Beauty and the Beastly

Over my many years I have been to lots of different countries.

Everywhere you go they will tell you that this country is God’s chosen land. They will tell you that, whatever it is that they do, it is the correct way, that everyone else is wrong.

They will also tell you that you will find no better food anywhere else and that their country is resplendent in its beauty.

They are, as one, absolutely right.

Each individual country is unique in some way. There is something about every country that makes it different, unforgettable and attractive.

Countries as barren geographically and socially as Sudan have their fine points. Things that make you remember it with some fondness in spite of the harsh cruelties that exist there. I remember the wonderful people who, in spite of having nothing, will give you everything to make you welcome. The warmth of the Sudanese heart is almost overwhelming.

China is a rat’s nest. The political situation that has existed for so many years has turned it into the ‘Land of the Zombies’. The only way to get any work done is to hire a young lady straight from school because she will want to prove she has worth, that she has value.

But the food in China. Warm, freshly made tau foo (soy bean curd) from the early morning market; tau foo that is still gently steaming and can be sucked into the mouth from a corner of the small block that it is formed into.

Do not buy anything remotely technological in China because it will either not work or cease to function in very short order.

The local people on the streets will follow you around in large groups; they are not threatening, they are curious—you are entertainment for people who have no television or radio and whose newspapers are glued to the wall each morning. Newspapers that contain only what the Government wants them to think.

No matter what you think of a place you will find something there that is good. Perhaps even something that is heartwarming.

That something is invariably the people.

You can insult people from other countries as much as you like because that is what you have been told to do by the media and, hence, your Government.

Iranians are, like most Arabs, loud and rough. But they are hospitable, warm, friendly. They have grown up through the aeons as nomadic peasant and that is what they still are—just that, now, they are rich nomadic peasants.

Iran was a great place to be. It was a place full of hope and ambition for a good future even though the war with Iraq had been going on forever—or so it seemed. It was not a place that was full of fear or despair, as we are sometimes told by the ‘news’.

America? Sorry, people. America is one of the most boring places on Earth. Of course you have street gangs and all sorts of weird people doing all sorts of weird things because they are desperate for some sort of excitement; some sort of release.

Where people live is flat, spread out and dull. Been to Texas? Yawn.

But the people are wonderful. They are, as one, warm hearted, polite, enthusiastic—extremely enthusiastic (see: ‘boredom’), generous and geographically illiterate.

They are also racist. They will deny this vehemently but one lovely young lady told me she yearned to go back to New York because, after ten years in Fort Worth, she was still an ‘outsider’—a foreigner, almost.

Everywhere you go. Everywhere, there are good things. Good people.

All over Africa from Sudan, down through Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa there are superb people.

So many times I have been told, “Don’t go there, it is dangerous.”

So many times I have ignored this and been treated warmly and generously.

In Yemen, in a ‘war zone’, I had dinner with an Arab friend and his wife in one of the forbidden zones and felt safe, welcome.

I have been in places where the temperature soared over fifty degrees plus in the shade and other places where we were down to minus forty degrees (all Celsius, of course). The common element was the good people.

There are no exceptions to this rule.

Say what you like about Fuzzballs, Ragheads, Eye-Ties, Frogs, Wops, Chinks, Dagoes, Spicks, Frogs, Porkies, Slants and Slopes they are all good people.

All of them.

But.

If you are looking for countryside to look at. If you are looking for sheer beauty that will whip your breath away every day then do not go to the African Rift, which is astonishingly lovely; never visit the Grand Canyon that is colossally impressive. Resist the Amazon Basin or the Jungles of Asia; avoid the scenic grace of Ayer’s Rock and the outback of Australia.

Go to New Zealand.

Trust me. There is no place on Earth for sheer majesty and beauty in varied abundance like there is in Hobbitland!

Aliens and Hamsters

I have a theory.

Well, OK. I have lots of theories.

Many of my theories seem to be scoffed at by some people who are blind to the obvious logic behind these theories.

Let's start with this theory:

It would seem to me that all the people of the World have brown eyes and black hair.

All.

This is irrespective of geographical location or climate. Eskimos and Africans, Asians and Indians from South America, Red Indians and Southern Europeans, Arabs and...

Well. You get the picture.

Except people from North Western Europe.

Do not tell me about Australians and Americans and so on. They emigrated from North Western Europe.

 There are no exceptions. None.

Now tell me about genetic ‘sports’ and deviations from the genetic ‘norm’ and I will tell you that this group is far too big to have developed a gene trait like blonde hair and blue eyes all on its own. A small village might but an entire sub-continent almost?

No. I don’t believe this is some sort of genetic malpractice by Mother Nature.

So my theory is that, in the same way that the British used Australia as a distant (but, evidently, not distant enough!) penal colony and the French adopted Devil’s Island for the same purpose, the North West of Europe was colonised for the same purpose.

That is why they have a different religion to everyone else. That is why they speak of Valhalla and the Nordic Gods in the way that they do.

Because they are aliens.

In the far distant past, some alien race from some equally distant star system found Earth. We were primitive; we were socially uncivilised (nothing changes, does it?); we were insular in our ways—overprotective of our hunting and gathering territories.

Earth people were easy to shift. The Neanderthals were also easy to shift. They and the early Hominids were no match for the aliens and their advanced weapons and defensive tactics even though the Neanderthals and the Hominids banded together. It was a lost cause. These big, blue-eyed, blonde people took over the cold, windswept lands of the North and made them home.

Until, using their advanced knowledge of stars and navigation, they found North America, they raided Britain, they settled in Northern France where they became, some of them, the Normans and successfully invaded Britain once more.

Some wanderers were captured by ancient Earth races and so the Phoenicians learned the secret of the stars as did the Egyptians and the Romans. Yet Europeans waited until Galileo to be told the truth about even our local solar system.

But the Northerners knew.

Because they are aliens.

I have another theory:

Some of my friends go to the gymnasium. They exercise. I do not. I am a lost cause—to them and their ideas.

They plan to be fit and healthy and thus enjoy life to the full.

I, also, enjoy life to the full and yet fit I am not. Healthy? Well, more or less.

Why do I not go to the gymnasium and join in with all those lithe young ladies covered in sweat and little else? The temptation is there for certain!

Heartbeats.

It is my theory that every living thing that has a heart has the same number of heartbeats. Once you achieve that limit your heart stops. It runs out of beats.

By giving in to the temptation of vigorous exercise you use up your heartbeats faster and thus die sooner.

Consider:

Hamsters live for two years. They are always ‘on the go’. They chew at the bars and they run like demons around their wheels to go nowhere.

My contention is that if you could get a hamster to relax and take life easy it would live for four years.

Why do hamsters live for two years? Because they, like humming birds, have a rapid heart rate. Elephant’s hearts beat at about the same rate as ours and so they live for? Yes, you guessed it, about seventy years.

Giant tortoises hearts beat at the rate of once every one and a half years and so they live for... what... ever, probably.

Be warned. Exercise at your peril.

We aliens are watching you!

Bugs, Rabbits and Dogs

“Oh, it’s a bug.”

There was something on my arm as I was typing, a sort of tickling sensation.

What do you do? Smash it flat with the other hand? Blow it off gently? It seemed to be harmless so I was loath to just kill it.

Killing is too easy. It is something that we do as a reflex action, without thought.

Extinguishing a life, however small, is still killing. Because the bug is tiny doesn’t make it less worthy of living than you or I.

Do we have the right to continue in our existence over a small insect because we are bigger, more intelligent?

At what point do we say that a creature is worthy of life. Life with us, that is. What is it that makes us say that killing a rat is acceptable but slaughtering a cat is a bad thing?

They are both animals; they both have hearts and lungs; they both have some sort of brain function and they are both covered in hair or fur.

Rabbits, then? Can rabbits live amongst us? As pets only, of course. All other rabbits are vermin and must be immediately squashed under the wheels of a tractor. Especially in Australia where rabbits are eating the heart out of the land.

Oh, but rabbits are soft and cuddly, they feel good. They also taste good.

Snakes. Perhaps we can kill snakes. Snakes are nasty, horrible, slimy things.

Except they are not. Slimy. At all. They are not really nasty, either. Snakes do their own thing and care not much for anybody else.

Dogs. It must be fine to kill dogs. Dogs have to be vermin. They hunt in packs, they smell bad, they are noisy and their faeces spread unspeakable diseases. Many breeds of dogs are unutterably dangerous. There are often news reports that tell us of people—children usually, that are attacked by dogs. Savagely attacked.

Pit bulls, Rotweilers and German Shepherds seem to top the list. A Jack Russell bit me once. Perhaps I should add Jack Russells to the list of savage beasts.

So we can kill dogs, then.

Except we cannot because they, like cats and some (selected) rabbits are regarded as pets. We also classify, at will, certain other small rodents as pets. Rodents like gerbils, hamsters, white mice and rats.

Is a hamster a rodent? Probably not. Please resist the temptation to tell me.

People tell us that dogs are not dangerous—it is the owners who are dangerous. It is the human at the end of the leash that should pick up the dog’s droppings, that dogs, like every other animals, has to ‘go’ when it needs to do so.

So it is small things that we can kill at our pleasure.

Humming birds are small.

No?

Pigeons are pests and vermin. Airborne rats—full of diseases, they are. They should be converted into a pie, or pies, as soon as possible. Rooks, too. Rooks can make a tasty pie.

Problem with downing a pigeon is that the police tend to frown upon persons wielding a shotgun in the city centre...

You could always down a duck. That was a joke or, at least, the semblance of one.

Slugs, snails, mosquitoes, wasps, caterpillars (but not, oddly, butterflies) are all fair game for the pestilential killing fields. Yet they all live. They all deserve to live.

We have no greater right to life than they do.

But it tickled. So I crushed it.

Fast Food Frenzy

There are three things, at my time of life, that are really enjoyable: food, eating and going out to stalls and restaurants.

Sitting on the beach is good. Looking at things through the car window is enjoyable. Sleeping is great.

Food is best.

Living here in Malaysia is, from a food-lovers perspective, like being in paradise.

The choices that are all around us here are vast and varied. Starting with the small stalls (gerai) that abound in open air and enclosed food courts (medan selera) and passing up through small restaurants (kedai makanan dan minuman) to the restaurants in top hotels there is an abundance of good food that utterly spoils anyone for choice.

A short while ago I paid over fifty ringgit (around seventeen US dollars – ten pounds sterling) for a buffet dinner in a hotel. This was a modestly priced hotel and the meals were also modestly priced. It was superb. It was wonderfully presented and eaten in comfortable and gracious surroundings by attentive and friendly staff.

Two days ago we went to a local restaurant where we had a meal that cost us around twenty ringgit, including drinks, for both. That is seven US dollars or four UK pounds sterling. Extremely tasty, filling and satisfying.

Yesterday saw us at a ‘roadside’ stall for a snack. Half the price of the restaurant but still very good and with good service.

Each of these meals was different. Each of these dishes had their own distinct flavour and were eaten in a different ambience.

Each experience was pleasurable whether it was inside an air conditioned hotel or at the roadside watching the cars drive by and pedestrians stroll past.

In each case there is a wide choice. We are spoilt for choice. Chicken, beef, lamb (goat here), fish or even vegetarian—it is there for your picking.

Last night we went to the International airport (KLIA) to collect Mother-in-Law and some other family on their return from overseas. On our arriving back at the house I found that there was some green chilli beef curry and rice left over from lunch.

I cannot tell you how ecstatic I was over that. It was just superb. Home made and perfectly cooked; eaten in the comfort of my favourite chair watching some sport on TV.

Life hardly gets better than that.

Wherever you go, wherever you eat, whatever you taste when you go out there is nothing on God’s earth that is ever as good as the food that is prepared by your wife and eaten in your own home.

Nothing.

So why do people go to ‘McDonald’s’?

I drove past ‘McDonald’s’ (one should never wish to stop there!) at lunchtime. It was packed. Packed, I tell you!

Why?

Advertising? Media?

We always say that if you want to find a good place to eat here in an area you don’t know then follow the crowd. If there are lots of people in there then it must be good because Malaysians are really fussy where they eat.

And then there’s ‘McDonald’s’!

I throw my hands out in despair. I am aghast, agog, speechless.

Why ‘McDonald’s’?

The Media is Going to Pot.

I feel as if my mentality is being eroded away. I feel that I am dying a cerebral death because of the media, specifically advertising, and ‘Facebook’.

There is so much stupidity about that assumes people are gullible enough to believe anything that is placed before them.

Few people question. They just accept and follow, believe or ‘share’, maybe.

We have advertisements for the latest toothbrush that advocate their purchase because the man that is explaining about its benefits is wearing a white coat. He is, therefore, an expert—a scientist, perhaps.

There was nothing wrong with the toothbrushes that I used as a child but we are required to buy the ‘new’, the ‘latest’, the ‘trendiest’ with ‘improved formula’ or ‘design’.

It is all rubbish.

I could tell you all about the greatest marketing strategy ever implemented but you may not believe it.

Oh, all right. I will tell you.

In 1941, when Britain was apparently losing the war with Germany and before the Americans had risen from their morning coffee, Winston Churchill summoned his closest aides and the corporate ‘Powers-that-Be’ to a meeting in his War Cabinet.

He told them, “When we win this war...”

There was no doubt. He was convinced that, however dark things appear, we should prevail.

“When we win this war,” he said, “we shall need to revert Great Britain from a war footing to a commercial footing. I need you to tell me, now, what we need to focus upon to do that.”

Some weeks later they all convened again.

They all told him that the one thing that was needed to put Britain back as a commercial endeavour was?

Television.

Of course, television was then in its infancy. My mother, as I have mentioned previously, was in on the development of TV and radar with ‘Marconi’ just before the war.

So these powers developed a plan that would culminate in one specific event:

Firstly they would introduce the radio system called ‘British Broadcasting Corporation’ (BBC) to television viewers. A simple television set with ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’ control.

The second stage was to introduce a commercial channel. This would become ‘Independent Television’ (ITV). This would require people to buy a new set that had a two-channel switch on it.

Third? BBC2. Now you need a set with three switches.

Manufacturers caught on. They had variable tuners now. So. How to get around that?

Easy. Change to a different frequency. VHF. Now you needed a different aerial, too. Plus, the bonus was that the neighbours could all see if you had the ‘new’ system by looking at your roof. The advantage was that the number of lines on the screen changed from 425 to 625 (yes, I know – 525 in the US!).

Then they introduced the killer blow.

Colour.

The plan was that all the British Isles would have colour coverage by the mid-1960’s.

Why”

Because the World Cup football (soccer) would be in UK in 1966 and the World would be able to see it in glorious, living, colour.

Remember, this plan for the continuation of the TV industry was proposed and implemented in 1941!

How did they know that the World Cup would be in England in 1966? Because they did know. It was a fact.

The American TV industry died off well before the UK industry because they went all out for colour right away.

Impatient.

I mentioned ‘Facebook’, right?

I also just mentioned ‘facts’, right?

Indeed.

There are so many specious and spurious arguments on ‘Facebook’ now.

For instance, you worship a tree that grows in the middle of the Sahara Desert. This tree is, thus, magic, it is the wellspring of eternal life and is, therefore holy.

Great. We shall (conveniently) ignore the idea that it has been growing there since before man arrived on Earth when the Sahara was lush and green, that it has now got a taproot that grows down to hell so that it finds the sub-Saharan aquifer and that it is tired and wants, desperately, to die.

The ‘Tree’ believers say, "We have read your holy books and they give us no proof. There is no evidence within their pages that tell us that you are right.

"WE have the tree".

Good for you. As if I care, really.

Then the ‘Tree Believers’ will tell us a ‘fact’.

They will tell you that sucking on the burnt end of a cucumber will cure AIDs.

It is, they tell us, a fact. There is no evidence to support it but it is eminently believable they tell us. We are to accept it verbatim.

Oh, good.

We are, after all, gullible.

They tell us that cannabis, for example, is wonderful. That the facts are that it will cure us of all ills. So it will.

Perhaps we should look at some of the ‘facts’.

Fact:

Cannabis, in the form of hemp, makes great rope.

Cannabis has many therapeutic forms, medical Cannabis is good for you when prescribed by a Doctor.

There is unsubstantiated (at present) evidence that says Cannabis resin can cure some human maladies.

Cannabis is a good resource as a bio-fuel.

Cannabis can be eaten in a processed state and is, we are told, tasty.

More facts:

Cannabis, when smoked, contains more tars than nicotine in ‘normal’ cigarettes and so is at least as likely to cause lung cancer. If cannabis cures cancer, then keep going—we will watch.

In spite of claims to the contrary, smoking Cannabis is addictive. That is why people keep smoking it.

Smoking Cannabis causes distorted perception (sights, sounds, time, touch), problems with memory and learning, loss of coordination, trouble with thinking and problem-solving, increased heart rate, reduced blood pressure. Sometimes marijuana use can also produce anxiety, fear, distrust, or panic.

Carl Sagan is sometimes quoted as being a marijuana smoker. He said, people tell us, that he enjoyed it. They do not tell you everything he said. He said that he smokes it once a month or once every two months and always on a Friday night so that it would not interfere with his work. Smoking marijuana gave him great thoughts, great insights—he just wishes he could remember what those ideas were on Sunday night!

People will give you half a fact and expect you to believe it implicitly. They will misquote and take things out of context.

They will never expect you to look for proof and yet they will require proof of a belief system.

Before you post anything or ‘share’ anything check it. Make sure it is right. ‘Google’ it or go to ‘Snopes’.

The biggest virus I get is people warning about ‘viruses’! The vast majority of them are hoaxes!

Keep the hate mail coming in—I have a delete button.

Paka

I have just wandered down to the beach, as one does, in order to investigate the possibility of a nice cool drink in the evening sun.

The cool drink, in the form of a large mug of iced lime tea, was forthcoming at the princely sum of 30p (50cUS) but the evening sun was not.

After several days of glorious brightness from the heavens the late afternoon, when I chose to forego writing training reports in my hotel room, greeted me with grey clouds.

Still, it was cool. It was pleasant. It was exhausting.

I am not now accustomed to walking so far. The distance must have been well over two hundred metres of exacting conditions—sand and such, that would sap the energy of the fittest person.

It may have come to your attention by now that the words ‘fit’ and ‘Leyman’ are uneasy bedfellows.

However, let it not be said that rigorous conditions such as these will deter an ardent explorer of strange and exotic places such as I.

At one point I even stopped en route, as they say, to take a photograph of some flowers growing in the sand. Thus the flowers are recorded for posterity. There are, I suspect, unkind persons out there who may suggest that I also stopped to gasp for breath but this is not the case.

This is a long, sandy beach. It is fringed partially with Coconut Palms and also some odd-looking trees whose roots begin up near the top and cascade out to dig into the sand away from the main trunk.

The World is full of peculiar things if we stop and look for them.

Those flowers, for example. They, too, are growing on sand. What nutrients could they possibly get from well-washed sand? Yet they thrive and flower.

Why do they flower? I observed no insects near them but maybe there are insect at other times of day. There also appeared to be no seeds. So why have flowers?

I feel I should talk in hushed tones, thus pretending to be David Attenborough.

The sea is calm. There is only the slightest ruffling of the surface and almost no surf. It is, possibly, the most surfless sea I have ever witnessed. Is it the lull before the storm? Are we about to be inundated with a tropical downpour that will threaten to sweep the hotel and all of us hapless patrons out to sea?

Unlikely, but I am donning my waterproof underwear just in case. No point in being unprepared, is there?

And so back to the room. There is work to be done. Preparation for tomorrow’s class. It will not teach itself and, sadly, it is yet to become an automatic function.

Perhaps there will come a day when I can imagine my lesson in some sort of helmet that the students can then fit on their heads and absorb the information directly into the brain.

Maybe this is not so farfetched. We already have speech recognition although they have yet to build a software programme that recognises my particular speech patterns!

Perhaps it will not be too far into the future when they build something that will convert brainwaves into usable communication devices.

Of course this will need to be used with considerable care; reading some people’s comments on ‘Facebook’ may invoke some sort of unwarranted mental exclamation that may get printed before you have a chance to amend the comment.

On balance it may be better to stick to the keyboard even if some commentators on ‘Facebook’ would benefit from the improved English that an automatic system might provide.

That brings me to my final thought.

I have been called a ‘Grammar Nazi’. That’s good. I regard that as a compliment. If people mangle the English language then they deserve a pat on the back of the head with a large volume of ‘The Concise Oxford Dictionary’ travelling at pace.

But.

Does this happen with other languages?

Do the Germans have ‘Grammar Nazis’, for example—although, in all conscience, they could probably benefit from an alternative name!

What about Chinese? One wonders if you get the characters in the wrong sequence have you changed a political comment into an order for shark fin soup?

Peculiarities abound. You just have to look.