Insults

Having previously mentioned the problem with ‘being offended’ it is time to move on to ‘insults’.

These two are closely linked. If you are insulted you may very well be offended. So here is my take on it, a mind set that developed from a very early age.

At Primary School in UK down in the far South-West of England where, at that time, sheep and cattle outnumbered human beings, the classes were split up into various factions.

These groups were basically decided upon by where you lived. The school was in one small village but it serviced other, smaller, villages in the area.

On top of that idea was also the strange sectioning of our own village. If you lived up by the Church you would be ‘Higher’ and if you lived down by the ‘Coop Store’ you would be ‘Lower’ village.

By some odd principle that I never did grasp, the people who lived in the ‘Higher’ part were superior to those who lived in the ‘Lower’ bit.

I was also at something of a loss to discover how the people in the ‘Middle’, near the school, fitted in with this. One family, who lived opposite the school, were really nice people – I socialised with one of the brothers later in life when we were all ‘Motorbike Mad’ and worked with one of the sisters in a local agricultural machinery company.

Now you have the background.

At playtime, one of the boys from a nearby village decided to call me some sort of horrid name and followed this by casting aspersions on my family. 

I was stunned into stupefied silence and went on my way.

That night, in the small hours, I tossed and turned all night fretting about my inability to respond to his taunt. Of course, all sorts of repartee occurred to me including what would almost certainly have been the ‘Parthian Shot’. All far too late, of course.

The next morning I dragged myself to school. I was tired, mentally weary and apprehensive about what the day would bring.

When I entered to playground, there was my supposed antagonist chatting happily with his friends with no regard for my presence at all.

He had forgotten all about it.

It was me that had suffered.

All night!

Lesson learnt. Those who insult you are casting a reflection upon themselves and not you.

Was his insult accurate? Was it true? Well, yes. In some way it was truth – particular the jibe about my family and that, in all probability, was why I felt such rancour about it.

The real lesson was that he was unaffected by his remarks leaving me to fret.

Since then you will find it very difficult to upset me with your words.

If your opinion of me is so low as to cause you to hurl vitriol or coarse epithets at me then I have no need to take it to heart since your opinion is, to me, worthless even if it is true.

If you are a close friend of mine then I will listen, because all my close friends are intelligent, so their opinion is worth listening to. I will not be upset because I value their thoughts and will, quite possibly, modify my behaviour accordingly.

Certainly, I shall not be awake all night, again, worrying about it.

It is for this reason that I laugh at the ad hominem arguments that are thrown about on social media. 

Just the other day I was referred to as a ‘P of cheeky shit’ because I asked the person making a comment if she had punctuation marks on her keyboard – it would have made interpreting her comment much easier had she used them!

I laughed. There is no point in getting worked up by undereducated idiots.

There’s the lesson for the day. Let it go. Life is too short* to worry about what other, stupid, people think about you. Be happy. Be happy NOW! Discard the negative and discover your own true worth.

I am a happy person because I admire me and know my true worth. That is not vanity – that is confidence; I do not hold with mock humility or modesty, if you are good at something then say so. The French would probably say 'amour propre', their version of 'conceit'.

Someone insults you then they are being rude. This gives you license to be rude back at them. They will not like it, of course. They will view your rudeness as a gross insult that will lead to escalation.

Let them worry about it.

Nil Ilegitimus Carborundum Est, as we used to say.

*Life may be too short but it is the longest thing you will ever know.

‘Mansplaining’

Here is a word that has cropped up a couple of times on social media – primarily ‘Twitter’.

In the first place I had no idea what it means but after going to ‘Google’ and requesting a definition I have a vague understanding.

The ‘Google’ dictionary says, “(of a man) explain (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising.”

Now, I have to say that after many, many years of being an Instructor/Teacher I have found that the simplest way is invariably the best way to get information across.

Is that condescending? Is it patronising? Perhaps it is but it is still effective.

However, the definition seems to lose something when applied to practical cases as quoted on ‘Twitter’.

Case 1:

He (being an older guy to a young woman at a make-up counter): “That’s pretty. It suits you.”

Girl: “What business is it of yours. Who asked for your opinion, pervert!”

Case 2:

He: holds door open for young lady.

She: “What? You think I’m useless? You think I don’t know how to manage door; that I’m some weak, helpless woman?”

These two cases were identified as ‘mansplaining’ – I’m not sure how the door extends into that but…

The thread following these was full of sympathies, both tearful and raging, for the girls so afflicted with the comment/action of the men such that I am forced to make a few observations.

It has long been held that the age of chivalry is dead. It is not actually dead although it would seem that it is wallowing in the depths of some terrible disease.

There was a time when gentlemen would hold doors open for ladies as a norm; when gentlemen would doff their hats to a lady and when a gentleman would invite a lady to precede him.

This latter has three exceptions:

1.           When climbing a ladder.

2.           When entering a gate.

3.           When entering a restaurant.

These were all examples of chivalry.

None of them denoted a weakness on the part of the lady. It was just the norm for a polite gentleman.

I am not referring back to the fifties when a normal advertisement for household appliances might run like this:

“Buy the little lady of the house a ‘Hoover’ for Christmas and make her really happy.”

“Make this birthday a great one for the little wifey, treat her to an ‘Electrolux’ oven.”

“She will love you forever with a ‘Frigidaire’ refrigerator for her anniversary.”

Very well, we accept that, even then, these adverts were patronising, condescending and not a little demeaning.

But they have little or nothing to do with chivalry.

Let me go a little further with this.

We, as a species, are hard wired to perform certain functions in certain ways. Men and women are different in their minds and not just physiologically.

Women are good at doing detailed work or hours on end – a task that would drive a man into total boredom within minutes.

Men are good at the ‘Big Picture’. Women not so much. Women like detail. We know that if you introduce an analogy into a discussion the woman will seize upon that as the very point that you are arguing about.

We are, male and female, different.

This has been going on for millions of years; it is not something that is going to change over a couple of generations.

Now, little girls with narrow and tiny minds on ‘Twitter’, be aware that when a man pays you a compliment it is just that. He is not (necessarily) a pervert. Older guys may well be more likely to do this than younger guys because older guys still have a core of chivalry in them.

We should mention that there is a difference between ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’.

Being feminine does not make you weak. It does not mean you have to walk around in gingham dresses and admire chintz curtains it merely means that you should behave like a woman just as men should behave like men. 

I do not require a woman to be weak and indecisive. Strong women are good. I have always been an advocate for equal rights for women in the workplace as well as in the home. If a woman does the same job to the same standards as a man she should earn the same money.

Women in sports tend to get less because, in most sports, the fan base for women’s sports is less than it is for men. The payments received depend on the fan base because the income is generated by advertising sales – advertisers prefer men’s sports. The recent World Cup in Russia is a prime example of that. How many people, by comparison, watched the Women’s World Cup in soccer, cricket, tennis or any other major sport?

This isn’t ‘mansplaining’, this is fact.

Perhaps, if your lust for feminist superiority is to be maintained you should not only burn your bras but also your tampons and sanitary towels. 

Why you would burn anything is beyond me but it is your choice.

Apart from sanitary products and brassieres you must be aware that mini-skirts and low cut blouses are also repressive to women. And high heels. Tights. Beautifully coiffured hair. Make up…

Why not go the whole hog and have a mastectomy to make yourself more equal to men? You could, since pregnancy is demeaning, have a hysterectomy and then have everything removed.

For their part, men could have total castration; both the penis and the testicles removed. Then the man’s nipples could be excised. 

Removing the body hair from both men and women would stop any sexist remarks and make everybody equal.

Equal pay for equal tasks.

And the end of the World’s population.

Everything solved in one go.

And no more ‘mansplaining’!

Advertisements

We are plagued, are we not? It is no longer just newspapers, radio, cinema and television but also, now the social media, huge billboards and certain applications on our telephones – like ‘Waze’, for example, that contain advertisements (This is ‘advertissmunts’ and not ‘advertisemunts’).

Some years ago an urban legend (originated by ‘The Onion’, the Madison, Wisconsin, born satire newspaper that was a precursor to things like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”) says that a company who owned ‘Pepsi Cola’ that may well have been called ‘Pepsi Cola’ but is actually ‘PepsiCo’, decided to save oodles of cash for itself and its shareholders by not advertising.

The reasoning was that they were already well known enough and so paying huge sums to marketing people was pointless.

The result, so it was said, was that ‘Pepsi' lost out to ‘Coca Cola’ in the ‘Cola Wars’!

In 2011 ‘PepsiCo’ brought in 38% more revenue than ‘Coca Cola’ but ‘Coke’ sold $28 billion worth of fizzy drinks compared to ‘Pepsi’s’ $12 billion. This happened because ‘PepsiCo' diversified its business and increasingly relies upon its other brands like Quaker, Frito’s, Tropicana, etc., but we have not yet finished with the idea of advertising being a culprit!

A culprit?

Yes. Guilty of clogging up our lives with useless disinformation.

Advertising is marketing in extremis. They tell you everything they want you to know about their product. But not everything about their product.

Let me explain that.

When you seek to buy a new car you will pick up glossy brochures from the various agencies that explain to you what a wondrous vehicle their's is.

It will tell you in great detail about the performance, the comfort and the versatility, no doubt, of that particular vehicle. What they do not tell you is that this car’s exhaust will drop off in thirteen months (one month after the lapse of the guarantee) and that the gearbox will collapse into a mangled heap after two years.

The glossy brochure that, like your resume, tells us all about the good points but carefully omits the bad points.

There are other ‘confidence boosters’ at work. Have you noticed that the person who tells you that a certain toothpaste is the very best for your teeth is wearing a white coat? That person is an expert, obviously. He is a highly qualified medical scientist whose word is to be immediately trusted; whereas, in fact, he is an actor and knows little about toothpaste other than how to apply it to his own teeth!

We have suicidal berries whose sole purpose in life is to leap joyously into a crusher for your delectation.

We have cans of sundry crisps and snacks playing football.

We have a gentleman appear with a can of coffee to repair a bout of disharmony in a relationship – I ‘Wonda’ who that could be?

For the most part I have no problems with the actors taking part. They, too, have to earn a crust. But I doubt that they would wish to see themselves disporting sweaty armpits on a seventy-two inch flat-screen TV however well they portray it!

During the World Cup 2018, which I have mentioned previously, there were averts for ‘Coca Cola’ (yes, back to that again!) that urged you to buy the limited edition cans of their drink.

Who on Earth collect cans of ‘Coca Cola’? For what?

There was no mention of the beneficial effect(s) of ‘Coca Cola’. No mention of the taste. No mention of the vast amount of sugar in each can. No mention of the high acidic levels of the drink. Just “grab these limited edition cans while they are available”! Followed by people pretending to actually drink it with smiles on their faces because they will get paid, hopefully, for this effort.

The adverts that appear on social media are, apparently, aimed at you specifically. They are oriented to you by your choices that you make on the Internet and the subjects that you have chosen to share with your ‘friends’.

How many people buy the product or service that is proffered?

Clearly somebody does or the practice of pushing it into your face would be discontinued.

Advertisements do not always work.

On the North-South Expressway before the recent election there were, at great expense, photographs of a smarmy individual peering down at the passers by with an instruction to vote for his party. So much expense and yet it failed miserably.

Gone are the days when advertisements were clever and entertaining.

I am thinking here of the ‘PG Tips’ Chimpanzees as a prime example. An example: two Chimpanzees, one apparently male and one female judging by their clothes, collide on bicycles. They make up over a cup of ‘PG Tips’ during which the gentleman Chimp says to the lady Chimp, “Can you ride tandem?”

Cleverly done but hardly PC in these modern times. There would, I am sure, be an outcry of cruelty at ‘PG Tips’ employing Chimpanzees now.

‘Jaguar’ cars paid for a whole page of a newspaper. All that was written on that page were three words, ‘Grace’, ‘Space’, ‘Pace’. At the bottom, almost insignificantly, was the ‘Jaguar’ logo. Elegant. Smart.

‘Austin’ cars came out with a really clever by-line. You would not merely ‘buy’ an ‘Austin’; no. no! You were invited to ‘Invest in an Austin’! Brilliant.

Advertisements like that are now rarely seen. They are, for the most part, wherever they appear, bland and uninspiring.

Having a semi-clad young lady draped over a car does not make me want to buy it. It will make me look at the advertisement.

Seeing sporty cars tearing along dusty roads does not make me want to open my wallet – that would, in itself, be some trick!

I have yet to rush out to buy a drink that someone is consuming on the TV. Much less would I go and buy a computer or toothpaste because some ‘expert’ has advised me to do so.

Perhaps, just to please us, the consumers, we could go back to a time when adverts were clever and entertaining. If it is, as it seems, to be necessary to fill every niche of our lives with them at least put some effort into making them rather than just consuming space.

We, the people, are irritated. We are irritated at the necessity to be deluged in gross consumerism; we are vexed at the bland mindlessness of the offering; we are frustrated at the need to tell us about every product known to man at every opportunity.

Give it – and us, a break. At least make the product or service worthwhile and not just some ‘clickbait’ on our computers.

In the meantime I shall just live with my tinnitus by drowning it in ‘Pepsi Cola’!

Betel Leaf Chews

A thousand years ago I was sent to Kenya. I do believe that this has come up previously in a couple of ‘Blogs’ but I mention it again because it is a place that is dear to my heart.

Indeed the second book of ‘My Name Is A Number: Three Fingers’ is located primarily in Kenya – specifically around the Rift Valley and Mount Kenya although there is a large section that is in Nairobi where we see our protagonists around the market and the Nairobi Hilton!

However, on this occasion I should like to remind you, dear reader, about the time we, DP and I, went to Naivasha for lunch. You will recall that the lunch was fish and chips! The fish was Tilapia – from Lake Naivasha, of course, where the ‘mud’ was deep and sticky ‘Flamingo shit’, unquote. 

Well, the thing is that after lunch DP asked if I should like to try something that would aid in my digestion of the lunch. I told him that I am ever willing to try anything new at least once.

He grinned – that was, I suspect, a warning that I missed!

We approached a roadside hawker who prepared a leaf-wrapped delicacy that was then handed to me.

It appeared to contain some crushed nuts and a white powder.

As instructed I popped the folded leaf into my mouth and began to chew it. Once. One chew. Enough!

It was impossible to get it out of my mouth fast enough!

Bitter? Great heavens above! My entire face turned inside out.

Subsequently they informed me that this was a betel leaf that contained a nut and chalk powder. It is the chalk powder that seems to aid the digestion.

Should have stuck with just the chalk powder!

Now, at last, I discover that the nutty part is called, here in Malaysia, Pinang.

It is suggested that this small nut is like a Nutmeg in that you remove the outer shell and then chop up the ‘fruit’ inside and add it to whatever you will - like a Betel Leaf Chew!

The Pinang Tree

Baby Pinang Nuts

To Give An Idea of the Size of the Baby Nuts (on the right!!)

The 'Adult' Fruit

After apologising to DP for my ill manners in spitting out the leaf and its contents he laughed and said that they suspected there might be a reaction of that sort.

‘Might’? ‘Reaction’? Kenyans are also guilty of understatement!

DP, also known as Dujirichand Premchand Shah, and his family were delightful, hospitable and friendly people as I have discovered Sikhs to be wherever you meet them.

Searches on social media and ‘Google’ have failed to come up with a solution to where they, and DP’s brother Vinuchandra, might be located now.

I hope they are alive and well.

They have afforded me some wonderful memories.

Made in China

Some years ago I worked in China. The company I was with had an office in Guangzhou, which is relatively near Hong Kong and Macau.

The people in the office – all of whom I remember with some affection, were wonderful people. Were it not for them my sanity would now be in question (yes, yes. I hear you!!).

There were people like Raymond who risked his all going to the Muslim Quarter with me to translate so that we could have halal meat in the house. He also tried to kill me by making me climb interminable stairs to the top of an observation tower in the garden of memorial to Dr. Sun Yat Sen!

It is a long, long climb to the top!

Richard Lim(?), Michael He, Tracy Zhang, Anna Guan, May Tong and the Manageress, ‘Whisky’ Vicky Chen were all wonderful people to work with.

They did have an odd quirk that I could not dispel. They had their lunch from noon until one o’clock. The ‘lunch’ hour, from one until two, was spent sleeping because that was their ‘own time’!

China, on the other hand…

There was never a problem finding a toilet. Just follow your nose. I am certain that you could catch terrible diseases just thinking about their toilets!

At a karaoke night (I abhor karaoke), I needed to go to the toilet at some point. A security guard followed me into the toilet and stood by my side waiting for me to return to the karaoke room. She was quite attractive but not really who you want observing you at such a time!

The public parks had two prices, one for the locals and another – much higher, price for foreigners who had to show their passport, of course.

The hotels were thronged with prostitutes. Even the biggest and poshest hotel in Guangzhou, the Garden Hotel, was not immune to their predations.

 The Garden Hotel in Guangzhou

But…

The main problem was buying anything that was vaguely technical. Food we could get from various sources including a market fairly near where we lived who sold the most amazing ‘Fuji’ apples and all manner of vegetables and live fish. The fish were mostly Tilapia that were cheap and tasty; they killed them and cleaned the one that you chose in the pond.

Fresh taufoo? Superb. Hot and steaming and delicious. It arrived  on wooden racks to be served on banana leaves or a small saucer.

Technical items?

No.

I bought a dozen bulbs for my torch (US: flashlight) in the vain hope that one of them may last longer than a few seconds. Not one survived.

It was cold for a long time. Then a warm breeze announced the start of spring and that brought instant flooding from condensation in the house. Time to buy a heater before black mould eats everything!

The heater was an infra-red tube mounted vertically. In this way the coil inside the glass infra-red tube was almost a straight piece of wire at the top that gradually became a spiral until it was just a compressed lump at the bottom. A compressed, white-hot lump!

The control was at the top. It was made of plastic! Guess what! Heat rises, does it not? Plastic melts!

Now comes the crunch.

When anything ceases to function in China you go to the person from whom you purchased said item and tell him that you need it repaired.

(NB: I am not being misogynostic, it is always a ‘him’.)

This person will then explain that it is their job to sell that item.

You explain that you want it repaired.

He tells you he does not do repairs, “Sell only-ah’.

You ask who does the repairing.

He shrugs.

You say that you want to see the manager.

He will now panic and cease to function. You are now talking to the equivalent of a wall.

The best you get from them is, “Better buy new-ah.”

Telling him that it is new is irrelevant to them. The answer is that you buy a new item – problem solved-ah!

It is for this reason that I studiously avoid purchasing anything that is made in China unless it is under the direct control of a foreigner.

There are many more stories that could be told about my year in the People’s Republic of China but, possibly, a veil is best drawn over most of them!