critics such as Archbishop Tutu, is not of violence or civil unrest, but rather a more amorphous but disquieting threat that the brittle pact that has allowed South Africa to move forward - the deal, in essence, that whites would cede power, blacks would forgive and there would be no excessive probing into the past - may crumble, with unpredictable results.
This pact, which formed the basis for the TRC, remains profoundly controversial. Four apartheid victims' groups are now suing the government to deny it the right to grant perpetrators any further indemnities. In the decade since the TRC, the concept of international justice has taken strong root globally: It is no longer the fashion to turn the page on crimes against humanity, but rather to prosecute, even long after the fact.
But the Archbishop and others warn that in South Africa, at least, this would be a mistake. “The raison d'être of the TRC was, ‘Let's look at enough of the past so that we can form a thumbnail sketch of it,” he said, “but that we mustn't dilly-dally too long, because that could jeopardize [peace].'”
DETECTIVE JOB
Ms. Fullard, Ms. Mohale and the rest of the team are looking not to jeopardize peace, but to restore it. They know that families are haunted by not knowing, and it is the desire to be able to give answers that fuels them through lengthy and complex investigations.
The process relies on a mix of skill and luck. It starts when Ms. Mohale interviews former comrades and commanders of the missing. “I ask them, ‘What do you know about where this person went, who were they with? This is their [code] name - do you know the real name?” Now 44, warm and quick to laugh, Ms. Mohale has a natural ease with the families, and gets considerable pleasure from working her networks.
Armed with these first, vague recollections, the missing-persons team goes to the archives of the state-security agencies. The surviving pockets of the perversely well-ordered bureaucracy of apartheid provides a rich trove of information. The government, for example, kept a photo album featuring every suspected guerrilla who went into exile - 9,000 pictures by the time white rule ended. When security officers killed or imprisoned an activist, they crossed the picture out, so the team turns to those albums first.
They then look for police dockets on arrests or attacks with dates that correlate to the intelligence Ms. Mohale has gathered. If they find a report of “terrorists killed,” they look for inquest records and post-mortems, which suggest to them where to hunt for possible graves. This is often the most complex step in the process, because the local authorities buried the guerrillas they killed as “paupers” in unmarked graves, in open patches of the cemetery for which no records were kept.
Ms. Fullard looks for aerial photographs from the suspected year of burial to see if she can tell what part of a cemetery was being used, while Mr. Moela tracks down retired municipal workers or hearse drivers, to see if anyone remembers transporting the unclaimed bodies.
Once they have located the likely site, the team brings its small tractor and “trenches” the area until they find graves. Then the work is handed over to Ms. Fullard's final recruit, Claudia Bisso, a weathered 45-year-old Argentine with bleached, cropped hair and a permanent squint.
Ms. Bisso is part of the collective - legendary in humanitarian circles - of forensic experts formed after Argentina's truth commission on the dictatorship that ended in 1983. They set out first to find Argentina's 10,000 disappeared, but soon realized there was a desperate need for their skills in other countries, and began to send team members to other developing countries to offer training.
That's what first brought Ms. Bisso to Africa. She has looked for bodies after the civil wars in Sierra Leone, Angola and Zimbabwe, and at evidence of massacres in Darfur in Sudan. Now, she stays because she has fallen in love with an Afrikaner, an ex-soldier and mine-removal specialist, whom she met at a mass grave in the former Yugoslavia. Ms. Fullard wanted Ms. Bisso to handle the exhumations because South Africa has no homegrown tradition of human-rights forensics - people with those skills here work mostly with police.
They trench the paupers' section of cemeteries, opening shallow lines until they catch a hint of crumbled coffin. Then they use scoops and shovels that look like children's beach toys to dig away the dirt until they expose a skull. Looking at brow bone, jaw and teeth, Ms. Bisso and her students can quickly assess the gender and age at death of the skeleton. If it could be someone whose remains they seek, they look also for injures, such as bullet holes in the back of the head, that match the post-mortem report.
If they can confirm a likely identity, they rebury the remains and leave them until they can contact the families and arrange to bring them to the cemetery for the exhumation. They have done 38 of these digs so far, recovering the remains of 44 people, and returned 19 to their families.
“Families always ask, ‘Did he suffer a lot?' “ Ms. Bisso mused, while she sifted through shards of bone and charred tire. “And the secret is to always tell the truth. Are you going to lie and say, ‘He had a very peaceful death'? They have the right to know.”
BIG BROTHER'S BONES
Ramodiehe Waisi's femurs were too big for the bags. The knobby ends of the bones, yellowed and crusted with dirt, stuck out of the paper sacks prepared for them, the sort of bag slid over a baguette at the corner bakery. Morungwa Mosothwane could not fold the bags neatly closed, and instead stood them up in a cardboard box, frowning a bit at this untidy solution.
“He was a very big guy,” said Neo Waisi, Ramodiehe's younger brother, as he watched the archeology student gently slide bones into bags, one for the radius, one for the calcaneus, one for the vertebrae. When he saw how big the bones were, he was sure he had found the answer he had been seeking for 23 years: These, he was sure, were his big brother's bones.
Ramodiehe left the family home in Bloemfontein in 1980 and went into exile in Botswana, joining the MK. He was sent back into South Africa on a mission in September 1986, and he and his comrade-in-arms got as far as Mafikeng, a town near the Botswana border, in the parched, scrubby north of South Africa. He was never seen alive again; his family, all this time, had only rumours of his death.
The Missing Persons team found Mr. Waisi almost by accident: They were searching for the remains of eight MK fighters, reported missing to the TRC, whom they suspected had been buried here, close to the border.
Poring over police dockets one day, they found a case in which police had spotted MK men and hunted them down. This case was not reported to the Truth Commission, and so the team added it to their list. In Mmabatho cemetery, they opened 29 graves looking for their MK veterans, and found a skeleton that matched the post-mortem injury descriptions of Mr. Waisi.
Ms. Mohale made the phone call: We think we found him. And so, a few weeks ago, Mr. Waisi's elderly mother Jeanette got on a plane for the first time in her life, and flew here from Bloemfontein in the centre of the country.
She, her three surviving children and the family of David Takalani Nambaye, who died with Ramodiehe that day, came to the graveyard in the grey light just after dawn, as pools of rain rippled in the wind. Ms. Mohale showed them the graves, and a minister led them in a brief prayer, asking for strength for what they would see in the day ahead.
Within a few hours, a crowd assembled, and the family took seats in the front row of chairs laid out under a vast white tent. When the team exhumes a fighter, the liberation movements come to pay belated respects: Choirs sang freedom songs, and former MK commanders recalled the days of struggle. When there are survivors of the incidents in which fighters died, Ms. Fullard invites them to come and speak, although “it can be incredibly painful for them to tell the story, and for the family to hear it.”
She tries to make sure someone tells the family how their child died. Often it is ugly information: In one case it was the dead man's aunt who tipped police off when he snuck back in from exile. More often than the team ever expected, they learn that people died after betrayal by an informer of one kind or another in their own communities. Then there is the cold, vicious language of the police reports and the inquests, so contemptuous of black lives. And often, grisly police photographs. Ms. Fullard gives it all to the families.
“They were denied information in the past,” she said. “It's their right to know as much as possible. It's not our task to censor.”
The families invariably want to take remains home for reburial that day. The Waisis were no exception. “We will take him home and bury him properly,” said Neo Waisi. (In fact they will have to wait for DNA analysis to confirm whether they really are his brother's bones.) “My mother was always counting her kids and saying, ‘But one is missing.' She was distraught. Those wounds were not healing. It is better now to know.”
But there was slim comfort in what they had learned - that an informer recognized Ramodiehe Waisi getting into a minibus taxi, that he was relentlessly hunted down by police, first by road and then in a helicopter, and that when they closed in, rather than be captured, Mr. Waisi killed himself with the hand grenade he carried.
Ms. Mosothwane, one of Ms. Bisso's student archeologists, explained all this to Mrs. Waisi, leaning with her over the edge of one of the graves. She pointed to the missing bones of the right hand of one skeleton, which matched the description of grenade injuries in the police post-mortem. The family stood grim-faced, starting down at the exposed bones. Finally Mrs. Waisi led the way back to her seat, looking even smaller and older than she had moments before.
Provincial premier Edna Molewa, her head elegantly wrapped in bright orange cloth, stepped forward to address the families. “Thank you so much indeed for giving us your children,” she said gently to the two mothers, who sat holding their cardigans tightly closed. “You may not have known they were joining the fight to liberate South Africa - we are who we are today in a South Africa that is liberated because of you.”
Then she turned to Ms. Mosothwane and the others, labouring in the graves. “We do indeed have confidence that you will restore dignity to those who are missing - help us find all of our missing.”
AWKWARD QUESTIONS
But just who are the missing? Many of the cases reported to the TRC are people such as Mr. Waisi, members of the liberation movements, particularly the ANC, who disappeared at the hands of the apartheid security forces.
But of the 25,000 people killed between 1960, the start of the armed struggle, and the transition to democracy in 1994, an estimated 15,000 died in civil unrest - in “intracivilian” violence, killed by their own communities as collaborators, or in fighting between ANC supporters and Inkatha, the Zulu party then used as a “third force” by the white government. Many Inkatha members are still missing.
The missing-persons team has also been asked to help with the case of white-government soldiers killed by guerrillas in South Africa's proxy war in Angola.
Ms. Mohale would dearly love to take on the few cases of white soldiers whose remains the state did not recover - “to show we will do anyone's case” - but those in the old forces remain mistrustful of the new government and won't ask for their help, she said.
Perhaps most delicate of all, there were the extra-judicial killings committed by the liberation movements themselves. The ANC provided the TRC with a list of nearly a hundred people who were killed in its military camps in exile as suspected spies or for other transgressions. There may be many more.
For Ms. Mohale, these cases strike particularly close to home.” I have a brother who died in an ANC camp in Angola,” she said. “And every time I see my ailing mother, she says to me, ‘When are you going to bring my baby back home?' “ Her younger brother had followed her into exile and into the movement. All she knows of his death is that it was the result of some kind of disciplinary measure that went too far. There are others in the ANC who know more. “But they say, ‘We won't tell you the name [of his killer]. We don't want you to overreact.' But I pray every day I will meet up [with that person].”
Ms. Mohale does not blame the ANC: “I took it that an individual did this, not the ANC did this.” But since she started asking questions, and started to work with the Missing Persons team, she has been given a frosty reception at many ANC gatherings. “I go to those offices that I set up, and they say, ‘Oh it's you, you're here.' “ She has little time for people who tell her - with increasing vehemence - that those who fought for liberation must not be investigated in the same way as the apartheid government: “I say, ‘Those parents are waiting patiently. If their children died at the hands of the ANC, you have to tell.'”
WITCH HUNT?
Former police minister Adriaan Vlok, his police chief Johanne van der Merwe, and three other senior police officers were charged this year for apartheid-era crimes including an attempt to assassinate Rev. Frank Chikane, now a cabinet minister.
Mr. Vlok and his co-accused plea-bargained and were given a suspended sentence, but the case was significant because the previous white government had, in its past submissions to the TRC, claimed that it had no policy to commit illegal acts during apartheid. Any that occurred - such as the incineration at Post Chalmers - were the work of a few rogue officers, they said. The Vlok conviction proved that claim false.
But Mr. Vlok and his co-accused gave no sign of guilt or remorse, to the immense frustration of many South Africans, who feel the security services and the military have never come clean about the nature and extent of their activities. Instead, Mr. Vlok said he felt “deeply wronged and even embittered” by the leaders whose orders he was following when he committed the acts in question, and by the leaders today who were sacrificing national reconciliation in the name of political point-scoring by prosecuting him.
The ensuing public debate, impassioned and often bitter, included complaints about the lenient sentence and demands that other senior white-rule figures such as former president and Nobel Peace laureate F. W. de Klerk also be charged.
“The Vlok case makes a mockery of justice,” said Ms. Sooka, who now heads the Foundation for Human Rights in Pretoria. No greater insight into the actions of the state was obtained, she said; victims gained nothing.
The widows of four murdered activists, backed by transitional justice groups, are currently suing the prosecuting authority itself, challenging a new law that allows it to grant indemnities to perpetrators it believes have shown sufficient remorse (or, presumably, co-operated with the state in other investigations).
Mr. Chikane himself has tried to ease the fears of an “Afrikaner witch hunt,” saying the NPA is not targeting whites but simply acted against Mr. Vlok because he failed to tell the truth when he had the chance to apply for amnesty at the TRC. “I do not personally have any interest in putting anyone behind bars for apartheid crimes, nor do I know of anyone in the leadership of the ruling party who would want this,” he wrote in an open letter. “All I want to know is the truth, like many South Africans.”
That's what the victims' families told Madeleine Fullard, too, when they came to the Post Chalmers farm. But there they came face-to-face with the brutality of how the men were killed and the humiliating way their remains were treated. Days later, Ms. Fullard was still wondering if the knowledge “would just tip them over the edge.”
This is Archbishop Desmond Tutu's fear. And yet, he said, it is probably best to know. “My inclination would be, try to find the truth, because ultimately the truth does free people. And the families of the victims are entitled to that truth.
“But you will always have a niggling question - was it okay to do that?”
WHAT REMAINS
When the day of digging and memorial tributes in Mafikeng drew to a close, the families were driven away, and gradually the crowds of gawkers moved on as well.
Eventually it was just Mr. Moela, Ms. Bisso and Ms. Mosothwane left, packing the paper bags of bones one by one into boxes. They loaded their boxes into the back to their truck, bound for a lab in Pretoria to confirm injuries and match DNA.
Rinsing the dust from her hands, Ms. Bisso surveyed the cemetery. The police who buried these men 23 years ago were no doubt sure they would remain there. So were the ones who burnt the bodies she is piecing together from Post Chalmers. But she knows better.
“A person cannot disappear,” she said. “People can die, but not disappear. You're not a bubble that can pop. That's denying humanity.”
Stephanie Nolen is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080509.wnolen-apartheid0509/BNStory/International
The White Madonna's Burden
In treating Africa as a child that must be adopted (Malawi) or as a devil that much be punished (Sudan), celebrities are breathing life back into the old Kiplingesque view of Africans.
Mail and Guardian, 9 May 2008
In the May issue of Vanity Fair, there was a telling exchange between its cover star Madonna - resplendent in leotard and black knee-length boots - and her interviewer, Rich Cohen. They were talking about David Banda, the child adopted by Madonna in Malawi in 2006. Understandably, Madonna is gushing about her adopted son and everything that he "represents". And what is that, exactly? Cohen explains: baby David is a "living totem of life as it was lived before machines". In other words, he's a simple, wide-eyed, primitive being who helps to remind Madonna about what is really important in life as she jets from one photo-shoot and session recording to another. Cohen compares David to Pocahontas, "the beautiful Indian girl found in wild America", and says that for "bringing this boy into her house and giving him everything", Madonna has got "something in return": a child who symbolises a wilder, more earthy, gritty way of life, who comes from a time "before machines". Madonna has never done things by half. Where most celebrities wear a plastic wristband to show how much they care for poor African babies, Madonna goes a step further and adopts one. An African baby has become the latest celebrity accessory; indeed, one might argue that having a black baby is the new black. Madonna does not only want her own little black baby to remind her of the simplicity of life - she also seems keen to save the whole of Africa. As one British commentator put it, she is treating the entire continent as "a little orphan that needs adopting". Her charity - or what she refers to as her "big, big project" - is tellingly called Raising Malawi. "For the last few years - now that I have children and now that I have what I consider to be a better perspective on life - I have felt responsible for the children of the world", says Madonna. Time magazine certainly seems confident that Madonna can "save" and "raise" Malawi. In a feature on Madonna's charity, Time recently said that Malawi "has four things in abundance: AIDS, malaria, drought and tobacco (its major crop)... But that's about to change. Malawi is about to be hit by a force that has thrown much more robust countries for a loop. Her name is Madonna." Are YOU an African country ravaged by Aids and parched by drought? Fear not! Simply call Madonna! This fabulously wealthy white women from the West will solve all of your problems with a few fleeting visits, some looks of pained concern for the paparazzi, and a couple of million quid in donations... There is something creepily colonialist in Madonna's attitude to Africa. First we had the White Man's Burden - now we have the White Madonna's Burden. More and more celebrities are treating Africa as a wide-eyed child that needs a Hollywood hug - or as a wicked devil that needs a Hollywood hammering. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have treated Africa like their own personal playground. In a shocking instance of what I have termed "celebrity colonialism", they effectively took over Namibia in May 2006 because Ms Jolie wanted to give birth to her daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in "the cradle of humankind" away from the clicking cameras of Western paps. In cahoots with the Namibian authorities, Brad and Angelina - or "Brangelina", to use celeb-speak - had a no-fly zone enforced over part of the country. The beach resort in Langstrand, Western Namibia, where they were staying, was sealed off with security cordons and protected by armed guards. Non-Namibian journalists had to seek permission to enter Namibia from both Brangelina and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Phil ya Nangoloh of Namibia's National Society for Human Rights said: "They effectively captured the state." He described Brangelina's control over journalists' freedom of movement as a "blatant violation of Namibia's constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech". Namibia was shut down because Brangelina wanted the birth of their first biological child to be a "special experience". Just as Madonna has assumed moral responsibility for the whole of Malawi, so Brangelina temporarily occupied vast swathes of Namibia, like absolute monarchs. Entire countries are being made subordinate to the whims and wishes of ridiculously rich celebrities, who, momentarily disillusioned by the high life in LA, want an ego-boosting experience in "pre-machines" Africa. When celebs are not treating Africa as a cute child that must be saved, they're treating it as a disobedient boy who should be punished. For example, celebrity activism over Darfur has done a great deal to mislead Westerners into believing that this terrible and complex conflict is a simple morality play in which "evil men" (Khartoum) are attacking "innocent men" (the rebel forces). George Clooney has said of Darfur: "It's not a political issue. There is only right and wrong." Fran Healy, lead singer of the British pop group Travis, who visited Darfur on behalf of Save the Children, says: "Africa is a very complex place, but the Darfur crisis is quite simple. The conflict is essentially the Arabs against the Africans. It's all tied up in various battles over things like oil and gold." The celebs' depoliticisation of Darfur has worryingly chauvinistic, possibly even racist undertones. As Mahmood Mamdani of Colombia University in America has argued, in treating Darfur as "a place without history and without politics", celebrities and others clearly give "the implication that the motivation of the perpetrators lies in biology ('race') and, if not that, certainly in 'culture'". Indeed, some celebs are so concerned about corruption in Africa, and about the seeming inability of bovine Africans to overcome their biological instincts to massacre each other, that they have decided to speak on all of Africa's behalf. Bono, the lead singer of U2, who has done perhaps more than any other celeb to convince the world that Africa is a continent of starving, cute, corrupt, demented children, once declared: "I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have no voice at all... They haven't asked me to represent them. It's cheeky but I hope they're glad I do." There is something Kiplingesque in this celebrity swarming of Africa. Kipling branded colonial subjects on the dark continent as "half-devil and half-child" - and today that old poisonous prejudice finds expression in the celebrity view of Africa as a child that must be adopted (Malawi) or as a devil that must be punished (Sudan). Africans once resisted the armies of colonialism; now they should consider resisting the armies of celebrities, camera crews, make-up artists and hairstylists who are seeking to turn Africa into a stage for celebrity expressions of cheap moral bombast.
While reading this article, I felt sick to my stomach and powerless to say the least. I can not understand how people can treat each other this way. I sound righteous when I say that this type of things shouldn’t have occurred in the first place. I am stunned, but instead of turning away from the TV or whatever info that’s available in any mediums simply because they are depressing, I kept reading. The ugly truth can be sickening, but I can not afford to ignore it.
On a different note, I used to think that “neutral” countries are something to be appraised of, but come to think of it, being neutral IS really picking a side! Essentially, by doing nothing, one’s picking a stance. You wouldn’t let a blind person cross the street when the light is red, would you? Exactly!
*Please note, I remember watching a program briefly here in Aus about the inefficiency and corruptions in the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission.)
**The second article after is more of an editorial. Interesting concept of “celebrity-colonialism”. While there’s a lot of criticism, but no constructive solutions were offered.
What's bred in the bones
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Globe and Mail of Saturday, October 20, 2007
May 9, 2008 at 4:30 PM EDT
MAFIKENG, SOUTH AFRICA — They thought it was a fool's errand. When South Africa's Missing Persons Task Team headed to Post Chalmers, an old farm in the Eastern Cape, back in July, none of its investigators believed they would find a thing.
Security agents working for the apartheid-era government had used the farm at least twice. They brought kidnapped black anti-apartheid activists there - including, in 1982, Siphiwo Mthimkulu, 22, on crutches because he had been tortured in jail for much of the previous year - interrogated them, shot them, doused them in diesel fuel and dumped them in bonfires. Or so they told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
But 20 years had passed since the last known crime was committed there, and since then the vast farm had been used as an abattoir. What were the odds of finding any identifiable trace of the five dead men? Slim to none.
But the killings had been so savage that the team members felt they owed it to the families of the slain to find some scrap of proof of how they died, and some fragment of their remains. One of apartheid's most malignant effects was the information it denied black South Africans: People disappeared, and it could be years before their anxious mothers or husbands knew if they had been murdered, imprisoned or exiled. Some still don't know.
“At the very least we had to try,” said Madeleine Fullard, who heads the team.
And so they drove 12 hours into the heart of the dry and desolate Eastern Cape, toting a miniature tractor. They shovelled off layers of gravel that covered the farm yard, and began to dig, searching for signs of a fire. On the first day, nothing. The second day, nothing. It was tedious work in an icy wind.
At the end of the third day, just as the team was beginning a morose conversation about having failed, they caught sight of a burn. When fires are made on open earth, the soil discolours and hardens like clay, an effect that can be seen years later.
Claudia Bisso, the forensic archeologist on the team, began to excavate the fire site. Soon, however, it appeared that the burn was simply the remains of a long-ago campfire.
“We were giving up - we were just about leaving,” Ms. Fullard recalled. But when they took a last scrape at the site of the fire, they caught sight of a thick black seam of dense charcoal. Ms. Bisso resumed digging.
“We nearly missed it: another two centimetres and we would have missed it,” Ms. Fullard recalled with a shudder.
Within minutes, Ms. Bisso had found shards of burnt bone. But was it human? Then they found a phalange, the fourth small bone of the fourth finger. Soon a vertebrae. Then a bullet. Ms. Bisso unearthed a burn area three metres square. Stunned, the team members silently carried buckets of blackened soil, charcoal, melted metal, bone shards and burnt tire fragments away from the pit.
Ms. Bisso is not superstitious. She has spent her entire professional life with bones and bodies and in graveyards; she does not spook and she doesn't go in for the unearthly.
“But I will say it: Those men wanted to be found. They were not going to let us leave without finding them.”
JUSTICE UNDONE
When South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded its work in 1998, it had a list of 477 people who were still missing. Their families had come before the commission and reported their disappearance, but their fates, and the whereabouts of their remains, were still unknown.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands more cases whose families had chosen not to go to the TRC, but who have never received the bodies of their lost children. President Thabo Mbeki, for example, had a teenage son who disappeared, amid rumours he followed his father into exile.
The TRC recognized the families' desire to have, at least, the bodies back, and recommended that the new democratic government set up a team to try to solve the apartheid-era mysteries and return the bodies of those who disappeared to their families.
Ms. Fullard, 42, is a petite blonde historian who grew up in a white liberal household in Cape Town. She felt alienated and lonely until, in her teens, she discovered the coalitions of civic organizations that were fighting apartheid. She became a dedicated campaigner - she vividly remembers marching in the streets to protest the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Mthimkulu. When the TRC was founded, she got a job as a researcher, taking on the task of piecing together some of the most grim and bloody events that were committed in the name of protecting white privilege - her privilege.
She was with the TRC from its first days until the last report was written, and then she took the list of 477 to the new National Prosecuting Authority and set up shop as an investigator in a cramped Pretoria office soon overflowing with paper. Relying at first on funding from human-rights organizations, she managed to assemble a small team. She hired Tshiamo Moela, now 29, who was doing research for Khumulani, a charity that campaigns for retribution for apartheid victims. (He speaks all 11 of South Africa's official languages and is a crack logistician.) And she set out to recruit Nozizwe Mohale to join them, too.
Ms. Mohale is also a veteran of the fight against apartheid. She followed her father, a guerrilla, into exile in Swaziland; as a teenager she joined the armed wing of the African National Congress - Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the Spear of the Nation - and rose through the ranks of the guerrilla movement until she was privy to much of its intelligence against the apartheid state.
After the transition to democracy, Ms. Mohale headed an office in the ANC tasked with helping fighters integrate into civilian life. Ms. Fullard went repeatedly to see Ms. Mohale seeking information on this mission or that operative, until she persuaded her to join the team.
Ms. Mohale understands why Ms. Fullard needs her, for her connections and her credibility. Otherwise, she said, “The families say, ‘It is the whites who killed our children and now the whites who are investigating.' “ But Ms. Mohale has, in her 18 months in the job, come to an intimate understanding that these cases are not always as straightforward as black victim, white perpetrator. These days, she finds herself asking probing questions of the very people she once trusted with her life. Her probing is not always welcome.
DIRTY WORK
The day after the team found the first remains at the Post Chalmers farm, their supervisor arrived at the site – Anton Ackermann is one of South Africa's leading prosecutors, and a veteran of trials of former state agents. He took one look around and said to the team, “I know how these guys worked. Check the septic tank.”
Ms. Fullard was astonished; she had not even realized they were working near a septic system. But they quickly traced the farm sewage system and dug out the top of the tank. When they pried off the lid, they were hit with the stink of sewage - and the powerful reek of 25-year-old diesel.
Over the next several weeks, they scooped out 20,000 litres of raw sewage in buckets, sieved through it for solid matter and dried the material. Again, they found burnt bone fragments, plus pieces of charred tire, a bunch of keys and a watch strap.
They invited the victims' families to come and see the work, and soon the elderly mothers and now-grown children of the five dead men had joined in, gently fingering through the dried sewage to find the teeth and bones of their sons and fathers.
In the end, the team amassed more than 250 kilograms of burnt material, and Ms. Bisso began the long, painstaking process of separating it into charcoal, metal, soil and human remains. She could tell from the shape of the vertebrae that most of the remains are those of young people; she could not tell, yet, how many. “There are definitely three, and very probably more.”
The team was shaken by their discovery at the farm, by the evidence of how horribly the dead were treated. “Burning them would have been a hectic job, said Ms. Fullard: “Why not take them out into the hills and bury them, or let the animals eat them? To roast a body you've got to turn it - the smell, the popping, the crackling, and my God, the smoke.” She shuddered.
The primary goal of this team is humanitarian, to return the missing to their families. But the bones and teeth they found at Post Chalmers are more than lost human remains. They are definitive evidence of lies. The security agents who committed the murders at the farm told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in their amnesty applications that they burnt the bodies and scooped the ashes into sacks, then dumped them in a nearby river.
As soon as Ms. Bisso read the TRC transcripts, she was suspicious of that claim: “I read the testimony and I said, ‘No, you would not have ashes. It takes a long time to burn a body and overnight you don't get just ashes, you have chunks of bone. And it would be too hot to put it in plastic bags the next morning.”
Now, in the boxes of burnt matter, she has proof: The bodies were burnt with tires, not just wood. They were broken up with a metal implement. And the ashes were never taken to a river, but dumped in a septic tank.
“I have waves of real fury around the septic tank, real clenched-teeth moments of anger,” Ms. Fullard said, with the quick rage that is fed by her work, and often leaves her lonely these days. “I do have fantasies of taking [the agents] and dunking them in the septic tank: ‘Tell the truth!' But at the end of the day all we can do is curse their fates, show they were liars and make sure the families get the remains.”
FRAGILE PACT
In fact, she can do more than that. The condition for amnesty from the TRC was total, truthful disclosure. Three of the security agents who were given amnesty in the first set of Post Chalmers killings have since died, and the fourth is ill. The team has sent an emissary to ask if he would like to make a true disclosure of what happened before he dies. Behind that invitation lies the threat of revoking his amnesty, and possible prosecution.
Four other agents were involved in the second killings. They were denied amnesty because their accounts differed too much to be judged truthful, but they were never prosecuted. Now, the South African government may have evidence to try them tried for the crime, 20 years later.
That idea may appeal to the families of the murdered activists, and there is a vocal community of apartheid-victim groups in South Africa keen to see more trials for crimes under white rule. But there are just as many voices raised in warning against reopening these cases.
“It is a serious thing - we have two rights, as it were, competing,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who oversaw the TRC, in an interview in his office in Cape Town last week. “The families want to know what happened, why and so forth, and they have a perfect right to that knowledge. And then there would be those on the other side who would say, ‘This thing is fragile, be careful.'”
Thirteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is a nation transformed, and yet the gulf between black and white remains enormous. The bulk of land, wealth and resources remain in white hands; unemployment is still more than 50 per cent and many black citizens, living without electricity, piped water or solid roofs, feel the promise of black rule has been hollow.
“What has changed? For the average, ordinary citizen, very little,” said Yasmin Sooka, a former TRC commissioner who now advocates for victims. “Reparations have been miniscule and from a very small group of people. In terms of real meaningful redistribution, what's actually happened? Almost nothing.”
At the same time, whites feel shut out of government, and are dismissed as racists if they complain about the outrageous rates of violent crime.
When Adriaan Vlok, the former minister of state security, was convicted in August of trying to assassinate a former guerrilla, now a cabinet minister, there was a national uproar. Many people, particularly Afrikaners, said that revisiting these cases would undermine whatever steps had been taken toward reconciliation. They called it a “witch hunt” and accused the ANC government of undermining the interim constitution that guided the transition to democracy.
The risk inherent in these prosecutions, say critics such as Archbishop Tutu, is not of violence or civil unrest, but rather a more amorphous but disquieting threat that the brittle pact that has allowed South Africa to move forward - the deal, in essence, that whites would cede power, blacks would forgive and there would be no excessive probing into the past - may crumble, with unpredictable results.
This pact, which formed the basis for the TRC, remains profoundly controversial. Four apartheid victims' groups are now suing the government to deny it the right to grant perpetrators any further indemnities. In the decade since the TRC, the concept of international justice has taken strong root globally: It is no longer the fashion to turn the page on crimes against humanity, but rather to prosecute, even long after the fact.
But the Archbishop and others warn that in South Africa, at least, this would be a mistake. “The raison d'être of the TRC was, ‘Let's look at enough of the past so that we can form a thumbnail sketch of it,” he said, “but that we mustn't dilly-dally too long, because that could jeopardize [peace].'”
DETECTIVE JOB
Ms. Fullard, Ms. Mohale and the rest of the team are looking not to jeopardize peace, but to restore it. They know that families are haunted by not knowing, and it is the desire to be able to give answers that fuels them through lengthy and complex investigations.
The process relies on a mix of skill and luck. It starts when Ms. Mohale interviews former comrades and commanders of the missing. “I ask them, ‘What do you know about where this person went, who were they with? This is their [code] name - do you know the real name?” Now 44, warm and quick to laugh, Ms. Mohale has a natural ease with the families, and gets considerable pleasure from working her networks.
Armed with these first, vague recollections, the missing-persons team goes to the archives of the state-security agencies. The surviving pockets of the perversely well-ordered bureaucracy of apartheid provides a rich trove of information. The government, for example, kept a photo album featuring every suspected guerrilla who went into exile - 9,000 pictures by the time white rule ended. When security officers killed or imprisoned an activist, they crossed the picture out, so the team turns to those albums first.
They then look for police dockets on arrests or attacks with dates that correlate to the intelligence Ms. Mohale has gathered. If they find a report of “terrorists killed,” they look for inquest records and post-mortems, which suggest to them where to hunt for possible graves. This is often the most complex step in the process, because the local authorities buried the guerrillas they killed as “paupers” in unmarked graves, in open patches of the cemetery for which no records were kept.
Ms. Fullard looks for aerial photographs from the suspected year of burial to see if she can tell what part of a cemetery was being used, while Mr. Moela tracks down retired municipal workers or hearse drivers, to see if anyone remembers transporting the unclaimed bodies.
Once they have located the likely site, the team brings its small tractor and “trenches” the area until they find graves. Then the work is handed over to Ms. Fullard's final recruit, Claudia Bisso, a weathered 45-year-old Argentine with bleached, cropped hair and a permanent squint.
Ms. Bisso is part of the collective - legendary in humanitarian circles - of forensic experts formed after Argentina's truth commission on the dictatorship that ended in 1983. They set out first to find Argentina's 10,000 disappeared, but soon realized there was a desperate need for their skills in other countries, and began to send team members to other developing countries to offer training.
That's what first brought Ms. Bisso to Africa. She has looked for bodies after the civil wars in Sierra Leone, Angola and Zimbabwe, and at evidence of massacres in Darfur in Sudan. Now, she stays because she has fallen in love with an Afrikaner, an ex-soldier and mine-removal specialist, whom she met at a mass grave in the former Yugoslavia. Ms. Fullard wanted Ms. Bisso to handle the exhumations because South Africa has no homegrown tradition of human-rights forensics - people with those skills here work mostly with police.
They trench the paupers' section of cemeteries, opening shallow lines until they catch a hint of crumbled coffin. Then they use scoops and shovels that look like children's beach toys to dig away the dirt until they expose a skull. Looking at brow bone, jaw and teeth, Ms. Bisso and her students can quickly assess the gender and age at death of the skeleton. If it could be someone whose remains they seek, they look also for injures, such as bullet holes in the back of the head, that match the post-mortem report.
If they can confirm a likely identity, they rebury the remains and leave them until they can contact the families and arrange to bring them to the cemetery for the exhumation. They have done 38 of these digs so far, recovering the remains of 44 people, and returned 19 to their families.
“Families always ask, ‘Did he suffer a lot?' “ Ms. Bisso mused, while she sifted through shards of bone and charred tire. “And the secret is to always tell the truth. Are you going to lie and say, ‘He had a very peaceful death'? They have the right to know.”
BIG BROTHER'S BONES
Ramodiehe Waisi's femurs were too big for the bags. The knobby ends of the bones, yellowed and crusted with dirt, stuck out of the paper sacks prepared for them, the sort of bag slid over a baguette at the corner bakery. Morungwa Mosothwane could not fold the bags neatly closed, and instead stood them up in a cardboard box, frowning a bit at this untidy solution.
“He was a very big guy,” said Neo Waisi, Ramodiehe's younger brother, as he watched the archeology student gently slide bones into bags, one for the radius, one for the calcaneus, one for the vertebrae. When he saw how big the bones were, he was sure he had found the answer he had been seeking for 23 years: These, he was sure, were his big brother's bones.
Ramodiehe left the family home in Bloemfontein in 1980 and went into exile in Botswana, joining the MK. He was sent back into South Africa on a mission in September 1986, and he and his comrade-in-arms got as far as Mafikeng, a town near the Botswana border, in the parched, scrubby north of South Africa. He was never seen alive again; his family, all this time, had only rumours of his death.
The Missing Persons team found Mr. Waisi almost by accident: They were searching for the remains of eight MK fighters, reported missing to the TRC, whom they suspected had been buried here, close to the border.
Poring over police dockets one day, they found a case in which police had spotted MK men and hunted them down. This case was not reported to the Truth Commission, and so the team added it to their list. In Mmabatho cemetery, they opened 29 graves looking for their MK veterans, and found a skeleton that matched the post-mortem injury descriptions of Mr. Waisi.
Ms. Mohale made the phone call: We think we found him. And so, a few weeks ago, Mr. Waisi's elderly mother Jeanette got on a plane for the first time in her life, and flew here from Bloemfontein in the centre of the country.
She, her three surviving children and the family of David Takalani Nambaye, who died with Ramodiehe that day, came to the graveyard in the grey light just after dawn, as pools of rain rippled in the wind. Ms. Mohale showed them the graves, and a minister led them in a brief prayer, asking for strength for what they would see in the day ahead.
Within a few hours, a crowd assembled, and the family took seats in the front row of chairs laid out under a vast white tent. When the team exhumes a fighter, the liberation movements come to pay belated respects: Choirs sang freedom songs, and former MK commanders recalled the days of struggle. When there are survivors of the incidents in which fighters died, Ms. Fullard invites them to come and speak, although “it can be incredibly painful for them to tell the story, and for the family to hear it.”
She tries to make sure someone tells the family how their child died. Often it is ugly information: In one case it was the dead man's aunt who tipped police off when he snuck back in from exile. More often than the team ever expected, they learn that people died after betrayal by an informer of one kind or another in their own communities. Then there is the cold, vicious language of the police reports and the inquests, so contemptuous of black lives. And often, grisly police photographs. Ms. Fullard gives it all to the families.
“They were denied information in the past,” she said. “It's their right to know as much as possible. It's not our task to censor.”
The families invariably want to take remains home for reburial that day. The Waisis were no exception. “We will take him home and bury him properly,” said Neo Waisi. (In fact they will have to wait for DNA analysis to confirm whether they really are his brother's bones.) “My mother was always counting her kids and saying, ‘But one is missing.' She was distraught. Those wounds were not healing. It is better now to know.”
But there was slim comfort in what they had learned - that an informer recognized Ramodiehe Waisi getting into a minibus taxi, that he was relentlessly hunted down by police, first by road and then in a helicopter, and that when they closed in, rather than be captured, Mr. Waisi killed himself with the hand grenade he carried.
Ms. Mosothwane, one of Ms. Bisso's student archeologists, explained all this to Mrs. Waisi, leaning with her over the edge of one of the graves. She pointed to the missing bones of the right hand of one skeleton, which matched the description of grenade injuries in the police post-mortem. The family stood grim-faced, starting down at the exposed bones. Finally Mrs. Waisi led the way back to her seat, looking even smaller and older than she had moments before.
Provincial premier Edna Molewa, her head elegantly wrapped in bright orange cloth, stepped forward to address the families. “Thank you so much indeed for giving us your children,” she said gently to the two mothers, who sat holding their cardigans tightly closed. “You may not have known they were joining the fight to liberate South Africa - we are who we are today in a South Africa that is liberated because of you.”
Then she turned to Ms. Mosothwane and the others, labouring in the graves. “We do indeed have confidence that you will restore dignity to those who are missing - help us find all of our missing.”
AWKWARD QUESTIONS
But just who are the missing? Many of the cases reported to the TRC are people such as Mr. Waisi, members of the liberation movements, particularly the ANC, who disappeared at the hands of the apartheid security forces.
But of the 25,000 people killed between 1960, the start of the armed struggle, and the transition to democracy in 1994, an estimated 15,000 died in civil unrest - in “intracivilian” violence, killed by their own communities as collaborators, or in fighting between ANC supporters and Inkatha, the Zulu party then used as a “third force” by the white government. Many Inkatha members are still missing.
The missing-persons team has also been asked to help with the case of white-government soldiers killed by guerrillas in South Africa's proxy war in Angola.
Ms. Mohale would dearly love to take on the few cases of white soldiers whose remains the state did not recover - “to show we will do anyone's case” - but those in the old forces remain mistrustful of the new government and won't ask for their help, she said.
Perhaps most delicate of all, there were the extra-judicial killings committed by the liberation movements themselves. The ANC provided the TRC with a list of nearly a hundred people who were killed in its military camps in exile as suspected spies or for other transgressions. There may be many more.
For Ms. Mohale, these cases strike particularly close to home.” I have a brother who died in an ANC camp in Angola,” she said. “And every time I see my ailing mother, she says to me, ‘When are you going to bring my baby back home?' “ Her younger brother had followed her into exile and into the movement. All she knows of his death is that it was the result of some kind of disciplinary measure that went too far. There are others in the ANC who know more. “But they say, ‘We won't tell you the name [of his killer]. We don't want you to overreact.' But I pray every day I will meet up [with that person].”
Ms. Mohale does not blame the ANC: “I took it that an individual did this, not the ANC did this.” But since she started asking questions, and started to work with the Missing Persons team, she has been given a frosty reception at many ANC gatherings. “I go to those offices that I set up, and they say, ‘Oh it's you, you're here.' “ She has little time for people who tell her - with increasing vehemence - that those who fought for liberation must not be investigated in the same way as the apartheid government: “I say, ‘Those parents are waiting patiently. If their children died at the hands of the ANC, you have to tell.'”
WITCH HUNT?
Former police minister Adriaan Vlok, his police chief Johanne van der Merwe, and three other senior police officers were charged this year for apartheid-era crimes including an attempt to assassinate Rev. Frank Chikane, now a cabinet minister.
Mr. Vlok and his co-accused plea-bargained and were given a suspended sentence, but the case was significant because the previous white government had, in its past submissions to the TRC, claimed that it had no policy to commit illegal acts during apartheid. Any that occurred - such as the incineration at Post Chalmers - were the work of a few rogue officers, they said. The Vlok conviction proved that claim false.
But Mr. Vlok and his co-accused gave no sign of guilt or remorse, to the immense frustration of many South Africans, who feel the security services and the military have never come clean about the nature and extent of their activities. Instead, Mr. Vlok said he felt “deeply wronged and even embittered” by the leaders whose orders he was following when he committed the acts in question, and by the leaders today who were sacrificing national reconciliation in the name of political point-scoring by prosecuting him.
The ensuing public debate, impassioned and often bitter, included complaints about the lenient sentence and demands that other senior white-rule figures such as former president and Nobel Peace laureate F. W. de Klerk also be charged.
“The Vlok case makes a mockery of justice,” said Ms. Sooka, who now heads the Foundation for Human Rights in Pretoria. No greater insight into the actions of the state was obtained, she said; victims gained nothing.
The widows of four murdered activists, backed by transitional justice groups, are currently suing the prosecuting authority itself, challenging a new law that allows it to grant indemnities to perpetrators it believes have shown sufficient remorse (or, presumably, co-operated with the state in other investigations).
Mr. Chikane himself has tried to ease the fears of an “Afrikaner witch hunt,” saying the NPA is not targeting whites but simply acted against Mr. Vlok because he failed to tell the truth when he had the chance to apply for amnesty at the TRC. “I do not personally have any interest in putting anyone behind bars for apartheid crimes, nor do I know of anyone in the leadership of the ruling party who would want this,” he wrote in an open letter. “All I want to know is the truth, like many South Africans.”
That's what the victims' families told Madeleine Fullard, too, when they came to the Post Chalmers farm. But there they came face-to-face with the brutality of how the men were killed and the humiliating way their remains were treated. Days later, Ms. Fullard was still wondering if the knowledge “would just tip them over the edge.”
This is Archbishop Desmond Tutu's fear. And yet, he said, it is probably best to know. “My inclination would be, try to find the truth, because ultimately the truth does free people. And the families of the victims are entitled to that truth.
“But you will always have a niggling question - was it okay to do that?”
WHAT REMAINS
When the day of digging and memorial tributes in Mafikeng drew to a close, the families were driven away, and gradually the crowds of gawkers moved on as well.
Eventually it was just Mr. Moela, Ms. Bisso and Ms. Mosothwane left, packing the paper bags of bones one by one into boxes. They loaded their boxes into the back to their truck, bound for a lab in Pretoria to confirm injuries and match DNA.
Rinsing the dust from her hands, Ms. Bisso surveyed the cemetery. The police who buried these men 23 years ago were no doubt sure they would remain there. So were the ones who burnt the bodies she is piecing together from Post Chalmers. But she knows better.
“A person cannot disappear,” she said. “People can die, but not disappear. You're not a bubble that can pop. That's denying humanity.”
Stephanie Nolen is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080509.wnolen-apartheid0509/BNStory/International
The White Madonna's Burden
In treating Africa as a child that must be adopted (Malawi) or as a devil that much be punished (Sudan), celebrities are breathing life back into the old Kiplingesque view of Africans.
Mail and Guardian, 9 May 2008
In the May issue of Vanity Fair, there was a telling exchange between its cover star Madonna - resplendent in leotard and black knee-length boots - and her interviewer, Rich Cohen. They were talking about David Banda, the child adopted by Madonna in Malawi in 2006. Understandably, Madonna is gushing about her adopted son and everything that he "represents". And what is that, exactly? Cohen explains: baby David is a "living totem of life as it was lived before machines". In other words, he's a simple, wide-eyed, primitive being who helps to remind Madonna about what is really important in life as she jets from one photo-shoot and session recording to another. Cohen compares David to Pocahontas, "the beautiful Indian girl found in wild America", and says that for "bringing this boy into her house and giving him everything", Madonna has got "something in return": a child who symbolises a wilder, more earthy, gritty way of life, who comes from a time "before machines". Madonna has never done things by half. Where most celebrities wear a plastic wristband to show how much they care for poor African babies, Madonna goes a step further and adopts one. An African baby has become the latest celebrity accessory; indeed, one might argue that having a black baby is the new black. Madonna does not only want her own little black baby to remind her of the simplicity of life - she also seems keen to save the whole of Africa. As one British commentator put it, she is treating the entire continent as "a little orphan that needs adopting". Her charity - or what she refers to as her "big, big project" - is tellingly called Raising Malawi. "For the last few years - now that I have children and now that I have what I consider to be a better perspective on life - I have felt responsible for the children of the world", says Madonna. Time magazine certainly seems confident that Madonna can "save" and "raise" Malawi. In a feature on Madonna's charity, Time recently said that Malawi "has four things in abundance: AIDS, malaria, drought and tobacco (its major crop)... But that's about to change. Malawi is about to be hit by a force that has thrown much more robust countries for a loop. Her name is Madonna." Are YOU an African country ravaged by Aids and parched by drought? Fear not! Simply call Madonna! This fabulously wealthy white women from the West will solve all of your problems with a few fleeting visits, some looks of pained concern for the paparazzi, and a couple of million quid in donations... There is something creepily colonialist in Madonna's attitude to Africa. First we had the White Man's Burden - now we have the White Madonna's Burden. More and more celebrities are treating Africa as a wide-eyed child that needs a Hollywood hug - or as a wicked devil that needs a Hollywood hammering. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have treated Africa like their own personal playground. In a shocking instance of what I have termed "celebrity colonialism", they effectively took over Namibia in May 2006 because Ms Jolie wanted to give birth to her daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in "the cradle of humankind" away from the clicking cameras of Western paps. In cahoots with the Namibian authorities, Brad and Angelina - or "Brangelina", to use celeb-speak - had a no-fly zone enforced over part of the country. The beach resort in Langstrand, Western Namibia, where they were staying, was sealed off with security cordons and protected by armed guards. Non-Namibian journalists had to seek permission to enter Namibia from both Brangelina and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Phil ya Nangoloh of Namibia's National Society for Human Rights said: "They effectively captured the state." He described Brangelina's control over journalists' freedom of movement as a "blatant violation of Namibia's constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech". Namibia was shut down because Brangelina wanted the birth of their first biological child to be a "special experience". Just as Madonna has assumed moral responsibility for the whole of Malawi, so Brangelina temporarily occupied vast swathes of Namibia, like absolute monarchs. Entire countries are being made subordinate to the whims and wishes of ridiculously rich celebrities, who, momentarily disillusioned by the high life in LA, want an ego-boosting experience in "pre-machines" Africa. When celebs are not treating Africa as a cute child that must be saved, they're treating it as a disobedient boy who should be punished. For example, celebrity activism over Darfur has done a great deal to mislead Westerners into believing that this terrible and complex conflict is a simple morality play in which "evil men" (Khartoum) are attacking "innocent men" (the rebel forces). George Clooney has said of Darfur: "It's not a political issue. There is only right and wrong." Fran Healy, lead singer of the British pop group Travis, who visited Darfur on behalf of Save the Children, says: "Africa is a very complex place, but the Darfur crisis is quite simple. The conflict is essentially the Arabs against the Africans. It's all tied up in various battles over things like oil and gold." The celebs' depoliticisation of Darfur has worryingly chauvinistic, possibly even racist undertones. As Mahmood Mamdani of Colombia University in America has argued, in treating Darfur as "a place without history and without politics", celebrities and others clearly give "the implication that the motivation of the perpetrators lies in biology ('race') and, if not that, certainly in 'culture'". Indeed, some celebs are so concerned about corruption in Africa, and about the seeming inability of bovine Africans to overcome their biological instincts to massacre each other, that they have decided to speak on all of Africa's behalf. Bono, the lead singer of U2, who has done perhaps more than any other celeb to convince the world that Africa is a continent of starving, cute, corrupt, demented children, once declared: "I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have no voice at all... They haven't asked me to represent them. It's cheeky but I hope they're glad I do." There is something Kiplingesque in this celebrity swarming of Africa. Kipling branded colonial subjects on the dark continent as "half-devil and half-child" - and today that old poisonous prejudice finds expression in the celebrity view of Africa as a child that must be adopted (Malawi) or as a devil that must be punished (Sudan). Africans once resisted the armies of colonialism; now they should consider resisting the armies of celebrities, camera crews, make-up artists and hairstylists who are seeking to turn Africa into a stage for celebrity expressions of cheap moral bombast.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Melbourne to Alice Springs
Pic above: Stevie in front of the rock. RIP Steveo Irwin.Heading up to Alice Springs on May 15th with a Japanese girl whom I’d met while picking apples in Tasmania. She just got to Melbourne a week ago. We are doing a fairly popular 3 day Uluru/Ayers Rock tour together with other 20 people from all over the world. The tour company’s website: http://www.therocktour.com.au/. P.s. kinda weird to see a tour company with a MSN msnger account: therocktour@hotmail.com hahahah. But I have heard from a lot of people that this is a good tour company to go with. I guess we’ll find out after my 3 days in the desert. Would I survive like a Jarhead or would I falter like hydroponic plant in desert?
I am pretty excited for Ayers Rock since I’d get to see the oldest living culture in the world. Australia’s very own Koori people and their cave paintings. Probably won’t climb the rock since it’s disrespectful in Koori culture to do so, but will walk around its base. Will check out the sunset and sunrise at the rock. I should hope so, since I missed the sunrise/sunset in China at the top of Yellow Mountain, missed it at Angkor Wat and also on the Great Ocean Road.
Going to Cairns to the Great Barrier Reefs then and I will work my way down Queensland’s coast back to Sydney. Time frame: To be announced.
Random:
1) Met soo many pommies of the whole time I have been in Oz and learned some Cockney slangs which are mainly used in London.
A “dog n bone” - a cell or mobile phone.
As in: “Can I use your dog n bone to ring my mate?”
“Apples and pears” - stairs.
As in: “No, let’s take the apples and pears to go up.”
“Skyrockets” - pockets.
As in: “Gimme the money in your skyrocket, byatch!.”
2) I got denied purchasing alcohol at a liquor store at St. Kilda beach last night. So what happened was this. My kiwi friend and I went to buy some beers for his housewarming party. Got to the liquor store and about to pay for our beers, the guy behind the counter asked for my ID (fair enough, I know what I look like). I presented my license and handed over my credit card. The guy turned around and asked my kiwi friend for his id even though he’s not buying any alcohol, since he just got some an hour earlier before I met up with him from the SAME store. Sure enough, my kiwi friend didn’t have his wallet on him, therefore the liquor store staff denied our patronage. I found that a bit ridiculous since my kiwi friend was only a year younger than me. Plus I was buying 4 cans of Guinness, not some shit beers. A rhetorical question: How many underage kids even have the taste for a dark Irish stout in Australia? If my kiwi friend and I were both underage, we’d be buying the most amount of alcohol at the lowest price. Taste wouldn’t be our primary concern.
I wasn’t very upset at the whole thing since I understand in Canada, it’s the same thing. Doesn’t matter if you are buying alcohol or not, as along as you enter the premise, you must produce ID upon request. However, my kiwi friend got really upset and he never ever gets upset.
I proceeded to try and resolve the situation by saying to the guy, “what if we left the store now and only I would come back in a few minutes? That’d be a brand new transaction right?” He denied that too. Thinking to myself, “WTF, mate?”
The kiwi guy really let him have it without swearing, but I just got him out of the door and went to a different liquor store down the street. To my pleasant surprise, the 4 pack of Guinness was 3 dollars cheaper than the place before. The staff at the 2nd store never bothered to ask me for my id either. Heck, the kid selling me the beers was even younger than me; he told me himself. He couldn’t have been more than 22.
At last, my kiwi friend decided to go back to the 1st liquor store just so we could rub it in this guy’s face, “we got the same thing elsewhere for cheaper, thank you!”
Out we go and went back to his new place and met his 4 other roommates, an Irish, 2 poms, and 1 cdn girl from Regina. We had some beers, talked about our traveling experiences thus far and also played $15 Sega mega drive system knockoff the brits bought in Indonesia.
I am pretty excited for Ayers Rock since I’d get to see the oldest living culture in the world. Australia’s very own Koori people and their cave paintings. Probably won’t climb the rock since it’s disrespectful in Koori culture to do so, but will walk around its base. Will check out the sunset and sunrise at the rock. I should hope so, since I missed the sunrise/sunset in China at the top of Yellow Mountain, missed it at Angkor Wat and also on the Great Ocean Road.
Going to Cairns to the Great Barrier Reefs then and I will work my way down Queensland’s coast back to Sydney. Time frame: To be announced.
Random:
1) Met soo many pommies of the whole time I have been in Oz and learned some Cockney slangs which are mainly used in London.
A “dog n bone” - a cell or mobile phone.
As in: “Can I use your dog n bone to ring my mate?”
“Apples and pears” - stairs.
As in: “No, let’s take the apples and pears to go up.”
“Skyrockets” - pockets.
As in: “Gimme the money in your skyrocket, byatch!.”
2) I got denied purchasing alcohol at a liquor store at St. Kilda beach last night. So what happened was this. My kiwi friend and I went to buy some beers for his housewarming party. Got to the liquor store and about to pay for our beers, the guy behind the counter asked for my ID (fair enough, I know what I look like). I presented my license and handed over my credit card. The guy turned around and asked my kiwi friend for his id even though he’s not buying any alcohol, since he just got some an hour earlier before I met up with him from the SAME store. Sure enough, my kiwi friend didn’t have his wallet on him, therefore the liquor store staff denied our patronage. I found that a bit ridiculous since my kiwi friend was only a year younger than me. Plus I was buying 4 cans of Guinness, not some shit beers. A rhetorical question: How many underage kids even have the taste for a dark Irish stout in Australia? If my kiwi friend and I were both underage, we’d be buying the most amount of alcohol at the lowest price. Taste wouldn’t be our primary concern.
I wasn’t very upset at the whole thing since I understand in Canada, it’s the same thing. Doesn’t matter if you are buying alcohol or not, as along as you enter the premise, you must produce ID upon request. However, my kiwi friend got really upset and he never ever gets upset.
I proceeded to try and resolve the situation by saying to the guy, “what if we left the store now and only I would come back in a few minutes? That’d be a brand new transaction right?” He denied that too. Thinking to myself, “WTF, mate?”
The kiwi guy really let him have it without swearing, but I just got him out of the door and went to a different liquor store down the street. To my pleasant surprise, the 4 pack of Guinness was 3 dollars cheaper than the place before. The staff at the 2nd store never bothered to ask me for my id either. Heck, the kid selling me the beers was even younger than me; he told me himself. He couldn’t have been more than 22.
At last, my kiwi friend decided to go back to the 1st liquor store just so we could rub it in this guy’s face, “we got the same thing elsewhere for cheaper, thank you!”
Out we go and went back to his new place and met his 4 other roommates, an Irish, 2 poms, and 1 cdn girl from Regina. We had some beers, talked about our traveling experiences thus far and also played $15 Sega mega drive system knockoff the brits bought in Indonesia.
Shine Your Colours! (With a card)
Pic above: I had to make this one available on my blog, it is a fantastic picture. My genuine mustard face and Vanilla face friends (no make up!) recently visited The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. They were handed these cards along with their tickets in order to be admitted. I love how they only differentiate the Whites from the Non-Whites. I wonder if the Chinese would do the same for the Beijing Olympics coming up in a few months while handing out “Mustard Face” and “Non-Mustard Face” cards accordingly to the spectators’ “appropriate” skin colour.The truth is: What’s the point of having these cards? Can’t they tell just by looking at you? Well, unless you are Michael Jackson I guess. Sorry, Jacko, I love you in Thriller! More interestingly, I wonder what kinda cards do the biracial people get? Both or neither? Probably the Non-whites cards.
2 friends whom I travelled to India with were recently in South Africa and the recent presidential-election scandal-bounded Zimbabwe. One of my friends emailed me yesterday about his short time in the 2 African countries. I decided to share this with my other friends since I find it extremely interesting. Here it is:
“South Africa was a lot wealthier than i expected. Johannesburg you always hear bad things about, but for the most part it just felt like a regular American city. Spread out, ppl have nice cars, downtown is all black people, white ppl live in gated suburbs (that part reminded me a lot of Dallas). i think things have changed a lot in recent years, with commodities prices booming and the Jobo region dependent on gold and other resources, kind of makes sense that you see a lot of wealth. still there were some very African aspects, such as the power going out everyday. the city of Jobo doesn’t have enough electricity, so there are always different parts of the city without power. traffic lights going out creates huge traffic jams. They don’t have much public transit yet but are building a subway/train soon. one messed thing, even the hospital's power got cut when I was there, and almost killed a patient who was undergoing heart surgery. You gotta at least power the hospitals! Zimbabwe was a different story, cuz of the election thingy, the Canadian govt actually tells ppl not to go, but the Victoria Falls area is richer/touristy so we went anyway. They’ve built nice hotels, but literally me and C-dub were the only tourists walking around in the whole town. It’s a ghost town; you see a lot of poverty. we went on this canoe trip in the Zambezi river, and on the way there the car broke down, had to get someone to come fix it, then they got us to fill out these forms, and even their pens don’t frigging work. also, we stayed in a really nice hotel, but it had a weird feeling. Most resort hotels always try to be nice so they get good reviews and repeat customers. but you got the feeling there that they know they'll be out of business soon because the country is in such a mess. a 5 star type hotel should do little things like refilling your shampoo but think they are trying to squeeze every dollar while they can.
I got a gift for you from Zimbabwe, a $50 million dollar bill! (It’s worth a bit less than 1 US dollar). Remember how you told Narinder you would give him half if you became a millionaire? should send him one of those as a good luck present for his new business. Then we were off to Cape Town. Probably the nicest city in Africa. Reminded me of Vancouver, the mountains’, beaches, and some streets were like Kitslano streets. the waterfront harbour there is very nice, shops and restaurants, also probably the whitest place I’ve been (no chocolate face, only vanilla face).”
*Steve: Narinder was our driver in India with whom the boys and I have developed a friendship while touring in India. I promised Narinder that I’d give him half of my money if I became a millionaire. Haha, I guess I’d have to honor my promise. Shyte, who cares? I should just pretend that I never said it. I’d make a great politician. Watch out, Obama………if Hillary didn’t get you first, then the Chenster is coming to get you!!! hahhahah
*Steve: I thought Guelph was the whitest place I’ve ever been to until little towns of Tasmania where Asians were only generally seen on TV and in films.
Randomness:
1) Met some Canadian girls from Victoria at the hostel today. I knew they were Cdns right away since their black Lulu lemon pants just screamed for attention. Very nice!
2) Saw a green Corolla hatchback today with an “Obama 08” sticker on its rear windshield today in the Melbourne CBD. That was unexpected, but awesome!
3) Bought some fruits today at the supermarkets. I was in a real state of excitement to see apples of the orchard I worked on back in March in Tasmania. (Since the apples had the little sticker with the orchard’s name on it) It was also very strange know that I could’ve picked some of the apples on display. The apples were being sold at just below $5/kg. Knowing that each bin is about 400 kg, the entire bin would sell for $2000 at the supermarket and it only cost the orchard owners $28 to pay me per 400kg bin. Now, that’s crazy!
4) In Oz and NZ, a Kiwi is either a New Zealander or the bird itself. However, a “Kiwifruit” is the fruit we eat. The fruit is named after the bird since it looks like one, without the limbs.
1) Met some Canadian girls from Victoria at the hostel today. I knew they were Cdns right away since their black Lulu lemon pants just screamed for attention. Very nice!
2) Saw a green Corolla hatchback today with an “Obama 08” sticker on its rear windshield today in the Melbourne CBD. That was unexpected, but awesome!
3) Bought some fruits today at the supermarkets. I was in a real state of excitement to see apples of the orchard I worked on back in March in Tasmania. (Since the apples had the little sticker with the orchard’s name on it) It was also very strange know that I could’ve picked some of the apples on display. The apples were being sold at just below $5/kg. Knowing that each bin is about 400 kg, the entire bin would sell for $2000 at the supermarket and it only cost the orchard owners $28 to pay me per 400kg bin. Now, that’s crazy!
4) In Oz and NZ, a Kiwi is either a New Zealander or the bird itself. However, a “Kiwifruit” is the fruit we eat. The fruit is named after the bird since it looks like one, without the limbs.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Food is the new Crack
In an email conversation with a good friend of mine, he told me he just bought a big bag of rice with his gf after hearing that the price of rice will increase by a large margin in the near future. Thinking to myself, this reminded me of Chris Rock’s joke that back in the days, the black people probably didn’t traffic drugs, but words. Yes, words!
A black guy would stand on a street corner and hustle books and words.
“Yo man, check this out man, I got a NEW word, man! A NEW WORD, man!”
I thought that sketch was pretty funny. (You’ve gotta picture that in Chris Rock’s voice.) If I could meet 4 people in my life, I’d like meet Edward Norton, Chris Rock, Allen Iverson and it’s currently a wild card for the 4th person. Application now accepted.
*Come to think of it, it’s sorta weird that all 3 of them are Americans and men. Perhaps I need to be more PC and inclusive for my 4th person-to-meet.
Anyway, with the global food crisis is coming along and the prices skyrocketing.…..soon enough we’ll be smuggling rice, but not drugs. How f’ed up is that? Pretty shit to serve a 4 year prison term for smuggling rice. Damn! What’s an Asian brother’s gotta do for some rice?!
Newsflash:
1) Just saw Obama’s speech live on TV after winning North Carolina. I swear when he said, “Thank you, North Carolina,” all I could think about was Petey Pablo’s song –“Raise Up”. (the lyrics go like this: “North Carolina, raise your hands up. Take your shirt off and spin it like a helicopter”) I also found Obama to have a stronger American accent than I had previously noticed. He really pronounces his “R’s”. Not sure if that’s a Chicago accent, but the Windy City usually speaks with a lot of emphasis. (See Common and Kanye West)
2) The person next to me in the internet café is watching porn on his laptop.
Since my weird experience in Beijing in November 2006, I have yet to encounter another similar situation until today. Another guy is looking at porn on his computer in a public space while sitting right next to me.
I find his behaviour extremely weird. The funny thing is that he mistakenly plugged in his headphones into the microphone jack on his laptop instead of the headphone jack. As you can imagine, some contents were heard by everybody around him and me. This guy wasn’t embarrassed, but more confused to what was going on. He quickly switched the jacks to the proper one and continued to entertain himself.
What’s even funnier: Free wireless is provided here, therefore he’s not only a horny bastard, but also a cheap ass. Lol hahahha….
3) Laundry detergent is called “Washing Powders” here in Oz. Hot Chocolate powders is called “Drinking Chocolate.”
A black guy would stand on a street corner and hustle books and words.
“Yo man, check this out man, I got a NEW word, man! A NEW WORD, man!”
I thought that sketch was pretty funny. (You’ve gotta picture that in Chris Rock’s voice.) If I could meet 4 people in my life, I’d like meet Edward Norton, Chris Rock, Allen Iverson and it’s currently a wild card for the 4th person. Application now accepted.
*Come to think of it, it’s sorta weird that all 3 of them are Americans and men. Perhaps I need to be more PC and inclusive for my 4th person-to-meet.
Anyway, with the global food crisis is coming along and the prices skyrocketing.…..soon enough we’ll be smuggling rice, but not drugs. How f’ed up is that? Pretty shit to serve a 4 year prison term for smuggling rice. Damn! What’s an Asian brother’s gotta do for some rice?!
Newsflash:
1) Just saw Obama’s speech live on TV after winning North Carolina. I swear when he said, “Thank you, North Carolina,” all I could think about was Petey Pablo’s song –“Raise Up”. (the lyrics go like this: “North Carolina, raise your hands up. Take your shirt off and spin it like a helicopter”) I also found Obama to have a stronger American accent than I had previously noticed. He really pronounces his “R’s”. Not sure if that’s a Chicago accent, but the Windy City usually speaks with a lot of emphasis. (See Common and Kanye West)
2) The person next to me in the internet café is watching porn on his laptop.
Since my weird experience in Beijing in November 2006, I have yet to encounter another similar situation until today. Another guy is looking at porn on his computer in a public space while sitting right next to me.
I find his behaviour extremely weird. The funny thing is that he mistakenly plugged in his headphones into the microphone jack on his laptop instead of the headphone jack. As you can imagine, some contents were heard by everybody around him and me. This guy wasn’t embarrassed, but more confused to what was going on. He quickly switched the jacks to the proper one and continued to entertain himself.
What’s even funnier: Free wireless is provided here, therefore he’s not only a horny bastard, but also a cheap ass. Lol hahahha….
3) Laundry detergent is called “Washing Powders” here in Oz. Hot Chocolate powders is called “Drinking Chocolate.”
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Riced Out
I’ve been reading up on some of the following matters in regards to food price increase/supply shortages over the past week. Thought this stuff is both important and interesting, so here it is for you. There are more rice eaters than potato eaters in this world. Rice is such an important part of my diet. I can’t even imagine what it likes to be living in Africa, Middle East and all of Asia right about now.
Let me know if you got any feedbacks or have read something news similar or from a different perspective.
PRODUCTION
Per capita rice production, in thousands of tonnes
Thailand: 277.3
Vietnam: 251.4
Burma: 222.1
Bangladesh: 180.2
Indonesia: 137.6
Philippines: 96.8
S. Korea: 92.5
China: 90.3
India: 82.4
Japan: 55.7
Egypt: 50.3
Taiwan: 49.8
Brazil: 39.2
Pakistan: 27.7
U.S.A.: 20.9
Australia: 17.8
Weighted average: 105.8
SOURCE: NATIONMASTER, U.S. DEPT OF AGRICULTURE, UN FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION (FAO)
Let me know if you got any feedbacks or have read something news similar or from a different perspective.
PRODUCTION
Per capita rice production, in thousands of tonnes
Thailand: 277.3
Vietnam: 251.4
Burma: 222.1
Bangladesh: 180.2
Indonesia: 137.6
Philippines: 96.8
S. Korea: 92.5
China: 90.3
India: 82.4
Japan: 55.7
Egypt: 50.3
Taiwan: 49.8
Brazil: 39.2
Pakistan: 27.7
U.S.A.: 20.9
Australia: 17.8
Weighted average: 105.8
SOURCE: NATIONMASTER, U.S. DEPT OF AGRICULTURE, UN FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION (FAO)
Not Soo Lazy Sunday
Pic above: Team Canada’s new uniform (By HBC) for the Beijing Summer Olympics. I really like the designs incorporating Chinese motifs and the colour of China/Canada – Red. http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/OrganizingCommittee/MediaCentre/FeatureStories/2008/04/30/95675_0804301600-184 (really not feeling picture 4 for the Canada visor. Looks like a banker about to count some dollar dollar bills, yo!)Listening to Nelly Furtado’s song, “Glow”, while I am typing this blog entry up onto a word file awaiting to be posted on my blog for when I get internet access at a later time.
1) It’s official! I am now on my way to Alice Springs and Uluru aka Australia’s Red Center to see yet another World Heritage Site – Ayers Rock. Had a few issues with purchasing my flight online with my visa card, but eventually got my Kiwi friend to use his credit card to purchase it for me instead. I am leaving Melbourne for Alice Springs on May 15th then flying to Cairns 5 days after for the Great Barrier Reefs located on the Northeastern tip of Australia in the State of Queensland. I will then make my way down back to Sydney along the east coast of Queensland and New South Wales on a Greyhound hop on/hop off bus ticket. Hopefully I will be back to Sydney by mid-June, assuming that I don’t stop somewhere along the warm coast for work.
2) Had some Vietnamese pho noodles around the Richmond area on Victoria Street with my Kiwi friend and another Aussie mate. The Pho I had was really good, it was a special one which tasted a lot like Thai’s Tom Yum soup since I could really taste the lemon grass flavour. Bought some cheap groceries at the Chinese markets around the corner. I paid about one-third less then I would if I shopped at a proper supermarket.
3) I have a real dislike for the Melbourne tram system (like the street cars in Toronto or the C-trains in Calgary). The fares can be purchased on board from a machine, but the machine only takes coins (much like Calgary’s system). Many of the transit users never bothered to buy the fares which could result in a $160 fine if caught by the Yarra Tram personnels (whom are sometimes undercover in plain cloths.) For example, I got checked today, but fortunately I bought a day pass.
The trams have really gotta start taking bills/notes or accept debit/credit cards. I really love how Vancouver’s skytrain fares can be purchased either with bills, coins or with plastics!
Ps. One of the most popular songs in Australia right now is “Paralyser”. That song came out ages ago back home.
ps. this just in, found a great site for movies (http://www.surfthechannel.com/). "Harold and Kumar - escape from Guantanamo Bay"..........that looks sweet.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Hotel Canada eh?
Canada is much more than a hotel
TOM KENT
Tom Kent Served as principal assistant to prime minister Lester Pearson. He was an immigrant to Canada in 1954 and in 1966 he was the deputy minister of Citizenship and Immigration
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 25, 2008 at 11:09 PM EDT
It was in 1947 that "Canadian citizen" replaced "British subject" as the legal description of a voting participant in this democratic society. One might think that by now the transition would be complete, the concept of our citizenship mature. It is not. It has not kept up with changes in the world around us. Canadian law on citizenship and immigration is in need of another radical revision.
Most of us are proud to belong to a nation welcoming diverse peoples and accepting many cultures. But present law permits, even encourages, confusion of loyalties and plurality of citizenship. The sense of a Canadian identity is increasingly diluted. It need not be.
(steve: is this necessarily a bad thing though? The cdn identity IS a bit of every culture. To separate the different cultures within the cdn society IS to break the cdn identity. )
In the beginning, in the 1867 escape from colonies to nation, what it meant to be Canadian was plain. It was to be different from American. As the United States emerged from its bloody civil war, and found purpose in the manifest destiny of rolling west and potentially north, determination to have no part of it was equally strong in the British and the French.
The BNA Act was soon supported by the National Policy of tariffs and the railroad. That was not enough, however, to build an economy from sea to sea. Farmers from a cold climate were needed to break the Prairie sod. It was immigration from central Europe that made it possible for Quebec and the old British colonies to grow into a nation state. We remained a dynamic economy. In the mid-twentieth century, particularly, remarkable and diversified growth called for many new workers. At first they came from Britain and Europe, but prosperity there soon diminished those sources. The temper of the 1960s in any case called for openness to all peoples, who have since come especially from south and east Asia.
It is, however, a new imperative that calls for them. Canadians have become much less productive of offspring. Our fertility rate is barely two-thirds of the population replacement level. We are, of course, far from unique in that respect. But our population is already slight in relation to our resources. Smaller numbers would damagingly increase the burden of infrastructure overheads imposed by our geography. They would reduce the economies of scale possible for an economy whose manufacturing and service sectors are already challenged by growth elsewhere. Much as the world as a whole will eventually benefit from lower birth rates, it will be a long time before both economic and social pressures cease to call for migration to Canada, migration substantial in relation to our otherwise declining population.
HEARTS NOT LEFT ELSEWHERE
Our national problem is to reconcile this need with the basic political fact that no democracy can thrive without some widely shared sense of community, of some things done differently because they are done together. We are a North American society, sharing many characteristics with our neighbour. But we have combined them with a stronger sense of community concerns. One aspect of this was brought home to me long ago by Prime Minister Pearson. When we were reminiscing together over an after-work Scotch, he said that in all his international dealings, and unilingual though he was, the people with whom he felt most at home were neither American nor British, but northern Europeans.
That was close to fifty years ago, in a different world. But the essential point remains. While Canada takes second place to none in the value it places on individual freedom and enterprise, we strive to do so within an equitable and equable society that combats inequalities of opportunity. Such is the community spirit of French Canadians as much as British, of most newer as well as earlier immigrants. It is the spirit that has guided our sometimes significant contribution to world affairs. We want immigrants who will in their diversity contribute to the development of that Canadianism. We do not want immigrants who dilute it by leaving their hearts elsewhere.
(steve: I am really not sure what to think of this. While moderate patriotism is great for developing a sense of community and nation, but what’s wrong with new immigrants leaving some of their hearts in their home countries. It’s bound to happen; it’s only human nature. I think “diluting” is the wrong word to be used here. With diversity, it also comes with multi-culturalism within a nation. Canada gotta take the good with the by-products. This is a relatively new thing to the so called “Real” Cdns. The Whites in the cities are becoming a minority for the first time in the cdn history. This is also evident in cities of most first world western countries. We can either live with it or send these immigrants-now-citizens back to where they came from. Obviously the later isn’t realistic, so that’s outta question. On a side note, how the heck could we achieve world peace if we couldn’t live with each other within the nation?)
Citizenship can neither be bred by preaching nor be enforced by law. It can be encouraged or not. At present it is not. Canada's national interest requires, first, a major change in the legal terms on which migrants come. After three years as residents they may, if they wish and satisfy a minimal test, become citizens. But if not, their permission to reside and work here continues. So does access to the hospitality of our multiculturalism. Legally, we minimize the meaning and responsibilities of citizenship. We give substance to the jibe that, by making so light of being Canadian, we are the hotel among countries: a place to which you come and go at your convenience, in escape from the obligations of a household.
FLAG OF CONVENIENCE
We used to think of immigrants as people who have identified themselves with a new land. A rather different reality was illustrated during the sudden war in Lebanon two years ago. The danger overwhelmed our embassy with a rush of thousands of people living in Lebanon but expecting to be rescued at Canadian taxpayers' expense. Contemporary communication tempts recent comers, whether residents or legally citizens, to remain more emotionally identified with relatives and friends whence they came, with that country's politics and conflicts, than with the people and affairs of Canada. A Canadian passport may be little more than a flag of convenience.
The primary way to give meaning to citizenship is to set a term to residence without it. In effect, the present provision would be reversed. Immigration should depend on the intent to become Canadian. It would give the right to live here for three years. Within that time, the immigrant could either become a citizen or leave. A review panel would have final authority to determine whether the modest language and knowledge requirements were satisfied. There would be no provision either for making exceptions by ministerial permit or for appeals. The rare immigrant who after three years could not meet the requirements would have to leave voluntarily or be deported.
If this procedure were to be challenged before the Supreme Court, Parliament should use the "notwithstanding" provision of the Constitution to uphold the law against the arrogance of lawyers. Morally, their clients must be considered beside the countless victims of conflict and privation who can never come here. Those who have that opportunity but fail to abide by its terms should be firmly and promptly deported. The cases would be relatively few if the terms of entry and of citizenship were properly defined.
Ottawa could do much more to assist the agencies that are ready and willing to help immigrants improve their language skills, to learn more about their new country, about its history and its public affairs. The result would be a future fairer society. Immediately, the citizenship oath could be modernized. It is well over forty years since we gave ourselves our own flag. Surely we can now do the same with words to express the essence of citizenship for all Canadians.
There will always be need for various kinds of temporary residents, such as students and the occasional person uniquely qualified for a particular task. Most importantly, genuine refugees, unable to return to their homelands, might well be allowed an extended period in which to decide whether to become Canadian, seek another country, or in some cases perforce stay here, even though unable to qualify for citizenship.
Such problems do not, however, affect immigrant status. It should always mean becoming a citizen within three years, or leaving. This legal change would not, of course, apply retroactively to immigrants previously admitted and remaining here. It would, however, apply to any who sought to return to Canada after absenting themselves for a period elsewhere.
TAX US WHEREVER WE GO
There are obligations of citizenship that can be enforced. They include a fundamental obligation that present Canadian law neglects to establish. The duty to pay taxes should be inherent in citizenship. Where the citizen chooses from time to time to live is irrelevant. The obligation is to the state that provides the rights of citizenship. Taxation is the price you pay to have those rights. But not, at present, if you are Canadian. Live in Barbados, or wherever, and you are Canadian free of charge.
We are in that no different from the nationals of most countries. But we are close to unique in the proportion of us who owe to the state the grant of our citizenship; and, unfortunately, in the proportion for whom old loyalties are more present than the new.
(steve: that’s a touchy subject. Is it necessarily an “unfortunate” thing that some of the immigrants are “more loyal” to its birth country than to Canada? That’s a bit hypocritical to talk about the celebration of the Cdn diversity and simultaneously question the loyalty of the immigrants. A NEW Canadian is more than just his Cdn citizenship, but he is also his former identity prior to legally becoming a Canadian. One is neither “Cdn” nor is one of his/her former identiy/nationality, but BOTH. As far as I am concerned and not trying to get the writer on technicality, but one just can’t be “more loyal” to the old than the new. One is loyal to one country or the other, and of course this is easier said than done, as it is not always black and white. What does Canada have to do to its citizen hopefuls? Should Canada go to the extreme of not allowing dual-citizenships? Even that won’t solve the situation of the so-called “loyalty”. As some rapper would say, “you can take me outta the hood, but you can’t take the hood outta me.” Things aren’t just that simple. With all being said, I do agree that some kinda obligations are required of Canada’s citizens whether they choose to live in Canada or not. Whether if the obligations were of monetary issues….or I should say some kinda tax programs is probably one of the least the citizens could do in order to retain their Canadian “membership”.)
The legal failure to link citizenship and tax invites the alienation that increasingly weakens our national politics, that among some newcomers encourages indifference to public affairs except those that impinge on their countries of origin.
Making tax the same for citizens in and out of the country will not, of course, in itself work any magic. But it is a crucial reinforcement to the primary reform that makes citizenship, not convenience, the condition for staying here. It will help to give meaning to the rights and obligations of belonging with a true north that matters.
And as legal changes go, it is easy. There is an excellent precedent to hand. American citizens living outside their country do not thereby escape liability for American tax. Canadian law should similarly provide that every citizen, irrespective of where he or she is residing at any time, is required to file a return of income from all sources, and then to pay the assessed Canadian tax. If the country of residence has a tax treaty with Canada, the assessment would of course reflect an appropriate allocation of tax between jurisdictions. But if it is a haven or country of uncertain tax administration, then the liability would be for the full amount of Canadian tax.
An immediate penalty for tax delinquency would be international notice that the offender's passport has become invalid. That would apply equally to citizens by birth and by naturalization. After a fair notice, this would be followed by cancellation of a citizenship acquired by naturalization.
Citizenship by birth cannot be so thrown aside (except, of course, on the initiative of someone who values it less than a foreign rank), but the delinquency is reason to refuse a passport in all cases. A tax offender who nevertheless presented herself or himself for return to Canada would be required to pay what was due, with interest and penalties, or be admitted into detention.
A province can tax only its own residents. The suggested legislation, it should therefore be noted, would relate directly only to federal taxation. However, it should not be difficult to get provincial agreement that, for non-resident citizens, the federal law would add a supplementary tax of about the average level of provincial taxes. The total for an absentee would then be much the same as is paid by a citizen living anywhere in Canada.
Equitable tax reform would not only strengthen the meaning of citizenship and the sense of Canadian identity.
(steve: not sure how paying taxes exactly “strengthen the meaning of citizenship or the sense of Cdn identity. Perhaps mandatory French lessons may strengthen the sense of cdn identity? Perhaps Canada needs stronger foreign policies? *yes, I do realize how ridiculous that sounds, but buying your way to retain your citizenship doesn’t equate to a “meaningful citizenship” either.)
It would facilitate an onslaught against the rapidly growing evasion through external havens of both personal and corporate taxation. That international inefficiency is not only an infringement of the fairness on which the stability of informed societies depends. It increasingly impairs the vigour of the older enterprise that is under challenge from emerging economies.
Our special Canadian problem, however, is our identity. The more complex and interdependent the world becomes, the more the bigger nations enlarge their economies and establish their distinctive roles, the more important for smaller nations is the sense of community needed to empower their particular policies. Our diversity and our location combine to make adherence to a place and a purpose in the world especially challenging and of some special importance. To foster Canadian citizenship is part of the way to strengthen our contribution to the global society.
TOM KENT
Tom Kent Served as principal assistant to prime minister Lester Pearson. He was an immigrant to Canada in 1954 and in 1966 he was the deputy minister of Citizenship and Immigration
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 25, 2008 at 11:09 PM EDT
It was in 1947 that "Canadian citizen" replaced "British subject" as the legal description of a voting participant in this democratic society. One might think that by now the transition would be complete, the concept of our citizenship mature. It is not. It has not kept up with changes in the world around us. Canadian law on citizenship and immigration is in need of another radical revision.
Most of us are proud to belong to a nation welcoming diverse peoples and accepting many cultures. But present law permits, even encourages, confusion of loyalties and plurality of citizenship. The sense of a Canadian identity is increasingly diluted. It need not be.
(steve: is this necessarily a bad thing though? The cdn identity IS a bit of every culture. To separate the different cultures within the cdn society IS to break the cdn identity. )
In the beginning, in the 1867 escape from colonies to nation, what it meant to be Canadian was plain. It was to be different from American. As the United States emerged from its bloody civil war, and found purpose in the manifest destiny of rolling west and potentially north, determination to have no part of it was equally strong in the British and the French.
The BNA Act was soon supported by the National Policy of tariffs and the railroad. That was not enough, however, to build an economy from sea to sea. Farmers from a cold climate were needed to break the Prairie sod. It was immigration from central Europe that made it possible for Quebec and the old British colonies to grow into a nation state. We remained a dynamic economy. In the mid-twentieth century, particularly, remarkable and diversified growth called for many new workers. At first they came from Britain and Europe, but prosperity there soon diminished those sources. The temper of the 1960s in any case called for openness to all peoples, who have since come especially from south and east Asia.
It is, however, a new imperative that calls for them. Canadians have become much less productive of offspring. Our fertility rate is barely two-thirds of the population replacement level. We are, of course, far from unique in that respect. But our population is already slight in relation to our resources. Smaller numbers would damagingly increase the burden of infrastructure overheads imposed by our geography. They would reduce the economies of scale possible for an economy whose manufacturing and service sectors are already challenged by growth elsewhere. Much as the world as a whole will eventually benefit from lower birth rates, it will be a long time before both economic and social pressures cease to call for migration to Canada, migration substantial in relation to our otherwise declining population.
HEARTS NOT LEFT ELSEWHERE
Our national problem is to reconcile this need with the basic political fact that no democracy can thrive without some widely shared sense of community, of some things done differently because they are done together. We are a North American society, sharing many characteristics with our neighbour. But we have combined them with a stronger sense of community concerns. One aspect of this was brought home to me long ago by Prime Minister Pearson. When we were reminiscing together over an after-work Scotch, he said that in all his international dealings, and unilingual though he was, the people with whom he felt most at home were neither American nor British, but northern Europeans.
That was close to fifty years ago, in a different world. But the essential point remains. While Canada takes second place to none in the value it places on individual freedom and enterprise, we strive to do so within an equitable and equable society that combats inequalities of opportunity. Such is the community spirit of French Canadians as much as British, of most newer as well as earlier immigrants. It is the spirit that has guided our sometimes significant contribution to world affairs. We want immigrants who will in their diversity contribute to the development of that Canadianism. We do not want immigrants who dilute it by leaving their hearts elsewhere.
(steve: I am really not sure what to think of this. While moderate patriotism is great for developing a sense of community and nation, but what’s wrong with new immigrants leaving some of their hearts in their home countries. It’s bound to happen; it’s only human nature. I think “diluting” is the wrong word to be used here. With diversity, it also comes with multi-culturalism within a nation. Canada gotta take the good with the by-products. This is a relatively new thing to the so called “Real” Cdns. The Whites in the cities are becoming a minority for the first time in the cdn history. This is also evident in cities of most first world western countries. We can either live with it or send these immigrants-now-citizens back to where they came from. Obviously the later isn’t realistic, so that’s outta question. On a side note, how the heck could we achieve world peace if we couldn’t live with each other within the nation?)
Citizenship can neither be bred by preaching nor be enforced by law. It can be encouraged or not. At present it is not. Canada's national interest requires, first, a major change in the legal terms on which migrants come. After three years as residents they may, if they wish and satisfy a minimal test, become citizens. But if not, their permission to reside and work here continues. So does access to the hospitality of our multiculturalism. Legally, we minimize the meaning and responsibilities of citizenship. We give substance to the jibe that, by making so light of being Canadian, we are the hotel among countries: a place to which you come and go at your convenience, in escape from the obligations of a household.
FLAG OF CONVENIENCE
We used to think of immigrants as people who have identified themselves with a new land. A rather different reality was illustrated during the sudden war in Lebanon two years ago. The danger overwhelmed our embassy with a rush of thousands of people living in Lebanon but expecting to be rescued at Canadian taxpayers' expense. Contemporary communication tempts recent comers, whether residents or legally citizens, to remain more emotionally identified with relatives and friends whence they came, with that country's politics and conflicts, than with the people and affairs of Canada. A Canadian passport may be little more than a flag of convenience.
The primary way to give meaning to citizenship is to set a term to residence without it. In effect, the present provision would be reversed. Immigration should depend on the intent to become Canadian. It would give the right to live here for three years. Within that time, the immigrant could either become a citizen or leave. A review panel would have final authority to determine whether the modest language and knowledge requirements were satisfied. There would be no provision either for making exceptions by ministerial permit or for appeals. The rare immigrant who after three years could not meet the requirements would have to leave voluntarily or be deported.
If this procedure were to be challenged before the Supreme Court, Parliament should use the "notwithstanding" provision of the Constitution to uphold the law against the arrogance of lawyers. Morally, their clients must be considered beside the countless victims of conflict and privation who can never come here. Those who have that opportunity but fail to abide by its terms should be firmly and promptly deported. The cases would be relatively few if the terms of entry and of citizenship were properly defined.
Ottawa could do much more to assist the agencies that are ready and willing to help immigrants improve their language skills, to learn more about their new country, about its history and its public affairs. The result would be a future fairer society. Immediately, the citizenship oath could be modernized. It is well over forty years since we gave ourselves our own flag. Surely we can now do the same with words to express the essence of citizenship for all Canadians.
There will always be need for various kinds of temporary residents, such as students and the occasional person uniquely qualified for a particular task. Most importantly, genuine refugees, unable to return to their homelands, might well be allowed an extended period in which to decide whether to become Canadian, seek another country, or in some cases perforce stay here, even though unable to qualify for citizenship.
Such problems do not, however, affect immigrant status. It should always mean becoming a citizen within three years, or leaving. This legal change would not, of course, apply retroactively to immigrants previously admitted and remaining here. It would, however, apply to any who sought to return to Canada after absenting themselves for a period elsewhere.
TAX US WHEREVER WE GO
There are obligations of citizenship that can be enforced. They include a fundamental obligation that present Canadian law neglects to establish. The duty to pay taxes should be inherent in citizenship. Where the citizen chooses from time to time to live is irrelevant. The obligation is to the state that provides the rights of citizenship. Taxation is the price you pay to have those rights. But not, at present, if you are Canadian. Live in Barbados, or wherever, and you are Canadian free of charge.
We are in that no different from the nationals of most countries. But we are close to unique in the proportion of us who owe to the state the grant of our citizenship; and, unfortunately, in the proportion for whom old loyalties are more present than the new.
(steve: that’s a touchy subject. Is it necessarily an “unfortunate” thing that some of the immigrants are “more loyal” to its birth country than to Canada? That’s a bit hypocritical to talk about the celebration of the Cdn diversity and simultaneously question the loyalty of the immigrants. A NEW Canadian is more than just his Cdn citizenship, but he is also his former identity prior to legally becoming a Canadian. One is neither “Cdn” nor is one of his/her former identiy/nationality, but BOTH. As far as I am concerned and not trying to get the writer on technicality, but one just can’t be “more loyal” to the old than the new. One is loyal to one country or the other, and of course this is easier said than done, as it is not always black and white. What does Canada have to do to its citizen hopefuls? Should Canada go to the extreme of not allowing dual-citizenships? Even that won’t solve the situation of the so-called “loyalty”. As some rapper would say, “you can take me outta the hood, but you can’t take the hood outta me.” Things aren’t just that simple. With all being said, I do agree that some kinda obligations are required of Canada’s citizens whether they choose to live in Canada or not. Whether if the obligations were of monetary issues….or I should say some kinda tax programs is probably one of the least the citizens could do in order to retain their Canadian “membership”.)
The legal failure to link citizenship and tax invites the alienation that increasingly weakens our national politics, that among some newcomers encourages indifference to public affairs except those that impinge on their countries of origin.
Making tax the same for citizens in and out of the country will not, of course, in itself work any magic. But it is a crucial reinforcement to the primary reform that makes citizenship, not convenience, the condition for staying here. It will help to give meaning to the rights and obligations of belonging with a true north that matters.
And as legal changes go, it is easy. There is an excellent precedent to hand. American citizens living outside their country do not thereby escape liability for American tax. Canadian law should similarly provide that every citizen, irrespective of where he or she is residing at any time, is required to file a return of income from all sources, and then to pay the assessed Canadian tax. If the country of residence has a tax treaty with Canada, the assessment would of course reflect an appropriate allocation of tax between jurisdictions. But if it is a haven or country of uncertain tax administration, then the liability would be for the full amount of Canadian tax.
An immediate penalty for tax delinquency would be international notice that the offender's passport has become invalid. That would apply equally to citizens by birth and by naturalization. After a fair notice, this would be followed by cancellation of a citizenship acquired by naturalization.
Citizenship by birth cannot be so thrown aside (except, of course, on the initiative of someone who values it less than a foreign rank), but the delinquency is reason to refuse a passport in all cases. A tax offender who nevertheless presented herself or himself for return to Canada would be required to pay what was due, with interest and penalties, or be admitted into detention.
A province can tax only its own residents. The suggested legislation, it should therefore be noted, would relate directly only to federal taxation. However, it should not be difficult to get provincial agreement that, for non-resident citizens, the federal law would add a supplementary tax of about the average level of provincial taxes. The total for an absentee would then be much the same as is paid by a citizen living anywhere in Canada.
Equitable tax reform would not only strengthen the meaning of citizenship and the sense of Canadian identity.
(steve: not sure how paying taxes exactly “strengthen the meaning of citizenship or the sense of Cdn identity. Perhaps mandatory French lessons may strengthen the sense of cdn identity? Perhaps Canada needs stronger foreign policies? *yes, I do realize how ridiculous that sounds, but buying your way to retain your citizenship doesn’t equate to a “meaningful citizenship” either.)
It would facilitate an onslaught against the rapidly growing evasion through external havens of both personal and corporate taxation. That international inefficiency is not only an infringement of the fairness on which the stability of informed societies depends. It increasingly impairs the vigour of the older enterprise that is under challenge from emerging economies.
Our special Canadian problem, however, is our identity. The more complex and interdependent the world becomes, the more the bigger nations enlarge their economies and establish their distinctive roles, the more important for smaller nations is the sense of community needed to empower their particular policies. Our diversity and our location combine to make adherence to a place and a purpose in the world especially challenging and of some special importance. To foster Canadian citizenship is part of the way to strengthen our contribution to the global society.
May, I write this. (I’m running outta ideas for the titles)
pic above: Amnesty International's "Nu Wa" or Angry Doll.1) Since I have been in Australia, I have met some travellers of “unlikely” nationalities. I wasn’t expecting to meet anybody from Niger, Zimbabwe, and Columbia, but I did. (On a side note, I haven’t met many of these nationalities, but there are a few out there: Dutch, Isreali’s (though they tend to go to Thailand and New Zealand), Belgian, Finnish, and Austrians. Oh, did I mention the Americans, too?) However, overwhelmingly of the backpackers in Oz are all from the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, and Japan.
Vice versa, they weren’t expecting to meet an Asian-Cdn either. However, my ethnicity and nationality that surprises mostly the Asian travellers, as they often find themselves with a look of disbelief on their faces once I have told them I am from Canada (I’ve been kind enough to satisfy their curiosity, or at times confusion, by adding a disclaimer: But I am also Chinese/Taiwanese.) At this point, they usually come to realization with a sigh of relief. It is quite funny actually.
I have also had some similar experience with some local Australians. I once told a Chinese-Aussie girl that I found it very weird to hear an Asian person with an Aussie accent. She replied: “It’s weird for me to hear an Asian with a Canadian accent.” We shared a laugh then and chatted for some time. (Perhaps, for somebody who tries to be very open-minded, I have been exactly the opposite.)
*My curiosity got the best of me when chatting with the Zimbabweans over a beer. While pretending to know what I was talking about, I asked them if they also heard that there’s gonna be another presidential election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. They confirmed and said that they didn’t like Mugabe and then kindly declined to talk much more about the situation back home. The guys must have been in their 30’s and they are just here to visit some relatives. When asked if they preferred Oz over home, they both said they prefer Zimbabwe.
2) A few weeks ago while out to an Irish friend’s bday dinner, I met an Aussie whom happens to be a member of the Internal Affairs dept of the Oz police force. Not sure what ethnicity he was, but he looked like he could be Fijian, Indian or some kind of Pacific Islanders. In chatting with him, learned that he works closely with the Interpol’s on international drugs and firearms trafficking. Cool guy, but weird sense of humour, extremely dry. (For somebody like me with a dry sense of humour, this guy’s got a extremely dry sense of humour.)
A side note, there were 9 of us out to dinner. Every one was from a different nation. At the table, we had 1 Irish girl, 1 English girl, 1 Scottish girl, 1 Aussie guy, 1 Belgian guy, me, 1 Kiwi guy, 1 French guy, and 1 German girl. As backpackers in Oz, it’s not uncommon to hang out in a group where everybody was from somewhere else.
3) Been listening to a lot of Aussie radio now that I’ve been cleaning cars. The radio shows here are terrible to say the least. Fair enough that the talking part of the show sucks, but they also play the same songs over and over again daily (sad thing is that the station we listen to at the garage/warehouse is not even a pop station.) I swear I’d rip my hair out, if I had any, if I heard Phil Collin and The Police’s “Just another day of you and me at the Paradise” again while washing the infinity numbers of Nissan X-Trails.
Sometimes, I’d get to tune in to a pop station for a few hours. I find it extremely weird to hear the “N” word in a rap song on the radio. As far of on-air censorship goes, one could say or play anything except for the “N” word or the F-bombs. This reminded me of an article I read in one of the Sydney’s papers back in January about a cricket game between Oz and Pakistan. The article was oddly titled: “Paki’s Snatch One”. Not a PC person myself, I still found it very odd to see that type of wording in newspapers.
4) Rented a car on Wed and did a overnight road trip to the Great Ocean Road on the southern coast of the State of Victoria. The crew consisted of me, my Kiwi friend and a Japanese girl whom I met while picking apples in Tasmania. Though the weather was crap and I did all the driving, but the trip was still not bad. We slept in the car at Port Campbell to save some cash. Had some fish and chips (the only food available) at the small village. I wish I had done this trip earlier when the it was still the summer months. Regardless of it all, we still got to see Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge and the famous 12 Apostles (minus the amazing sunset and sunrise.) There was a 8-minute helicopter ride we could have done for $80 which would have been pretty amazing to see the cliffs from the sky above the sea, but I thought I was too much dough especially in a rainy weather.
Things I learned from this wet road trip:
a) Long johns are fantastic for sleeping in the cars when it’s cold out.
b) Sleeping inside cars suck.
c) Rip Curl and Quicksilver are both native brands of Oz to the town of Torquay.
d) I have a genuine dislike for road trips. Driving on the wrong side of the road during a road trip is only fun for the first 10 minutes.
e) My knowledge of Victoria’s south coast has drastically improved. From Melbourne to Geelong to Lorne to Apollo Bay to Lavers Hill to Glenaire to Princetown to Port Campbell to Peterborough to Camperdown to Colac then back to Melbourne 700 kms later.
Vice versa, they weren’t expecting to meet an Asian-Cdn either. However, my ethnicity and nationality that surprises mostly the Asian travellers, as they often find themselves with a look of disbelief on their faces once I have told them I am from Canada (I’ve been kind enough to satisfy their curiosity, or at times confusion, by adding a disclaimer: But I am also Chinese/Taiwanese.) At this point, they usually come to realization with a sigh of relief. It is quite funny actually.
I have also had some similar experience with some local Australians. I once told a Chinese-Aussie girl that I found it very weird to hear an Asian person with an Aussie accent. She replied: “It’s weird for me to hear an Asian with a Canadian accent.” We shared a laugh then and chatted for some time. (Perhaps, for somebody who tries to be very open-minded, I have been exactly the opposite.)
*My curiosity got the best of me when chatting with the Zimbabweans over a beer. While pretending to know what I was talking about, I asked them if they also heard that there’s gonna be another presidential election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. They confirmed and said that they didn’t like Mugabe and then kindly declined to talk much more about the situation back home. The guys must have been in their 30’s and they are just here to visit some relatives. When asked if they preferred Oz over home, they both said they prefer Zimbabwe.
2) A few weeks ago while out to an Irish friend’s bday dinner, I met an Aussie whom happens to be a member of the Internal Affairs dept of the Oz police force. Not sure what ethnicity he was, but he looked like he could be Fijian, Indian or some kind of Pacific Islanders. In chatting with him, learned that he works closely with the Interpol’s on international drugs and firearms trafficking. Cool guy, but weird sense of humour, extremely dry. (For somebody like me with a dry sense of humour, this guy’s got a extremely dry sense of humour.)
A side note, there were 9 of us out to dinner. Every one was from a different nation. At the table, we had 1 Irish girl, 1 English girl, 1 Scottish girl, 1 Aussie guy, 1 Belgian guy, me, 1 Kiwi guy, 1 French guy, and 1 German girl. As backpackers in Oz, it’s not uncommon to hang out in a group where everybody was from somewhere else.
3) Been listening to a lot of Aussie radio now that I’ve been cleaning cars. The radio shows here are terrible to say the least. Fair enough that the talking part of the show sucks, but they also play the same songs over and over again daily (sad thing is that the station we listen to at the garage/warehouse is not even a pop station.) I swear I’d rip my hair out, if I had any, if I heard Phil Collin and The Police’s “Just another day of you and me at the Paradise” again while washing the infinity numbers of Nissan X-Trails.
Sometimes, I’d get to tune in to a pop station for a few hours. I find it extremely weird to hear the “N” word in a rap song on the radio. As far of on-air censorship goes, one could say or play anything except for the “N” word or the F-bombs. This reminded me of an article I read in one of the Sydney’s papers back in January about a cricket game between Oz and Pakistan. The article was oddly titled: “Paki’s Snatch One”. Not a PC person myself, I still found it very odd to see that type of wording in newspapers.
4) Rented a car on Wed and did a overnight road trip to the Great Ocean Road on the southern coast of the State of Victoria. The crew consisted of me, my Kiwi friend and a Japanese girl whom I met while picking apples in Tasmania. Though the weather was crap and I did all the driving, but the trip was still not bad. We slept in the car at Port Campbell to save some cash. Had some fish and chips (the only food available) at the small village. I wish I had done this trip earlier when the it was still the summer months. Regardless of it all, we still got to see Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge and the famous 12 Apostles (minus the amazing sunset and sunrise.) There was a 8-minute helicopter ride we could have done for $80 which would have been pretty amazing to see the cliffs from the sky above the sea, but I thought I was too much dough especially in a rainy weather.
Things I learned from this wet road trip:
a) Long johns are fantastic for sleeping in the cars when it’s cold out.
b) Sleeping inside cars suck.
c) Rip Curl and Quicksilver are both native brands of Oz to the town of Torquay.
d) I have a genuine dislike for road trips. Driving on the wrong side of the road during a road trip is only fun for the first 10 minutes.
e) My knowledge of Victoria’s south coast has drastically improved. From Melbourne to Geelong to Lorne to Apollo Bay to Lavers Hill to Glenaire to Princetown to Port Campbell to Peterborough to Camperdown to Colac then back to Melbourne 700 kms later.
5) Yesterday at Federation Square, I stumbled upon a event hosted by Amnesty International in regards to censorships of internet in China. I read a few items and talked to some of the volunteers, but didn’t engage in signing any petitions in pleading with the Chinese officials for honouring Article 35 of PRC’s constitution: “citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the pres, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration”.
I have known this situation for a few years now so it wasn’t news for me. In light of the China-Tibet relations, forget about Free Tibet, how about Free China. The Chinese deserve the basic human rights as much as the Tibetans.
For more info: http://www.uncensor.com.au/
I have known this situation for a few years now so it wasn’t news for me. In light of the China-Tibet relations, forget about Free Tibet, how about Free China. The Chinese deserve the basic human rights as much as the Tibetans.
For more info: http://www.uncensor.com.au/
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