My younger sister aka Little Sis almost floored me last Sunday over lunch. I thought I heard she asked, “Do you know about Viagra? What it actually means?” “Little Sis! Of course I do! But it does not mean I need it!” I had to balance my retort delicately. Too strongly and she may wrongly suspect I take them. Too lightly and she will also think my flippant dismissal of it is indicative of a flaccid admission. Not that there should be any stigma for viagra users. “Why would you ask that? Is your husband finding a need to use them?” That was smart of me – I thought to myself – putting her on the back foot will teach her not to ask such personal questions. Instead she roared. “No! Virga, not Viagra!” She tsked-tsked at me, as all my sisters are prone to do to express their annoyance at me. But, being my younger sister, she never used to dismiss me in such a brusque manner. The hierarchical structure of a Chinese family unit is still very much observed, such has been the tight rule of our matriarch. My ranking is seventh, being the seventh-born. There can be no usurper. So, if there is a difference of opinion, the younger ones will be the first to quieten down. We don’t offer any ideas unless asked and we don’t touch the food in front of us until those who outrank us have. There are exceptions of course, as with anything in life. But by and large, the norm is the younger ones will show respect and observe that hierarchical line. Admittedly, that rule is quickly relaxed should a plate of lobster Yee-foo noodles be placed right in front of me. Or, a freshly opened Musang King durian is precariously positioned for a photo shoot near Little Sis. She will be quick to say she’s poised to attack it first, despite being ranked last. Observing this ancient tradition is a tacit nod to the virtues of filial piety that our parents had imparted to us all through our childhood, not an endorsement of the rule that age-based seniority deserves special respect. We willingly bend because we still can. Unlike the elders. They are more like the old oak trees that break rather than bend. When the elders speak, they command silence and expect obedience. When I speak, I expect courteous resistance at best and more too often, ridicule and sarcasm. There has been a notable shift of late though, since I turned 60 over a year ago. Maybe I have joined their club finally and am no longer treated as an inconsequential junior whose existence is of little relevance to them. “Virga”, Little Sis repeated. “It is rain that does not reach the ground.” The story of the virga is a sad one. Made in Heaven, they are sent down to earth to sustain the crops but they fail to even reach the ground, having dissipated in the atmosphere. Created for a purpose but perpetually an abject failure. For a long time, I too felt like virga in my family. Inconsequential and irrelevant. Useless. Aimless and often a disappointment. Hardly noticeable, my absence from a family party would rarely raise an eyebrow or warrant an enquiry, I imagined. Any room would not be less interesting without me, I dare say.

On the menu that afternoon was Penang bachang made by an incredibly versatile Penangite or Penang lang. Anne, a lanky perfectly-proportioned woman with gorgeous, long and silky black hair whom I have met a couple of times at dinner parties thrown by Little Sis, is Penang-born and bred. Radiating a sweet smile that is accompanied by a near-perfect set of natural white enamel unblemished by tea and black coffee, she is an obvious candidate as a model for any toothpaste brand. To be adept at making bachang (sticky rice dumpling) would not qualify her to be pigeon-holed as someone who is amazing or special. To be versatile enough to make perfect salted eggs, sambal belachan, nasi ulam and have a myriad of other Malaysian dishes raved and praised by the Malaysian diaspora here would put her on a level of culinary expertise very few have reached. Above and beyond her responsibilities as a mother of a young daughter and an incredibly supportive wife, she also helps manage a large successful winery in South Australia’s Clare Valley. “Manage” is a poor word that does a huge disservice to describe the physical and fiscal responsibilities and, dare I say, somewhat dare-devil feats required that accompany a “family-run” job in the wine industry. The long arduous hours she grinds through day after day and the tenacity to complete her impossibly challenging tasks without so much as a protest or a whimper inform me she is a very special woman. Both husband and wife arrived here some ten years ago, attracted by the offer to run the whole operation of a winery from toiling the land to planting and harvesting the choice grapes to making award-winning wines and storing them in massive tanks and oak barrels. After that comes the slick and upbeat marketing campaigns to distribute their products to a worldwide market. Anne is known to have scaled the heights of such massive tanks to repair a broken pipe or something, and then abseiled from one tank to the next without blinking or thinking about the “what-ifs” if she were to lose her nerve or footing or both. Since I suffer from acrophobia, she instantly won my admiration. She flexed her biceps and asked me to feel them. Her rock-hard arms won her many points too. Yet, she does not possess the typical physique of a weather-beaten farmer. No coarse calluses offered during a brief handshake, no sun-damaged, parched and mottled facial features when she smiled and surprisingly, she revealed a pair of pure white soft forearms when she rolled up her puffy woollen sleeves to help her husband clear his broken wine glass toppled during a brief careless moment of celebratory clinking of glasses. Anne and her husband Raymond, although their marriage is obviously also made in Heaven, are the opposite of virga. They are the heartbeat of any party – she the centre of attraction. Her life story is a powerful and poignant one. Filled with purpose from a demanding mother even from an early age. Her needy and aged parents still rely on her to look after their well-being. They still live in Penang but the physical separation does not lessen the emotional and financial dependance on her. I do wonder if she ever wished she was a virga, the ability to simply disappear and not reach her destination and fulfil her purpose in someone else’s lives would be so liberating and uplifting. Instead, she is the “viagra” that many people close to her depend on. She is the one they need and she has to continue providing the “blood flow” and the lifeline for them to carry on. Without her zest and enthusiasm for love and life, her loved ones would be the poorer.

Yesterday, I went to Chinatown specifically to hunt for durian. It was my first visit to that corner of the city this year, I reckon. COVID-19 has made me much less inclined to leave my house. Besides, Asian groceries are available even in the suburbs now – a far cry from when I first arrived here back in 1977. Then, not only were Asian groceries difficult to find, we Asians stood out like the proverbial dog’s balls. A rare sight. A common way strangers greeted me then was to ask if I knew karate or kungfu. My standard reply was real kungfu exponents never reveal their skills unless seriously threatened. Luckily I was never ever seriously threatened. Back to the hunt for durian. My friend Chip had shared some photos of the durian he had relished last week. His third durian for this season, he said. Not just any durian but the King itself! In Adelaide! Maoshan Wang in Mandarin or Musang King, accessible to and obtainable by plebs! Life is fair after all! This obviates the need for a costly air ticket and time to fly to Asia for the King! Just a leisurely 15-minute drive to Chinatown without the snarly traffic and toxic fumes. It was a Saturday morning “rush” in Adelaide, yet I slipped the car straight into a parking bay that had a sign that said free parking for 15 minutes! Free and isn’t it lovely?! And just across the road from where I needed to be! The two Kings cost me $115, providing a total of 19 “hoods”, local Penang parlance for the aril that covers each seed. Cheap, if you convinced yourself the price includes a free air ticket to the land of the King. But, it sounds even cheaper when you’re told they have flown it to you and you need not have to leave home to get it! That would have been my mum’s way to rationalise it. For once, she said it was very reasonable amidst a hearty chuckle. Ma even flashed a most treasured sweet smile. It’s amazing how a sweet-tasting but foul-smelling fruit can instantly inject an electrifying spark or a Dopamine boost to provide us brief feelings of euphoria and lift us from the rut and the mundanity of everyday life. Not dissimilar from what Viagra does, I bet.

I met his manager, Luigi Caiola on March 2, eight years ago. Our meeting was hastily arranged. In fact, just the day earlier, he asked me to meet them at the Hyatt Hotel. A friend in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO) had passed my letter to The Maestro on the off chance that he may consider my proposal to write music for me. Well, since I do not play any instruments, it was really a proposal to write for my sons. I was so taken aback that Mr. Caiola actually made contact and wanted to meet to discuss in more detail my “kind proposal’ (as he called it). On the morning of the meeting, I did not fret and I did not stammer. For a person who cannot make a public speech without being extremely nervous – potentially a closet sufferer of glossophobia – I was surprised I was calm and behaved normally during breakfast, despite the sheer audacity of asking for an audience with a living legend on the world stage. After all, at the time he was a five-time Oscar nominee and the winner of the Academy’s Honorary Award in 2007. He was to win one more nomination four years after we met and he would go on to win the Oscar that year. Luigi was a towering, heavy man with a massive handshake. “Please call me Luigi”, he said. Well presented in his bespoke Italian-made business suit, he made me feel under-dressed and disrespectful even though I had picked the best suit in my wardrobe. Maybe the tie let me down – it was one from the 80’s, a black skinny tie acquired after much deliberation from a clearance sale at Myers. Well, one must not judge a book by its cover, I was taught from very young. Let us not look at the superficial surface but delve deep into the substance of the person, right? Luigi came across like Michael Corleone (in The Godfather) in his demeanour – confident, busy and sharp. “Would you like coffee or tea?” he asked. He offered me only two choices, just as well I never decline coffee when offered. The one thing I learned about successful, worldly people is that they are incredibly polite and generous with their time. On reflection, why the heck would people of such greatness give someone like me their time? Someone like me… no, that is not a put-down, it is not self-deprecating. A person like me would frown and be agitated if I was asked to view a three minute video that was fit only for the rubbish bin. Our time is so precious we do not even give enough of it to our loved ones. Yet, this great composer had agreed to meet me, to give me his time. “The Maestro apologises for not being able to meet you personally this morning”. Luigi started with an apology. I later learned The Maestro never learned English – that could also be another reason why he was absent. Luigi went on to explain why his boss couldn’t make it. The night before, The Maestro had conducted the ASO in an open-air concert at Elder Park but he was greatly stressed by the poor acoustics and noise from outside the park. “The Maestro isn’t feeling too good this morning, he sends his apologies”. Luigi was very restrained to explain that the concert was spoilt by a noisy car race being held nearby their event. Such gentlemanly conduct, so un-Italian-like without the Italian expletives, I thought to myself. No, the word Vaffanculo did not spew from his mouth. No, his elbow did not bend to produce the Italian Salute either. So, I let rip into the farcical scheduling of South Australia’s event organisers instead. “No, those feckless idiots ought to be sacked! How unthinking were they not to understand that a car race cannot be held next to an orchestral concert just a few hundred metres apart. Do they not know how incredibly lucky and privileged South Australians were to be graced with such a visit? This was a visit from royalty, far more beneficial and special than that from any monarch. Seconds later, there he was, sitting right in front of me, sipping coffee and listening to my ideas why The Maestro should consider writing for me. How impetuous of me! How audacious of me! Yet, I attracted no vituperation from him. What was I thinking? No, I wasn’t thinking. That was why I had the nerve and naivety to even dare dream to meet the great man. No, not merely to meet him, but to actually ask him to write music for me? No, not for me. For my sons. A father does just about anything for his sons.

On Monday 6th July, Ennio Morricone died in a Rome hospital, after earlier falling and breaking his leg. He was aged 91. The Maestro leaves behind a huge legacy for mankind – a body of work that someone like me cannot even begin to imagine – some 500 original scores across many genres, westerns, romances and historical dramas. He was annoyed at his music being predominantly known for spaghetti westerns because they were no more than 7-8% of his work, he said. Yet, who will not remember A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon A Time In The West? He brought new sounds to Hollywood – to America and therefore to the rest of the world. He was the first to use the notes a-e-a-e-a-e to depict the sound of the hyena. In A Fistful of Dollars, he showed what a genius can do with a guitar, a whistle and a whip to convey the stark landscape of the world of Clint Eastwood’s character, “a man with no name”. Morricone also showed us a showdown or a gun-fight cannot be faced without the solo trumpet’s call for bravery and sharpness. I learned to spin my wooden revolver as a young boy whilst the music replayed in my head. I listened to his music all day today. I still get goose-pimples when I hear Edda Dell’Orso’s soaring voice in Once Upon A Time In The West. But, for me, there is nothing more wonderful than Deborah’s Theme in the 1984 drama starring Robert De Niro, Once Upon a Time in America. This movie was Sergio Leone and Morricone’s final collaboration. Deborah’s Theme… I have shed many tears listening to Yo-Yo Ma’s version of it. Listen to it in the still of the night, but please have a box of tissues ready by your side. It pulls at your heart, kneads it, crumples it and turns it inside out. You suddenly cannot breathe whilst it transports you into another realm.

The other contender for making my tear ducts hyper-active is Gabriel’s Oboe, a soundtrack from the movie The Mission. It was voted #1 in the ABC Classic Music in the Movies countdown in 2013 and again in 2020. Its music is more famous than the movie, often performed in concert halls all over the world. It is so glorious it lifts my spirit high every time the oboe makes its entrance. The Mission was a 1986 drama about the experiences of Jesuit missionaries in 18th century South America trying to ward off the Portuguese and later the Spanish invaders. But, it is they too who destroy the idyllic innocence of a group of people. It is no wonder we describe grand scale high drama music as “cinematic”. The Maestro’s music is cinematic. Director Edgar Wright probably summarised it best. “He could make an average movie into a must see, a good movie into art, and a great movie into legend.” Film composer Hans Zimmer said “Ennio was an icon and icons just don’t go away, icons are forever.”

Thank you, Maestro Morricone for enriching my life with your music – another personal favourite is Cinema Paradiso. The poignant piano never fails to bring me back to my own life as a 15-year-old boy who fell in love with a girl with pig-tails who he remembered as Janet all his life until friends recently told him her real name is Susan. When the violin appears it is like a beautiful moment when their eyes meet briefly, just once. In his mind, he saw a smile formed by her soft lips as her shy eyes looked away. Hello Susan, goodbye Janet. Vale, Ennio Morricone.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump committed a heinous act and bought 90% of the world’s supply of Remdesivir from the US pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. Whilst the US hoards it for their own use, it deprives the rest of the world of this potentially life-saving drug. Apart from a handful of countries who hold some stock of this drug such as South Korea and Australia, there is nothing for the others for at least the next three months. This is what America does, to both friend and foe. Since it is under patent to Gilead, no other rich country can produce it, despite their capability to make it or the potential to save lives. Lower-income countries however can access the generic version of the drug, made under licence with India, Pakistan and Egypt. We can understand America’s immoral behaviour though – their daily infection rate has hit a new record, now over 50,000 cases. On July 1, Europe started opening their borders to many countries but the list excludes their old ally, America. The most powerful and wealthiest country in the world is ranked very lowly in terms of managing the spread of the virus. That the world’s most advanced economy is greatly out-performed by minnows such as Montenegro, Morocco, Tunisia and Rwanda is an indictment on the Trump administration. Citizens of these countries are welcomed to visit Europe but not Americans. Prior to the pandemic, the US was ranked No. 1 and the UK No. 2 in a Global Health Security Index. We now know the US ranks last in the world and the UK last in Europe, for the number of COVID-19 deaths they have reported.

Remdesivir is an antiviral drug that has been repositioned as a fore-runner in the treatment of COVID-19. In late April, The Lancet reported that early trials in China did not show any significant benefit on patient recovery time or on mortality rates. The trials were abruptly terminated in China due to their low cases in May but preliminary results in the US showed patients recovered some four days faster after Remdesivir treatment, although there was no significant difference in the death rate with those given a placebo. That Trump can leave all other nations without any supply of a life-saving drug by hoarding it wholly for themselves shows how evil the empire has become. It begs the question what they will do with the vaccine, should that become available to them first. It does not stretch my imagination that Trump is capable of using it to extort the world for his own personal gain.

There is much evil and treachery in the world. I was therefore pleased when a friend baked a pie and our conversation turned to nursery rhymes instead. We began with the one about a pie, of course.

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.

But, we came to the part about the maid who was hanging out the clothes in the garden. Along came a blackbird and snipped off her nose! So graphic, so violent. Was this a children’s nursery rhyme? How awful. What did the adults do to us when we were young? Soon after, I was telling my friends I was somewhat traumatised by other rhymes too, such as Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. As for Jack and Jill, they did not tell me Jack was King Louis XVI who lost his crown (he was beheaded) when he fell down, and Jill (his Queen, Marie Antoinette) came tumbling after. Another gruesome tale for a young boy.

Ring around the Rosie has a lot of relevance today. The rosie is a red rash, a symptom of the Bubonic plague. The children sneezed and soon died whilst on their feet.

Ring around the rosie
A pocketful of posies
“A-tishoo, A-tishoo”
We all fall down!

Goosey, Goosey Gander was equally ferocious to an elderly man. They simply caught his left leg and threw him down the stairs! I wondered if any kid ever did that to their grand-father after learning these harmless rhymes.

Goosey, goosey, gander,
Where shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady’s chamber.

There I met an old man
Who wouldn’t say his prayers;
I took him by the left leg,
And threw him down the stairs

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring was also about a head injury. He was careless going to bed, hit his head and died. I do not understand the preoccupation with head injuries.

It’s raining, it’s pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed and he bumped his head
And couldn’t get up in the morning.

London Bridge Is Falling Down. London Bridge Is Falling Down. I did not understand why there was a fair lady when the famous bridge by the Thames fell down. This nursery rhyme was actually about Anne Boleyn, the beautiful second wife of King Henry VIII. She was accused of adultery and had her head chopped off for treason. I may be mistaken for believing that Anne Boleyn is beautiful, as I often confuse her with Lady Jane Grey whose execution was also held in The Tower of London. I was captivated by Paul Delaroche’s superb “The Execution of Lady Jane Grey”.

London Bridge is falling down
Falling down, falling down
London Bridge is falling down
M-y f-a-i-r l-a-d-y

Nursery rhymes are meant to encourage young children to sing and recite poetry – lyrics that rhyme with nice melodies helped us while our holidays away. But, why the horrible tales? Three blind mice with their tails cut off with a carving knife was gruesome, and in Ladybug, Ladybug Fly Away Home children burned in a house fire!

Ladybug, ladybug fly away home,
Your house is on fire,
Your children will burn.
Except for the little one whose name is Anne,
Who hid away in a frying pan

In Mother Goose, why would the adults even think it’s wise to put a baby to sleep high up on the tree top? Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, And down will come Baby, Cradle and all.

Luckily, we Chinese kids had some reprieve from these horrible nursery rhymes from the West. One of my favourites was a Shanghainese nursery rhyme about some mice that came out to play when the cat was away. It returned and sprung a surprise at them.

Didi Lolo
Loh Tze kui koh
Huo meh leh thou
Cheche tha Cheche tha!