Author: urghhling

I have viewed earthlings as urghhlings ever since the early 1970s when I read about people eating the raw brains of screaming monkeys. Two decades later when served live oysters in Adelaide, instead of being repulsed by eating a living thing while it was still alive, I discovered to my horror that I actually relished these living bivalves. The realisation that I am also an urghhling has muted my abhorrence of such despicable cruelty to living things.

Mum About Mum VI

Why would they not be happy for me to write about mum? By they, I mean some of my siblings. Aren’t they proud of her? Ma’s grace, her tenacity to survive a war, her frugal ways to make ends meet and build a comfortable nest for us. Were there any insidious secrets that can’t be told? Perhaps, sexual misconduct and scandals so embarrassing they must be buried forever? Any unforgivable crimes that are not allowed to resurface? No, no and no. Then, why the frequent barrage of reminders of what not to write and criticisms about what I write? For a long while now, I have stopped sharing my stories with my siblings. Save the angst, avoid the anxiety. There was neither applause nor encouragement for me to continue. Only the opposite. As if what I have written about mum is repulsive, revolting or repugnant. Or, in one sister’s opinion, mum’s stories should simply remain private. Don’t let me mislead you, there is no ill-feeling between me and them. They just guard their privacy zealously whereas I view that we have nothing to hide and ought to be proud to tell our parents’ stories. Ma wants me to write. That is all that matters. I can tell. She can skip her afternoon naps when she reminisces about her past to me. She becomes talkative, alert and responsive. She becomes fully awake. They can tell. They will choose to leave us when Ma gets into the groove. They don’t want to know. Off they go, to Bunnings. To Burnside Village. Wherever. I don’t want to know, as long as they leave me alone. Don’t censor me, don’t tell me what I can write or can’t. And, don’t censure me after. Ma wants her stories told, and that is good enough for me.

After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Pa and Ma took the opportunity to visit their elders in Teluk Anson. That was their happy hunting ground, where they met. Where they fell in love and married each other after being given the necessary nods from their elders. They had not returned since they left the town in early 1941. Five years had passed. The elders had all grown older and wearier. Wars do that to people, I suppose. Lives wrecked, livelihoods wrecked or worse, diseases and a painful death for the unlucky ones. The clan was lucky, almost all had been spared. It was a joyous occasion. When the Japanese left, it felt like a suffocating, dark and heavy cloud that was suppressing all traces of normality had lifted and a fresh sea breeze had suddenly blown in and dispersed the acrid air from the town. The wholesome spontaneity that everyone expressed with their smiles and laughter was unrestrained and genuine. The exuberance, the joy, unforgettable. Pa and Ma spent two weeks there. They even popped in to check on their Indian tailor friend, the one who made Ma’s wedding dress. He happened to be overstocked with bundles of fabric and clothes made for customers who had failed to collect their orders. The war made him desperate for cash. Pa, the ever-ready entrepreneur saw the opportunity to make a buck and helped his friend offload the unwanted stock. His mentor, my grand-uncle Ngagung also had lots of garments dry-cleaned for customers who had not returned to collect their very fine clothes. Perhaps his wealthy European customers, many of whom were plantation owners, had fled the country when news broke of the Japanese invasion. Pa got them at a bargain also. When Pa returned to Penang, he did not waste a day to set up a store at “Mor-lah” flea market adjacent to Chowrasta wet-market on Penang Road. It did not dawn on me until recently that “Mor-lah” was very likely derived from the Malay word “murah” or cheap. Pa did a roaring business with the used clothes and fabrics he got from Teluk Anson. Ma said he had his pocket picked when they went to celebrate their bonanza at the grand opening night of a new cinema called The Majestic straight after work. Most of their profit was lost that night, some $300. Pa soon quit his “Mor-lah” store. No, it was not because he was demoralised by the loss of his takings but he did it to avoid the taunts the fellow retailers dished out at him. Apparently, he was clumsy with the metal rule and lacked the finesse that his competitors had with their slick movements when measuring the length of the materials. No matter, the early success and resulting feelings of euphoria sparked Pa’s enthusiasm for identifying good business opportunities. In August 1946, they moved out of their bomb-damaged house in Bishop Street to the shop-house at 3-J Penang Road. Ma had just fallen pregnant but that was no justification for her to avoid the long hours for some two weeks in that 2-storey house cleaning it from top to bottom. The shop-house must have been strategically acquired, for within a month, Pa had negotiated a buy-out of the Eastern & Oriental (E&O) Hotel contract from his uncle, Li Fook, for $500. This was a contract to provide all the laundry services for the hotel which was situated only about 200 meters from the shop-house. During the war, Pa and Ma had hidden from the Japanese in uncle Li Fook’s Anson Road property; the elder clansman did not mind that his business was passed down to Pa. In April 1947, my brother, Ko, was born. He had a maid with a distinct harelip to look after him during the “Mua-Guek” (Zuo Yue) or full month. Traditionally, women had to spend the first 30 days as postpartum confinement. I suppose despite the myths, it should be taken advantage of as their maternity leave, a chance to simply lie in bed, rest and learn how to breast-feed. During those early years, there was no herbal chicken soup or pig’s trotters in ginger and black vinegar for Ma. No extra nutrition to help her recuperate. I should ask Ma how she coped without washing her hair or taking a cold shower or going out for an evening stroll during the 30-day lockdown, and did Pa “leave her alone” for all that time during her confinement? Big Sis was cared for by our mum’s younger sister, our Balapai Ahyi, so named after she settled in Bayan Lepas many years later. Balapai Ahyi moved into the Bishop Street house to stay with Ma in December 1943. She was only 13, but it was decided Ma would take better care of her than their mother who as a widow was struggling to fend for herself and her youngest daughter at home. The maid with the distinct harelip left after Ma’s “Mua-Guek” and was not seen again. Ma heard she went to work at the Thai-Burma railway, an idea that sounds preposterous unless she had absolutely no idea of its horrific history.

In January 1948, Pa returned to China to visit his mum. That would be the first of only three visits after he left his homeland in his teens. He had ‘not made it” when he returned to his village. Surely, he would have felt he had fallen well short of his ambition. Who amongst us did not harbour the dream to be a “self-made” person by the time we returned home after a long stint away? Pa had spent all his savings procuring the E&O contract – he was almost penniless at the time and it was by taking up a loan from a Hong Kong man who went by the name Ng-san that he could bring home a bottle of Ghee Hiang sesame oil and some clothes for his mum. I do not know why the Cantonese and the Japanese use the same honorific word “san” for Mr. The business from E&O had been disappointing – the Canadian sailors had left Penang, and the spate of rainy days made it very difficult to hang the linen out to dry. To be more brutal, the business had turned out to be a dud investment. Pa was away for almost 3 months, a one-way journey by cargo ship to China took 20 days. Ko was almost a year-old when Pa returned home to Penang. By then, Big Sis was already a fast eater – just like Pa – but it could be because all she had was rice and “Chay-thong”, Ningbonese for watery sauce from a vegetable dish. I checked, it meant no meat and no vegetables. Ko was a slow eater and wanted only mother’s milk. Obviously, he was born clever. Powdered milk was unaffordable and condensed milk with bread was not to his liking. Big Sis was sent to Bukit Tinggi to be cared for by a distant relative, Poddy Ahyi. Anyone from Zhejiang in those days was embraced as a distant relative. Big Sis remembers using a small umbrella as her security teddy bear. She can’t explain how she found an umbrella to be cuddly as a teddy bear but it must have been comforting for a 3-year-old in the home of a distant relative. Pa was the 4th son in his family of five sons and three daughters. He left his Shaoxing home when he was just 9-years-old to start his apprenticeship in a dhobi shop in Shanghai. He knew his family was too poor to afford all of them at home. So, he volunteered to leave. Their days were not always so desperate and miserable. Pa told Big Sis when he was a little boy, he watched from a distance his grand-father’s funeral. The vantage point from a hillside offered him a bird’s-eye view of a long funeral procession that snaked along the fields from the village to the local cemetery many miles away. The quite elaborate occasion would have been fitting for a feudal lord. That little snippet of a story raised more questions than it answered. Who was Pa’s yeh-yeh or Ahya, in our Shaoxing dialect? Why did it strike Pa that his grandpa was inexplicably so much wealthier than them as their circumstances at home clearly showed? Why was he not part of the procession? Why did he observe the funeral from a great distance? Did he not have the right to mourn publicly? Was he deliberately hidden from view? Was it really his yeh-yeh’s funeral or someone was just telling fibs to a young boy? Facts mis-remembered or truths from a little boy’s innocent but naive perspective? This next bit is undoubtedly true. Pa’s eldest sister committed suicide rather than accept the man who was match-made for her by their father, my Ahya. “Why?! Was the bridegroom so grotesque?” I asked. We never did find out why. The man, deprived of Pa’s eldest sister, married the 2nd sister instead in order for Ahya to honour his deal and avoid slighting the man. The couple could not produce a child and so they adopted one of Pa’s 2nd brother’s son. Haizhong, 海忠 whom I met in Shaoxing in October 2007 is their grandson. So legally, he does not bear my clan’s surname although he is still my first cousin once removed. The West does not differentiate between a progeny from an uncle or an aunt, but the Chinese can always tell. Due to his adoption, I am his “Jiu-Jiu”舅舅 from the maternal side rather than his ‘Ah-Song”, 叔叔 from the paternal branch of the family tree.

Balapai Ahyi married in August 1948. She was 18. She was pleased with the Shanghainese bloke Pa match-made her to. Ma said her sister left with a lingering broad smile. Two months earlier, Ma lost a 6-month-old baby. It wouldn’t be her only miscarriage. According to Ma, the boy didn’t make it because she was weak and malnourished. Ma had spent long days and nights making a cheongsam or Qipao and two sets of blouses and shorts for her sister’s wedding gift. The two sisters were as fragile as porcelain. Ma reckoned she got her ill-health from those long hours at the Singer sewing machine. My memory of Balapai Ahyi was of a sickly but beautiful and elegant lady with jade-like complexion who often behaved as if any strong gust of wind would blow her away. The newly-weds moved to Ipoh and bore a beautiful daughter in 1950. Not long after that, they settled in Bayan Lepas, when her eldest brother, my Do-Ahjiu, gave them his struggling laundry shop there to take over. Do-Ahjiu was a very active businessman, quick to seize opportunities to open shops. He would have been a fantastic creator of franchise businesses had he taken that next step to replicate the same business in different locations rather than start different businesses.

To ease their pain from the miscarriage, Pa upgraded their car in late 1948. It was a Hillman Minx, a tortoise-shaped car made in England as most good things were back then. But, the pain quickly returned. In January 1949, Ma had another stillborn – a 6-month-old girl this time. That year, on the 5th August, my parents lost a newborn, a son. He managed to give Pa a sweet endearing smile before he passed away a few minutes later. Four months later, Ma had a miscarriage, a 3-month-old boy. 1949 would turn out to be the worst year of their lives – three babies lost before they could even embrace them in their arms or hear them give the happiest sound any mother would love – the first cry of a newborn. In October 1951, My Second Sis, Neechee, would be born. Ma attributes her successful birth to the Javanese medicines her neighbours from Medan gave her. They lived three doors away, on 3-G Penang Road. I only remember the name of their shop, Kam Sisters. In December that year, Pa went to Singapore either for a short holiday or to scope the port city for opportunities, leaving Ma to look after the business as well as their three kids. Neechee was their lucky baby. Business boomed for the next two years despite much turmoil during the Malayan Emergency which intensified after the assassination of the High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney in October. Penang, also known as the Pearl of the Orient, was a favourite holiday destination for the British and New Zealand troops (the Aussies arrived later) – the fighting against the Communist guerrillas took place in the jungles of Malaya but the R&R place of choice was Penang. Pa was a flamboyant man, so Ma jealously said. A tall handsome man, he was habitually well-groomed and well-spoken. He commanded attention when he spoke, aided by a confident and firm voice and of course, why wouldn’t he be confident? His cars turned heads. Who did not find him irresistible? He loved cars and loved Peking opera. His favourite role was playing Zhuge Liang, a war hero during the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history. I was brought up by Ma to believe that my family eked out a hand-to-mouth existence when we were little. But, now I realise Pa the car-lover acquired quite a few cars during those years. He started with a tortoise-shaped second-hand car before trading it for the Hillman, and later changed it to an Austin, then a Morris, and a Fiat after that. When we were in our early teens, he bought an Opel, followed by a Ford Capri in the 70s and a Corolla after I left for Australia in 1977. Ma never got her driving licence. Pa was her driving instructor in 1952-53. The three lessons over a 9-month period she had were too much for her weak heart. During those days, there was just the one set of traffic lights, at the Chulia Street and Penang Road junction opposite Odeon cinema. (It is likely Ma meant the Capitol cinema, Big Sis said) With hardly any cars on the road, it should have been a great time to own the road. Ma said she could not find the spare time to have lessons but I suspect she was reluctant to sit behind the steering wheel. She failed to reach Gurney Drive after starting her lesson at the Penang Road and Northam Road junction. The grand mansions which flanked Northam Road sat on acreage blocks that abutted a private stretch of Penang’s famed pristine golden sands. It was those magnificent manors which bore the heavy influence of British architecture that caught Pa’s attention and his mind was momentarily transported to a world of dreams which beckoned the likes of Yeap Chor Ee, Yeoh Wee Gark and Loh Boon Siew. Those were men of great stature, legends amongst Penang’s self-made tycoons. “Bilik! Bilik! Blaaake!!” Pa yelled when he suddenly saw his precious Hillman heading towards a ditch. Ma could not find where the brake pedal was. “It was a near-miss by a matter of inches” Ma said, but it was enough to bring Pa back from his dream and for Ma to forever quit learning to drive.

Ko, Neechee and Big Sis, and the Hillman Minx

In all her previous seven pregnancies, Ma never went to visit a doctor once. In those days, people did not think they could afford a doctor’s opinion. During the 1950s and 60s, old wives tales were still relevant and therefore prevalent in Asian cultures. Mothers or grandmothers ruled the roost – we did not have doctors to look at our wounds, aches, fevers, or broken limbs or dentists to extract our rotten teeth, let alone ask them for the correct diagnosis. We never went to bed with wet hair as we were repeatedly told that it would make us sick. We only secretly cracked our knuckles and ribs to avoid our ears being pulled for not obeying their wise advice. Apparently, old wives believed knuckle cracking will give us arthritis. Every of Ma’s aunties seemed to have the God-given skill to predict the baby’s sex whenever Ma fell pregnant. In late 1953, Ma fell pregnant again. “You will have a boy this time!” Ma again trusted Mother Nature to grow a healthy baby in her tummy, no visits to midwives or doctors were warranted. The war may have ended eight years earlier and business may have delivered profits healthy enough for Pa to buy his favourite car, albeit second-hand, yet the accepted practice at home was that the informal (and therefore free) consultations with the herbalist on Campbell Street was enough to ensure a proper pregnancy. Third Sis or Sehchee was born in July 1954 when the British Empire was weakening and the colonial masters were starting to leave Malaya. Abdul Rahman had become president of UMNO in 1951 and a year after Sehchee was born, the alliance swept to power in the only general election before Malaya’s independence in 1957. The departure of the British meant that the laundry and dry-cleaning business had truly passed its heyday. Sehchee was a sickly child who suffered from frequent bouts of diarrhoea. Frequently rebuked for being a cry-baby, it ought to have been easy to understand why her discomfort made her cry. It was only in the 1970s that Ma fully understood why. Sehchee was fed powdered milk during her early childhood. The Swiss-based Nestlé was embroiled in a controversy in 1973 – their infant milk formula Lactogen was named “The Baby Killer” in a German magazine. Women all over the world were misled by their advertising that promoted the magical powdered formula offered more health benefits for infants than mother’s milk. A switch that was expensive not only in money terms but especially costly in increased malnutrition and infections, retarded development and often death.

Ma holding Sehchee with Big Sis, Ko, and Neechee (partly hidden) at Penang’s Botanical Gardens. Pa’s Austin parked behind.

Name Me, Blame Me

Before the pandemic, I had always used my real name here. But, Australia changed after Trump called the virus the China virus or the Kung-Flu virus. Aussies have turned less multi-cultural, more xenophobic. I man the phones at work and pretend to be AI in running the live-chat responses. Trump is the master of the slow-drip treatment and eventually the leaking tap will cause the soil to turn muddy. Throw the mud around and some will eventually stick. Say the same lies over and over again, and eventually people will believe you. For the same reason, many of my friends think one of us has a rather long dong. But, name me and they will shame me. Back to manning the phones. Over the recent months, I detected a rising level of bias against China and all things Made-in-China. Most of the products I sell are from China. Even for the few products made locally here, the components or raw materials are processed in China. I did not want my business to suffer by what I call a triple-whammy effect. A bloke with a Chinese name and a Chinese accent selling China-made products. Who is going to buy from such a bloke, given the almost daily news about the growing friction between China and Australia? So, I turned down the accent of my mother tongue and put on a more international twang. “Are you a Kiwi?” “Are you from Scotland?” “Sorry to ask but are you South African?” “Can I ask if you’re an Islander?” As a filial son, I never dreamt that one day I would abandon the name given to me by my father. Sorry Pa but at work, I now go by a new name. A name I once associated with my childhood hero, Roger Moore. So, for the record, in my life, the first person named by me is I. Having lived here for forty years, I am suddenly calling myself by a Western name. It still feels weird and I must say I am not accustomed to be known by this Western name. In fact, I find it quite strange to see that name as the sender of my emails. And when I am called by my original name by friends and relatives, I somehow stand taller and feel stronger. After all, that is the meaning of my name in Chinese – forever strong.

Who’s got a knack for this Almanac?

No, I never got to give my sons their names. That privilege went to my father. Besides, I wasn’t qualified to perform that task. Firstly, one needs to know how to write the Chinese characters. Secondly, you will need to know how to write it in traditional characters. The simplified version will give the wrong results. I think it is to do with mathematics and maybe even astrology, yes, naming someone is all very scientific. For me, I find it strange that in Mainland China, the simplified version is now used, but outside China in say, Taiwan and Hong Kong, they stick to the old complex characters. My father would carefully count the number of strokes of the names he liked. Firstly, the names had to be meaningful, e.g. for my eldest son, his name means abundance of vigorous energy or magnificence – his first name means copious and his second name, energy from a waterfall. After Pa was happy with the name’s meaning, he then had to satisfy that the number of combined strokes of the chosen names when referenced not against the time and date of the birthday but the number 384 which gave the auspicious result he sought for from the Almanac of Names. Second son is named abundance of auspicious and good spiritual life. Baby Son’s name means abundance of imperial significance. All my sons are named by their paternal grandpa. Pa had the sole naming rights. Their surname was his and I doubt very much that he even paused to consider deferring that right to me or to their maternal grandparents. To be fair, he was the only one equipped with the Almanac. Naming a baby is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly as the baby’s future is totally dependent on the name given and the number of strokes of the Chinese characters will determine the characteristics and wellbeing of the child. Historically, sons were favoured over daughters. The girls when married off will merely be discarded water from a wash basin, they cannot return or be retrieved.

Jià chu qu de nǚ ér pō chu qu de shuĭ – shōu bù huí lái
嫁出去的女儿，泼出去的水 – 收不回来

In those days, should a young boy do poorly or was sickly, it was not uncommon for the adults to rename him a cow, pig or dog. The belief was evil spirits roamed about the village to ensnare boys with good names who therefore will have good health and a prosperous future. These evil spirits will obtain their sustenance by residing in the bodies of the boys they possessed. These boys can recover from their sickness only if their names are changed to depict inferiority. No evil spirits want to live inside a pig or a cow, right? If Ah Too or Ah Goo did not recover from his illness, the adults will change his name again, to that of a girl’s. It was believed that a girl was worth less than a pig, so for sure the evil spirit will abandon the boy renamed Ah Moi or Ah Mei. Names and meanings…hmmm, if I have got the historical aspects wrong, please don’t blame me.

It would be some ten years after my sons were born that we had search engines for us to surf the Internet. Netscape Navigator was born in 1994, but was soon destroyed by Windows 95 which came packed with Internet Explorer. I put a lot of my savings into LookSmart, a budding search engine in 1996 but was made to look dumb when the share price tanked and never resurfaced. It was well before Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, and definitely no Google Chrome then. It was my one-in-a-million-chance to tell how I made my millions from the Internet boom but look, I was not smart enough, OK? You can name me whatever but please don’t blame me. Without the Internet, I didn’t have a ready tool to anglicise my sons’ names. I didn’t possess a pinyin dictionary to work out the appropriate names from Pa’s choices. Back in the 80s, hyphenated names were exotic, why not go along with that trend? So, even today my sons sometimes still frown at their anglicised names, they are quite difficult for Westerners to announce over the PA system! It’s ok to blame me, I suppose.

A couple of weeks ago, a good friend asked for suggestions of a suitable name for his grand-niece. I knew he wasn’t serious about it, and no one offered any. He was just a proud grand-uncle sharing the joyful news of a newborn. Wilson belongs to a big family and like any hierarchical unit, I gathered there would be quite a few seniors ranked highly and deserving of the privilege to name the beautiful child. His grand-niece indeed is a creation of exquisite beauty. A natural beauty, I would say. After all, in the midst of the universe we live in, it would be hard to disagree that nature herself is the most beautiful. It is early spring here in Adelaide and I have to say, this is the season where nature is supremely beautiful and at its faultless best. In my native Penang Hokkien dialect, how would we describe a place as beautiful and serene as this? Two words will aptly apply. Jin Sui! Really beautiful.

My neighbour’s garden. Jin Sui!

Jin Sui! I said to Wilson. “The newborn, the beautiful girl in the photo. Jin Sui.” Wilson thought that was my choice for his contest for us to come up with a name for the girl. One can easily come up with a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. Maybe even Sophia from Sophia Loren, or Artemis the Greek Goddess famous for her boobs and the natural environment. Another name we can’t dismiss is Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus, the Goddess of love from whom the word aphrodisiac comes from or even Hera, the wife of Zeus and by extension, the queen of all goddesses. All heavenly. All beautiful. But Wilson’s niece loves the name and has named her daughter Jin Sui! Suddenly, I was the one privileged with giving the beautiful newborn her name. Jin Sui, may you grow up to the most beautiful person you can be, a beautiful woman with a beautiful mind and the loveliest heart.

Jin Sui. A beautiful child who captivates many and will surely win many hearts

Vain, In Vain

Jit Huat, who at times can be a rather vocal politically-incorrect friend, sent us a message claiming that it is OK for sexagenarians to be vain. Bravo, Jit Huat. I respect anyone who is honest and brave enough to stand on his soapbox and tell the world what his mind says. He doesn’t hide behind a thick curtain of political correctness, and it is that whiff of honesty that we should all appreciate. According to him, vanity keeps our sense of humour intact and helps revive the “aura of youth” that we all so desperately need. A vain one, I imagine he would often check his reflection on the kitchen window whilst his Mrs magically produces a magnificent meal. I can visualise him scritch and preen his unruly long hair using the kitchen window as a mirror whilst she slaves away on her own. Her calls to him to relieve her sprained wrist from the heavy cast iron wok fall on deaf ears, as he meticulously re-buns his hair at the most inappropriate moment. The vain man is also likely to preoccupy himself with his silhouette, favourably comparing his physique against the boutique store’s mannequin, whilst his Mrs tries out a new dress. That level of self-awareness is what reminds some of us to straighten our backs and improve our posture. Don’t worry, Jit Huat. This story isn’t about you, although Carly Simon’s words flooded my mind in an instant.

You’re so vain

You probably think this song is about you

You’re so vain (you’re so vain)

I’ll bet you think this song is about you

Don’t you? Don’t you? 






In less than a week, I will turn 62. In truth, I have felt 62 for almost all of this year. Absent-mindedly, I have more often than not, selected my age as 62 when recording the settings of my exercise bike before each rigorous routine. At our age, the look to cultivate should be that of a kind and elderly gentleman, a very good friend recently reminded me. For the majority of my life, vanity has been a stranger to me. Very early on, I divulged to The Mrs that I once aspired to be an actor. That dream expired very quickly after she said I should really look into the mirror. She has, throughout my married life, cleverly drummed into me that at best, my “thoo-fei” or bandit looks will get me a 3-second role as an easy-beat thug. One kick by the hero in white and my role would end in the ditch. She is such a clever one. Snip off any buds that will sprout the natural tendency to be vain, and her man will never be. Vanity costs money. A vain person will want to always look good and that comes with a huge cost. Better grooming means more visits to the hair-dresser. Haircare, skincare and healthcare represent a real scare to a tight family budget. Looking good equates to many thousands of dollars during one’s marriage and that is before we even consider spending on high-street fashion shoes and clothes. Just a few years ago, on a holiday in New York City, I walked into Allen Edmonds on 44th Street. If you want a serious pair of dress shoes, go there! The shoe whisperer knew everything about my feet just from looking at the way I walked. The Mrs was not disappointed. She knew that her husband wasn’t vain enough to spend a dime in such a store. Instead, she bought it for me, splurging many hundreds of US dollars even though I lacked vanity. Last week, I finally had a haircut this year. Can you imagine how much she has saved from the shunned haircuts?! At $75 a visit to my hero, Hiro at Clip Joint, those five visits I skipped would be enough to justify a big plate of my favourite dish at our local restaurant, Australian rock lobster with yifu noodles. She said my birthday is coming up, time to get a haircut. Wow! Hooray! I assumed she meant she would flash me a Clip Joint gift card. Nope, it was a pair of scissors instead as she hollered for me to bring out the barber’s stool. Fair enough, I am not vain. I don’t care how I look. But, I am the boss of my business. Shouldn’t I look like the boss? The boss should have the body and haircut to execute proper authority, right? The Mrs is clearly a step ahead of me. She knows I work from home and I don’t use Zoom or Skype anyway. No one will know if I have had a bad haircut day. “It’s alright. Your hair will grow back after a week”, she reassured me with her soothing smile. Well, it has been a full week and I still can’t find my smile yet. 





My most expensive pair of shoes!





You may cut my hair so long as they don’t hang in the air.





Is it wrong to be vain though? Is it not natural that we want to look good? Present the best we can be? Be that most attractive person that we can mould ourselves into? Vanity can be a great motivator for us. It can be the reason why we want to be the role model for our children. Who does not want their kids to look up to them? Be the star in their eyes? Be that person they aspire to be – one of vibrant vitality, shining with positivity and exuding great inner strength filled with self-respect and confidence. Those who want to look great will lose weight, quit smoking, start fasting and do everything right to radiate beauty for all to see. Without health there is no beauty, so for some, good health is the by-product of vanity. This surely must be the bright side of vanity, and it cannot be detrimental at all to our mental health and general well-being. After all, vanity is well short of narcissism. Vanity doesn’t require us to bully, lie through our teeth, or rely on misogynistic abuse to take advantage of  women. Just think of Donald Trump if you need more traits of a narcissist. 





Armed with such iron-clad logic, I decided to entertain the idea of being a vain person. Some ten years ago, after observing for a long time how well my three sons look after their health and their looks, it didn’t strike me that they were being vain at all. They were merely looking after themselves! There is absolutely nothing wrong to want to look good, present well,  articulate clearly and carry oneself with aplomb. Be as sure-footed as a mountain goat, I told myself. Soon after, I started to dabble in skincare brands. Naturally I went for the best, SK-II  and Khiels got the nod first. Even though I knew the blemishes on my face are subcutaneous, it didn’t stop me from splashing out on their flagship skin repair products. A Malaysian friend introduced me to Cocolab, her family’s skincare and healthcare empire founded on virgin coconut oil. I miss their soaps, they really smell the best. Since then I have tried a few other brands, and other wonderful products such as face masks, hair oils, exotic shampoos and hair conditioners, but alas, there is no magic wand. 





I seldom look in the mirror and I must admit that the person looking back at me this morning shocked me.  Despite the DKNY leather jacket that props up my body and the BOSS leather belt that holds up my jeans from dragging on the ground, or the well-cut Calibre tee shirt, (a gift to a son some Christmases ago) that can no longer hide the bulges in the wrong areas, the person staring back at me is almost unrecognisable. A soon-to-be 62-year-old sun-ravaged badly hunched man with a scrawny torso and a most out-of-place lump of belly fat in the midriff. An old Chinese bloke who still thinks he is an old Aussie cobber. I would like to tell him, “Mate, you’ve been vain, in vain”. 

	


	



			
				


			

			
Kelp Is On The Way
		
	
	

		

Last weekend seems such a long time ago now. It has been one friggin’ bad week for me. It is just not right that I failed to let the good vibes of one happy short holiday linger for longer. The laughter, the good food, the good wine and great company all have so quickly become a distant memory. What happened? Life got in the way. Nasty customers spewing their bile, remonstrating with their anger-laced impatience at me for the pandemic-caused delays – their severe remarks and demands for immediate refunds have anchored me at the bottom of what feels like a muddy, toad-infested well. But, they pale into insignificance when compared with the vicious people and their hurtful views about why I should stop writing. A few days ago, someone echoed that which was said to me last year. When a person says something hurtful, we can choose to ignore it. But, when the same criticisms are dished out by another person close to us, we have to pause and reflect. It is very likely there must be some truth for us to face up to and some honest deliberations should be endured in order for us to correct and improve ourselves. The whole process can be rather painful. Why must they think they need to be cruel in order to be kind? 







“You should read more before you write! It is embarrassing to write about matters you know so little about! Why don’t you do some research?”
“You’re not a good story-teller! You don’t know how to make a story interesting.”
“You’re simply copying the words of historians and philosophers. Nothing original.”
all by one person





Alas, I am no colourful raconteur. No! I shall write this week off. Let me cast my mind back to the weekend that was filled with sun and fun. COVID-19 has erased our forthcoming 3-week cruise ship holiday to Rome and Barcelona. There was so much I had hoped to see and many giant footsteps to trace, like those of Alexander the Great’s and Leonardo Da Vinci’s. Barcelona was one great city I enjoyed on my own many years back and I was keen to share with The Mrs the many highlights that I know she will want to visit. The one highlight I knew I had to forgo was Camp Nou. The Mrs does not share my adoration for my football god, Barcelona Football Club’s number 10, who else but the greatest of all time, Lionel Messi. The other two couples who were meant to be travelling with us had confirmed a few months ago they had already got back their money from Regent Seven Seas Cruises. I merely nodded when asked by The Mrs if we also had received our refund. “Been too busy to check my credit card statement” would be an irresponsible and feeble excuse. That would have earned me a deservedly stern rebuke from her. But, how did I pay for it? With which credit card? With whose credit card?! Before I post this story, I must confirm the refund is received. Otherwise, there will be no peace of mind for many days to come. 





Last weekend’s short holiday was organised by Little Sis. That is the kind of holiday I enjoy. Just pack a bag and turn up. Everything is arranged, paid and provided for. The destination was Victor Harbour, a mere 90 minutes from Adelaide CBD. The last time I visited that resort town was almost seven years ago. Then, the Southern Expressway was the world’s longest reversible one-way highway. In the mornings, only travellers heading north could use it and after 2 p.m., we could use it to travel south only. It was quite odd for the infrequent user, I never could remember when it was southbound or northbound. Today, it is an impressive (normal) seven-lane freeway, and we no longer have to think if it is opened or not for the direction we are travelling. Victor Harbour has become Victor Harbor. I was quite disturbed by that. When and why did they change it? Why Americanise an old Aussie town when our roots are most definitely English? I expected it would be a nice getaway, holidaying in a quaint small town.  Instead, the gateway to Victor Harbour was flanked by the ubiquitous and very suburban stores such as Bunnings, Aldi, and Repco. So, it felt like we travelled 90 minutes to just another suburb. I suppose that’s nothing unusual in most parts of the world. But, the South Australia I fell in love with in the 90s was where the outback was just some twenty minutes out of the city! My spirits lifted a little when I saw a shopfront that had a faded and paint-peeled signage that read Victor Harbour Bakery. It was proof that my memory of the town’s original name was correct. 







Two humpbacks, but they weren’t whales.





As soon we arrived at our destination, our mundane, routinely predictable world magically transformed into a paradise. There were traffic signs warning whale watchers to be careful but the only humpbacks we saw were two humpback islands. There were no mother and calf pairs, none were loafing about, or blowing fountains of seawater into the air. We were just a few weeks too late to witness the tail-slapping and flipper-waving antics that wow us humans. Nonetheless, it was a well-deserved holiday. The COVID months had dragged most of our mood down, and the very long hours of hectic work and incessant telephone enquiries from customers for the past six months have definitely drained me of energy and mental strength. A good dosage of the freshest, cleanest air from the Great Australian Bight did wonders to my system. The worn-out, grumpy old me vanished and was replaced by a chirpy and happy youngish larrikin. A hearty lunch at the local pub with a commanding view of the ocean was followed five hours later by Little Sis’ sumptuous roast beef paired with knife-cut Shanxi noodles for dinner. Magically served at the dining table, without fuss and seemingly without much effort, the Shanxi meal was a memorable one imbued with lots of local red wine, laughter and love. The night continued with much frivolity and fun. We all had a great laugh looking at ourselves masked with facial masks – the ones used for skincare, not healthcare.





Ma, trying to pull off her face mask as I was putting it on for her.





The next morning, we woke up early, eager for another fun-packed day at the beach. The rest of the family do not practise Intermittent Fasting. So, much of their morning was spent preparing and having breakfast. I didn’t have to eat till 1 p.m. due to the late dinner the night before. My spare time was spent studying the notes I prepared from ma’s stories related to me the day before. It was well past 11 a.m. by the time they were ready to leave. At the beach, we came across a massive pile of fresh kelp washed to shore earlier in the morning. “Help me, free kelp!” The Mrs yelped excitedly. We were totally unprepared for such an easy harvest. None of us had any empty bags with us to stash the kelp in. Seaweed is expensive, a popular ingredient in Japanese and Korean dishes. High in iodine and anti-oxidant, it is a natural multivitamin and is amazing for gut health and the thyroid. Kelp’s benefits are almost endless, used in skincare, cosmetics and animal feed, and can be used as an agricultural fertiliser. Perhaps, it can be one of our greatest tool to help us fight against global warming. Kelp absorbs carbon dioxide and nutrients from the water. This process helps de-acidify the water, enabling a healthy environment for shellfish farming. Scallops, oysters and mussels need clean water to thrive – kelp farming and bivalves farming would be great companion industries. In 2012, Dr Antoine De Ramon N’Yeurt reported that if 9% of the ocean were to be covered in seaweed farms, 12 giga-tonnes per year of bio-methane can be produced as a substitute for natural gas and at the same time capture 19 giga-tonnes of carbon dioxide. The cleaner water is estimated to potentially provide 200 kg of seafood, per person, for 10 billion people. It is a no-brainer for urghhlings to invest in kelp farms. Where is the help when we need it? In 2018, CGTN reported that China produced over 58% of the world’s seaweed. Why do the rest of the world lag behind so badly?





Help yourselves to the free kelp!





Drying kelp collected from Victor Harbour





A week later, the seaweed dish is on our dining table

	


	



			
				


			

			
Thinking About Thinking
		
	
	

		

Thinking aloud is allowed. Unfortunately, the noisy chatter is annoying my neighbours. The Mrs had not sat down to watch a movie with me ever since the pandemic caused such a panic. Last Friday, she caught a glimpse of Line of Duty Season 4 Episode 5 with me, and promptly sat down to finish the episode with me. It was intense! Some of you may think it was the close proximity to the woman that I meant. Perhaps. I had planned to commence Season 5 this week, but she wanted to watch from the very beginning, from S1E1. So, dutifully I am re-visiting the stories. A most compelling story about AC-12, the anti-corruption unit of the U.K. police, Line of Duty. Is it my duty to accompany her though? So, it got me thinking about the concept of duty. I am known to be a filial son, yet the things I did for my parents were acts of love, not duty-bound. I think there is a big difference between an act of love and an act of duty. A duty is a moral or legal obligation, but sitting down with a spouse watching whatever she likes is an act of giving, willingly, happily and unconditionally. Definitely not a duty. I half-expected The Mrs to lose track of the little details or hints of who the baddies were or what they were up to, but no. She was superb and I think she exceeded my own ability to notice the little nuances of the story – especially the part about the DCI’s secret affair with a woman. She nailed it well before I did.





Can we both be right? Just thinking aloud





Mandatory or not, mask-wearing has seen loud and somewhat violent protests, especially in the U.S.  and they aren’t even mandated there. There has been much kerfuffle even in some parts of Australia about the forced limitation of movement and the requirement to wear masks. The tussle between ruling for the greater good vs rules to protect individual freedom and rights has continued unabated in Victoria. I think in the not distant future, people will read with disbelief that mask-wearing during a pandemic to save ourselves was such a challenging proposition.





Two days ago, the Federal government announced a A$3.5 billion upgrade to the NBN (National Broadband network). We have spent some A$60 billion for what will surely become an archaic system once 5G is universally available. Even before the first dollar was spent and the first bucket of soil turned, we already said it was a farce to invest in cables in the ground for the future. Free Wi-Fi was already available in some cities around the world back then at speeds that were not much slower than the promised speed of the NBN. This latest upgrade will deliver “super fast” speed to those who want them, said the Minister for Communications. Both my office and home internet have recently changed over to the NBN, after some coercion and threat of losing internet altogether, if we did not. Since then, we see a lot of the spinning circle on our computer screens and iPads. Is the operating system busy suddenly or has the NBN broken down again? Nope, our productivity has not improved at all with the promised higher internet speed. The NBN is a broken system, which has seen my staff busily making coffee and tea to keep themselves busy. I read that by 2023, the A$3.5 billion will deliver us FTTP. Impressive, with the media parroting about the promised “super-fast speed” without questioning how fast fibre-to-the-premises actually will be. At the moment, our NBN is fibre-to-the-node and then copper to the building. It delivers 100Mbps, i.e. slow. With FTTP, it will become “super fast”, i.e. 1Gbps or ten times faster. Yippee! Until I read that 5G’s speed is 20Gps – that is right, today’s 5G is already 20 times faster than what our NBN will be in three years’ time. It is no wonder Malcolm Turnbull banned China’s 5G from coming, on the pretext of security concerns. I think he meant it was to secure our NBN’s lifeline, to prevent it from becoming a white elephant before the project is even completed.





A very good mate, Mak, sent me a video-clip about the Dhamma’s way to find happiness. He apologised for regularly sending me talks on Dhamma or Buddhist teachings as a way of life. Usually, unsolicited lengthy messages are frowned upon – especially when we are pre-occupied or disinterested in the subject matter. I told Mak, no worries. I enjoy these Dhamma clips, initially out of curiosity but now as a source of knowledge. I was brought up by my mother to pray with joss sticks but there were no deep teachings and philosophical ideas imparted by the adults to a young boy, e.g. why pray when there is no deity in Buddhism? Who was I praying to? Also, the opposite premise was as equally troublesome for me. If the all-knowing God exists, why do we need to pray? Are we not too presumptuous to think the all-knowing deity needs us to tell Him all our woes, wishes and wants? Why waste His time and tell Him what He already knows? Please correct me if I have used the wrong gender pronoun. (Why are there no gender-neutral pronouns for God?) Anyway, back to Mak’s Dhamma clip. I couldn’t get past the first two sentences that asserted we only find happiness when we stop thinking. Peace of mind brings calmness and this is the core of happiness. Sounds easy. Stop thinking and we find happiness? Luckily, with a free morning, I was able to prod Mak for more answers. That required thinking for both of us. I don’t know about Mak, but I think I got some happiness out of our discussion. Thinking about thinking. Why does the Dhamma teach us that thinking will lead us away from our goal of finding happiness? We did not cover the next subject of the video-clip which was about wisdom. The core of wisdom is in the Four Noble Truths. To enlighten ourselves, we need to understand what is suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to end the suffering. To end the suffering, we have to get to Nirvana and it is all paved for us very clearly in the Eightfold path. The path is all about goodness. Wholesomeness. Good viewpoints, good values, good speech and good action. Coupled with good livelihood and effort, we are well on our way once we also heed the teachings about good mindfulness and good meditation. We will reach Nirvana if we stay on this good path to truth. We didn’t discuss wisdom at all because I couldn’t get past the idea of the need to stop thinking. The message rings unabatedly in my mind. “When the mind stops thinking, that is when you find real happiness”. Mak added it is the proliferation of thoughts and the mindless chattering of the unwholesome types that crack our calmness. Unwholesome thoughts will lead to unwholesome actions and words. Eventually, that person’s life is unravelled and misfortune will strike. I suppose that is the theory behind it, and who can be happy after that? I suggested that “contentment” has to be a big part of the equation for happiness. If we are not contented with our lives, how can we be of calm mind and spirit? I honed in on Mak’s remark that it is “unwholesome” thoughts that lead us away from happiness. I reckon the evil ones can also be happy with their unwholesome thoughts, right? As long as they are contented, baddies can still find happiness, irrespective of what makes them contented. It cannot be true that bad people are all unhappy, surely? Can baddies have peace of mind? That, I don’t know. As long as people, good or bad, are contented with their actions and thoughts, they will still have a chance to find happiness. That’s what I think. Proliferation of thoughts is discouraged in the Dhamma. When the mind stops thinking is when we find happiness. I can’t understand that. Isn’t the opposite true? That we cannot be calm if we can’t think and discover the answer? Did the Buddha not have to think a lot to discover the Four Noble Truths? If we all choose not to think and our contentment leads us to complacency and inaction, what will humans become? Stupid and lazy? Unproductive? Unprofessional? Regressive in technology and medical knowledge? I suppose there is a counter argument that technology has not done humanity any favours with all the destruction and death that technology in the wrong hands brings. Medical knowledge has also been abused with the use of biological warfare and accidental releases of deadly pathogens. Is it the heedless, mindless and undisciplined thinking that the buddha discourages? There has to be a mindful way of thinking then. A conscious reflection on thought itself? Yet, in reality when we try to focus on a thought, that very attempt makes it elusive to capture it in a mindful way. Isaac Newton revealed that it was sitting under an apple tree that gave him that “AHA!” moment in defining the law of gravity. There is no evidence that an apple fell on his head but it was his observation of falling apples that helped to inspire him to eventually develop his law of universal gravitation. It was already said that the apple tree is the tree of knowledge – precisely why Eve ate the apple despite God’s command not to. The other important tree for us was of course, the Bodhi Fig tree for without it, we have to wonder where Siddartha Gautama would have got his enlightenment.





The Dhamma tells us to stop thinking, whereas Western philosophy is all about critical thinking. It was the ancient Greeks who laid the foundations of Western philosophy, from the search for personal happiness to issues for the greater good, a selfless sense of duty for society. There was also the concept of Stoicism – that we are part of nature, not above it, and should therefore live virtuously. First Son often reminds me we cannot control what others say or do to avoid being hurt. But, what we can control is how we react to them. Be stoic! The French promulgated the idea of freedom and personal rights. Voltaire and Rousseau were the poster-boys for the revolutions in France and America. “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chain”. By that, Rousseau meant that it is the government that takes away our personal freedom for the sake of a social contract with society. In Britain, Hobbes saw the dangers of natural rights for the individual and argued that it is the sovereign state that holds the power to exercise the rights for the good of society. He did not trust the selfish, evil and violent nature of urghhlings. John Locke, the Enlightenment thinker, went the opposite way. Under natural law, we all have the right to property, freedom and life. Under his social contract, the people have a right to rise up and bring down the government if it acted against its citizens. Locke asserts that we have the right of revolution. My favourite philosopher is René Descartes. I am forever grateful to him for proving my existence. We exist because we think. “I think and therefore I am”.





So, why is the Dhamma against “proliferation of thoughts”? Do they mean disorganised thinking leading to disorderly conduct? Mak said, “Proliferation of mind brings about more discontentment as the more you seek, the more desire and never-ending goals you will have. The mind gets agitated as our desire is not satisfied. Contentment breaks the desire for more.” Can desire for knowledge be bad though? So, humans should stop thinking? The ability to think, plan and execute our plan is the special trait of humans. The ability to verbalise our thoughts with language is what has placed us at the head of the food chain in the animal kingdom. It is our ability to think and communicate a detailed plan to our people that has us leading in the evolutionary race to unchallenged superiority. That is, until we created AI. Artificial Intelligence is far superior in the ability to think, research and remember everything, and execute their plans perfectly every time. Ok, the Dhamma is right. All this thinking isn’t very calming! It is clear that we control only a tiny part of our conscious thoughts. The vast majority of our mind is churning away subconsciously. Slips of the tongue, accidental body gestures, day-dreaming and unintentional actions are all examples of the cluttered mind.





Question: What is the core of happiness? What is the core of wisdom? 





Ajahn: The core of happiness is calm, peace of mind. When the mind stops thinking, that’s when you find real happiness. And the core of wisdom is the Four Noble Truths. If you understand the Four Noble Truths, then you have the wisdom to overcome all of your suffering, to get rid of your suffering. So, this is what you need, two things. You need complete calm which is samādhi and you need the understanding of the Four Noble Truths. Dhamma in English, Nov 14, 2017. By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto http://www.phrasuchart.com
Latest Dhamma talks on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g





Too busy to be thinking about happiness

	


	



			
				


			

			
Hysteria About Wisteria
		
	
	

		

“Hey Cuz, I can’t wait to see your Listeria bloom!” a cousin sister exclaimed last week. A biomedical scientist, it is no surprise she had bacteria on her mind rather than flowers. Listeria infection, although uncommon, does raise its ugly head every year. One year, it was bean sprouts. Can you imagine no raw bean sprouts with your pho? Disappointing – pho just isn’t the same without that sweet, green taste of sprouts. Last year, it was rock melons that made headlines. We did not return the one we bought from Coles because it was already inside our tummy. Trust your nose, your eyes, and your taste buds. We can smell them, see them, and taste them, surely! My cuz will tell me off for peddling such silly notions. A few years ago, we found a fridge-full of deli meats and the most expensive Brie and Camembert in a local supermarket bin. There were pâtés and smoked salmon too. A quick guesstimate told me there would have been easily $2,000 in that bin. Half my body was inside the bin, reaching for the discarded veggies at the furthest corner of the bin. The thought did cross my mind. $2,000 worth of goodies and I’m picking damaged vegetables? See, they are for the chooks. They won’t succumb to Listeria, right? No risk to them. Unfounded theory, that. I love them but isn’t it careless of me? Callous? Why have I not researched into this? What if they die of Listeria-poisoning? I did have a pet chook when I was a young boy. I singled it out to Yong Jie, our family maid, that it was not destined for our dinner plate. Based on my childhood experience, no birds died because they were fed rotten fruits and vegetables. You could give them overnight rice that had gone off also. They will choose what is edible and leave what’s bad for them. There! That’s my research. But, my childhood experience also taught me that chooks kept for the family were only temporary pets. All birds die because they are destined for the oven or hotpot. The Mrs and I keep four chooks. One of them is a poor layer. “Off with her head!” I would threaten her indirectly – the chook I mean. Said numerous times in jest, I now make this solemn declaration that all my chooks will die a natural death. By natural, I do not mean they are naturally destined for the oven. If you Google the pros and cons of binned food, Google will ask “Did you mean: pros and cons of canned food” No one discusses the benefits and risks of consuming binned food. The abhorrent waste of throwing away food should be a crime. According to Rabobank’s 2019 Food Waste Report, Aussies are the fourth worst culprits of throwing away food, despite only being the 55th largest country by population. We bin about $10 billion of food every year. We clog our landfills with food that was once perfectly edible. The concept of wasting precious earth’s resources and wanton animal sacrifices is not lost on me. Water shortages, political stoushes about the unfair allocation of water from the river systems, and uncontrolled bush fires hog the headlines every year.  It is clear food waste is a contributor to the ecological disaster we are experiencing today. COVID-19 recently showed the ugliness of earthlings. We panic too easily. All over the world, urghhlings went on a rampage and emptied their supermarket shelves of toilet paper and food. Toilet paper does not have a shelf-life. But, stock-piling on food? Food has use-by-dates, it is foolish to stock up on perishables. The panic-buying frenzy led to the eventual binning of food. I get it – there is a strong argument to not waste food, but some go even further. They collect binned food for their personal consumption. I have seen people loitering near my local supermarket’s trash bins waiting for the next new batch of food wastes. One of them even drives a Mercedes. I assume she collects them for the needy and desperate, and not for herself – otherwise it is greed and not the disguised claim of saving the climate. Leave them for the poor, why deprive the poor of food we can afford? In any event, it is risky. A power outage or other causes of disruption to the safe storage of perishable food will mean a big harvest for these bin-divers. Unlike my cousin sister, I hope there is no Listeria bloom with the warm weather upon us. The poor and vulnerable do not need another threat to their health. COVID-19 is bad enough.





September 11 2020. A Wisteria bloom.





September 11, 2020. “Hey, cuz! Here is my Wisteria bloom, finally.” Every September 11, the world pauses to remember those 2,977 killed during coordinated attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists using four hijacked planes. Purportedly. There are also the many accounts by very reliable witnesses that the towers were brought down by bombs that were part of a “controlled demolition”. We all remember how the two towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. But, very few remember the collapse of Tower 7 which housed CIA and Secret Service offices. Tower 7 was not hit by any aircraft, yet it too imploded in a free-fall. Neither before nor since 9/11 have fires caused the free-fall of steel-framed high-rises. There is a report titled “15 Years Later: On the Physics of High-Rise Building Collapses” which earned the signatures of 2,936 engineers and architects. One paragraph said “the head structural engineer (of the Twin Towers), John Skilling, explained in an interview with the Seattle Times following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing: “Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed,” he said. (But)“The building structure would still be there.” (emphasis is mine). In other words, the fire (and resultant high temperature) alone could not cause the free-fall of the whole building that we all witnessed. Link: http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2016/04/epn2016-47-4.pdf”





We all watched in disbelief as the towers collapsed like a deck of cards. It is too far-fetched to think that these towers could fall to the ground in a matter of seconds once some of the upper floors gave way unless the rest of the lower floors were blasted by the precise detonation of bombs professionally placed on the structural columns. I am neither an engineer nor architect.  But there is a body called the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth). AE911Truth posits that there is sufficient doubt about the official version of 9/11 and that a new enquiry, to examine the possible use of explosives that destroyed the three buildings, should be called for. Aside from this controversy, we must remember that people continue to be killed from the resultant War on Terror by America. Over 500,000 killed and over 6 million have been displaced from their war-torn countries ever since the US attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria. Let us pause a little bit longer on 9/11. Link:  https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/us-war-terror-kills-nearly-500000-afghanistan-iraq-pakistan





I have lived in this suburb of mine since 1996. Prior to that, I did hear my brother mention the sighting of brown snakes in his garden. He has lived here for 14 years longer. I suppose he has seen a few of them. The Eastern Brown is the second most venomous snake in the world and they are very common here in South Australia. My brother demolished the quaint white cottage he had and sub-divided the land. I liked the design of the two Federation houses on his plan. Pa encouraged me to buy one of them. I did not need much encouragement for I have always liked the architecture of such homes. The previous owner of the land was an English botanist – which explains the rare plant specimens we have in our garden. I discovered not only are there poisonous snakes here, some of the plants too are poisonous. Our kids were toddlers when we moved in. So, I chopped down a Brugmansia, the Angel’s trumpets. The Mrs and I could not risk the chaps ingesting them should they decide to mimic their mother and cook garden weeds whilst left unattended out there. I used to play “masak-masak” (cooking in Malay) when I was a kid. Start a fire, find a discarded condensed milk can, and chop up some Morning Glory vines to cook. I didn’t have to worry, the chaps did not have such an inclination. So, the Brugmansia died in vain. Little did I know there are more than 1,000 species of plants that are toxic to us. I still have the Oleander in the garden. And of course, the Wisteria. Every part of it is toxic, especially to dogs! I am beginning to think the garden is a dangerous place. Before we put on our gumboots and gardening gloves, we unfailingly examine them for any signs of spider web. The dreaded redback spider loves dark, damp places to hide. They are another highly venomous resident of South Australia. Also known as the black widow, I think it is an unfortunate name that wrongly tarnishes widows. When our new neighbours moved in on the other side of our house, we assured them we do not have snakes here. See, we have blue-tongue lizards out there on the moss rocks, warming themselves in the sun. That was something the old Aussie cobbers used to say. If you see blue-tongue lizards, it means there are no brown snakes. I rationalised (wrongly) that the blue-tongue lizards must be predators of brown snakes. Last Saturday, I was horrified to see a brown snake slither silently towards the Mandarin tree right in front of me. A good 3-feet long, I was told it is a mature snake. Its skinny body showed that it has just awakened from hibernation. It is a myth to think snakes are slimy. This one had beautiful dry scales. I was sure the poisonous snake would be ravenous and wisely kept a safe distance. That to me was some 15 feet away. It took me mere seconds to retrieve my phone from my desk. I wanted to take a photo of it to prove it was an Eastern Brown. But, it was nowhere to be seen when I returned. What do I do now? Was it just a figment of my imagination? Was it just a brown garden worm? Will anyone believe me? I was concerned for my chooks. Eggs and mice would be perfect food for snakes. Eggs can’t run, they are even more ideal for snakes. I suggested to The Mrs we should get some sulphur powder. Not a good idea, she said. She did not want sulphur to be blowing in the wind. “What about an electronic snake repellent?” Little Sis joined in. Luckily I googled before parting with my money. Reviews show they do not work. The pulsing vibration does not fool a snake. They have a much heightened sensory system and can smell a rat a mile away. They are territorial also – they “own” six neighbourhood plots. The female does not stay with her eggs or nurture her young. Lay and say bye-bye. After I cleared away the overgrown vegetation and rotting pallet wood left in a pile from years back, I called in the snake-man instead. When one runs out of ideas of what to do next to scare off a snake, the next obvious task is to catch it. The snake-man goes by the name of Rolly. Rolly belied his name – he isn’t roly-poly at all. He lived in Cambodia for 12 years. He told me he would go to the snake market once a week to buy up all the snakes he could get. “Why? You eat them?” I asked. No, he loves them and sets those destined for the dining table free. I told him we have not sighted any blue-tongue lizards for over a year. That proves to me the old cobbers were right. See a blue-tongue and you won’t see any snakes. Rolly said the opposite is true. Snakes love to eat the lizards. If you see lizards, you will find snakes. Predators flourish when there is food. I was quick to retort that it is the presence of blue-tongues that tell us there aren’t any snakes around. If there are predators, you would not see their food lazing about, sun-baking in the sun. Rolly looked at me and said nothing. Snakes are defensive, not aggressive creatures. They have numerous predators such as lizards, birds and mammals, and fear anything bigger than themselves such as humans. But then, which animal does not fear urghhlings? Snakes are a bit like me, they will always choose flight over fight, and only act aggressively if they feel threatened. They are usually shy, quiet animals and are efficient predators of rodents such as mice and rats. A pet to keep, perhaps. Rolly set a trap near a compost bin by the chicken run. Rats are attracted to the compost bin, but only if you foolishly throw meat scraps with your kitchen wastes. Snakes love to visit compost bins as it is their ever-ready food source. Worse news is that they are often found right under the lid of the bin, as the top section of the bin is the warmest. A horrible image appeared in my mind of The Mrs shrieking with fright whilst a snake was uncoiling its body with a sudden forward thrust. That horrible image was followed by even more horrible images of Rolly rummaging through the dense undergrowth with his bare hands. “Rolly, what do you think you’re doing?!” I cried out. “Looking for your snake, of course”, he answered. Silly man. We look with our eyes. Rolly has had many snake-bites, yet he still loves them. I had to remind him they are not love-bites. Spring is usually the loveliest time of the year to be out in the garden. This Spring, it feels different…..somehow. Overnight, the gully winds returned with a vengeance. The Wisteria bloom normally lasts a good three weeks, but they no longer look their best after the blast they copped. The hysteria about the missing snake has not subsided though. Rolly’s snake trap has not worked. There is simply no trace of the snake. Maybe it was in my imagination after all. Rolly said to call him when I find the snake trapped in the netting. I mumbled under my breath. “No chance, mate. The Mrs will cook soup when she finds it.”





Rolly found a long one, but it’s just the garden hose.











Snake-lover, Rolly, has had many snake-bites. Rolly, they aren’t love-bites.





A snake-trap sprayed with pheromones that smell like rats






	


	



			
				


			

			
Be Straight, It’s A Self-Portrait
		
	
	

		

Anne Koh's self-portraits depict 
A story about a pandemic
The virus causes much panic
Millions suffer, it wasn't just economic
The loss of lives, the most tragic.

Wear your mask, be proper
Wash your hands, the new order
Social distance, protect the elder
No hand-shakes, no kisses, don't wander
It's the MCO, Movement Control Order

They have a name for it, COVID-19
SARS-CoV-2, the virus found in 2019
They say it's from China, have you not seen?
From a Wuhan lab, a bat or a pangolin
Quarantine, quarantine, where have you been?





Some call it the Wuhan virus, the Kung-flu virus
They use politics to divide China and us
Pay up China, it's your Coronavirus
Where is your abacus, it's not contentious
Their claims are atrocious, devious and outrageous






I do wonder what the future will hold
There is much unknown but let's be bold
Look after each other, are we callous and cold?
Follow the science and together let's grow old
Will we want our Covid stories retold?





Covid apps, lockdowns and contact-tracing
No more footy, concerts and social dancing
Forget hugging, friendly greetings and embracing
Refrain from public coughing, sneezing and rejoicing
Many are convalescing or desperately refinancing





Yet, heroes of civil rights are out there protesting
Their bloodletting and complaints most excruciating
Pity those whose landlords are evicting
Shopping mall owners aren't accommodating
Will a vaccine soon end the pandemic’s sting?





It is no big task to wear a mask





A smile beckons. She is safe, she reckons

	


	



			
				


			

			
Mum About Mum V
		
	
	

		

Ma turned 97 last week, we had a small feast at The Empress for our Empress. It is her 98th birthday today, so tonight’s party will be bigger. You get the feeling she is racing towards the century mark like a T20 cricketer on an adrenaline rush? Have a birthday a week, and anyone will soon get there quickly. I am just being facetious – idiotic, some will say. Today’s birthday is her real birthday. Ma observes the Chinese lunar calendar. Last week’s was more for us, the so-called “banana” generation. Those “white” on the inside but “yellow” on the outside. We only observe the Gregorian calendar. I should admonish myself, for I can never remember our “Chinese” birthdays, no matter how hard I try. Ma is 98, I think I should make it a point to know both her birthdays by now. Her “Chinese” one is on the 23rd day of the 7th month. The 7th month?! Isn’t that the month of the hungry ghosts? See? If we do not pause and think, we will never be enlightened. It is only now that I am aware Ma was born in the month when the hungry ghosts returned to our world and roamed for food and entertainment. It is deemed inauspicious to be born during this month but I think Ma has decisively put this theory in the category of “Fake News”. 





My mother’s 98th birthday 





Ever since Ma turned 90, we have been ordering the dish she enjoys on her birthdays – the dish is so politically incorrect I shall not mention its name. It is a soup that rarely meets Ma’s lofty standards. If it is poorly cooked, then it is surely a waste of a fin. The stock has to be rich, prepared with lots of chicken carcasses. The viscosity must be perfect, not too runny and not too gooey. Generously garnished with real crab meat (none of those fake seafood sticks please), fish meat and chopped prawns and we are well on the way to please the birthday girl. Sprinkle a few drops of her favourite Martell XO on it, and you will witness her sweetest smiles. Last week, we celebrated her birthday with the politically incorrect dish. No exceptions, anyone who turns 90 and beyond deserves whatever they fancy. When someone reaches that landmark, they deserve special entitlements that we ordinary folk don’t. Who are we to say no to the most venerable? They have eaten more salt than we have eaten our rice portions. Our elders drummed this wisdom to us when we were kids. 我吃盐多过你吃米. Let us respect their age and experience. Maybe others will soon show me that courtesy also. I hate to admit it but I would love to be able to say to a young punk, “Hey, I have crossed more bridges than you have crossed roads! So, do not cross me now.”





Ma’s 97th birthday last week





By Ma’s reckoning, everyone has two birthdays a year. To her, it is the Chinese one that is the accurate one. It is based on the moon and for auspicious days, it is the moon she turns to. Yet, she remembers all our birthdays. By all, I do not mean just our lunar and Western ones, and not just her siblings’ and children’s. I mean all, including her elders – uncles and aunties, her nephews and nieces, and all her grand-children and her nine great grand-children. Whilst on the subject of dates, Ma with her photographic memory (until recently), remembered all of them – wedding anniversaries, the dates her eight children left home for the first time, our graduation dates, dates her grand-children graduated, dates her daughters residing in KL and London visited (I am not kidding) and of course, bereavement dates  of those departed. Ma has out-lived all her elders and most of her peers. She is very surprised she remains “not out” (in cricket parlance). She survived a childhood that was shortened due to poverty. The impoverished ones tend to grow up quickly. Deprived of a proper childhood education, she had to grow up quickly or wither, I suppose. She avoided the Japanese attack on China just before WW2 but she couldn’t avoid them when they bombed Penang. Worse was to befall her, as they dragged away her husband from their bedroom on March 23rd 1942. My generation has not experienced war first-hand, so we are totally ignorant of the sheer tenacity required to survive years of hunger and hardship. Years, not months. Years of total deprivation of anything that resembles a typical day here. There would be no waking up to a cacophony of busy cockatoos and kookaburras, no hearty breakfast to be made, and no guaranteed meals during the rest of the day, let alone the week. A walk in the park? Do not dream. A visit to the shops? Forget it. Wait for the telephone to ring? Turn the lights on when the day becomes night? No, no no. You avoid the Japanese. You keep to the clan – trust no outsiders, they may be the spies who dob on you, and accuse you of being a communist sympathiser. You hide from the Kenpeitai – those who would chop your head off, without any hesitation, without reason. You dress like a homeless boy, dirty and smelly so they won’t give you a second look. Forget the long hair and the cheongsam. You do not want to look attractive to anyone. You do not want to be seen. It is no wonder I, like all her other children, grew up to be poorly dressed and contented to be quiet in the background. Habits die hard, Ma still enthusiastically cleans her dinner plate at the dining table. Nothing is missed – the minutest crumbs of food and the most stubborn dried-up sauce that coats her plate will be lifted by some water or soup, before being scooped up gently with a spoon. No stress, no distress. Every drop is consumed purposefully. Ma is not known to be wasteful. All of us cannot understand her thriftiness but that may be because none of us have experienced a war. 





I have wanted Ma to tell me more stories about Pa. Especially during the war years and also how he carved out a business that catered to the hotel industry in Penang after the war. What made them decide investing in coconuts and rubber was a good idea? What were the mistakes Pa made – did he fall into a financial hole like I did? Which of their children brought them good luck? Was I the one? Did my arrival trumpet the renaissance of commerce for them? They bore a child almost yearly. Which year brought them their first major contract with a hotel to manage their laundry and dry-cleaning business? I have tried a few times to get these stories from Ma’s memory bank but lately, eager she may be, she has been easily distracted by recollections of people or places that are merely foreign pieces of a jigsaw to me. I have not been able to get Ma to focus on stringing a few sentences about a single topic. I don’t think she is confused or forgetful. Rather, I suspect her mind is like one long movie with too many sub-plots  to describe in one scene.  Her hearing is deteriorating very quickly. Half a year ago when she was living with me during the first wave of the pandemic, I did not find her hearing seriously impaired.  I did speak slightly louder than at my normal decibel, but I had to do that with The Mrs too. It was not untoward. Finding the right audio volume is challenging. Slightly soft and I’ll need to repeat myself too often. Slightly too loud and The Mrs will accuse me of shouting at her. “Why are you angry at me?” “Why can’t you be patient with me?!” “Why must you yell at me?” Why. Why. Why! At times, I get into hot soup also when mucking about with First Son’s pup, Murray. Pretending to be upset with him, I would scold him in a game. The Mrs would, of course, assume I was scolding her, and a war chest of words would soon fly like armed missiles my way. Sometimes I wish there is an invention that will allow me to adjust my voice box remotely so that my voice is always kind, calming and perfectly audible. 





I bought a robot two weeks ago. The iRobot that it replaced didn’t last three months. Murray decided vacuum robots are just like brooms, mops and garden rakes. These utensils are aliens that must be destroyed on sight. Poor iRobot. Whilst diligently scoping the dining room, sweeping up dust and dirt, it got attacked from behind by Murray. It died a terrible death, mauled to pieces by a mad dog. I hope iRobot’s replacement will last longer than three months. I have named the Xiaomi robot Mimi. Let’s hope Mimi and Murray will be friends. I would hate to have to bury another robot so soon. Ma was impressed with Mimi. “How much?” She asked. “$399, Ma. Not bad” I replied. Ma said that’s cheap. She wouldn’t mind one too. I had already decided to buy her one, once I checked out how powerful Mimi’s suction was. Big Sis rang a few days later. “How much? $39, Ma said. Surely not.” “My fault, I should stop mumbling when I speak”, I said. Perfectly timed, Mimi’s twin arrived today, just in time to be Ma’s birthday present tonight. It is customary for Ma to pay for tonight’s birthday party. Ever since she turned 90, she no longer accepts Ang Pows (red envelopes that contain money) from us. “What was our custom in China, Ma?” I asked. “Didn’t the elders in Zhejiang gladly accept Ang Pows for their birthdays?” Apparently, they did. But they collected them and gave them to their community to build a road, a bridge or whatever the village needed to be replaced or repaired. “But, weren’t our elders too poor to contribute to such infrastructure?” I was bewildered to learn of such generosity during their time. I think Ma almost sniggered when she told me “Ala mak dongpeh”, Ningbonese for “We did not have Tungpan”, (Chinese copper coin or money) to celebrate their birthdays during those early years. No birthday dinners. Therefore, no Ang Pows were necessary.”





Ma’s 98th birthday tonight, so pleased with a big fat Ang Pow from Corinne, a favourite grand-daughter 






	


	



			
				


			

			
The Nun, None The Wiser
		
	
	

		

I have watched six episodes of Netflix’s series Warrior Nun since the beginning of last week. That’s five hours of my life I have invested in this story. It is already past the halfway point of the Season One (I assume there will be a next), yet Alba Baptista, the girl who stars as the nun is still not yet a nun in the story and she is still none the wiser about her abilities as a warrior. I should have abandoned this story after the first 90 seconds of episode one, but my curiosity was aroused by the titles of the episodes, taken from verses of the Bible. I assumed they would be indicative of the plot in each episode. I was not wrong but I needed to check with Google to know the hidden meaning behind each one. So far, it has been mostly about the experience of a young virgin girl enthusiastically tasting the joyous and exciting temptations of a rebirth. It took a priest in a Spanish village to come up with the first meaningful sentence in the story so far. That was towards the end of episode 6. “Searching for oneself is a journey for a lifetime.  Life is what happens in between.” Later, I dwelled on this and disrupted my sleep. Live, and may we then discover ourselves. Let us not focus too much in discovering who we are –  it is more important not to miss out on living it and seizing the opportunities that come our way. The quest to answer who we are is best left till we have lived fully. Already into my sixties, I am none the wiser to know who I really am. I think I am a good guy but maybe my bad looks deceive The Mrs. She is still none the wiser too about who the real me is. Anyway, the final episode of the first season of Warrior Nun is titled Revelation 2:10. If you know the verse, then you’re already wised up to how it will end for the nun. “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.”















Similarly, I was not enthused after watching the first episode of The Wire. First Son told me many of his friends reckon it is one of the best crime drama TV series ever made. It was based on the lives of real gangsters, so let us give it a chance to develop. Aren’t we curious about how the others live? I am prepared to risk or invest another chunk of my life just in case they are right. In one crime scene investigation, two detectives were figuring out how the victim died. I kid you not, the scriptwriter must have been on holidays the night before filming it. Maybe he was involved in a domestic quarrel and the only word in his mind was that four-letter word. That whole scene was just too easy for the two actors, all they had to remember in their conversation was that one word. F..k! Indeed! F..k, f..k, f..k f..k, f..k, f..k f..k f..k f..k, f..k f..k, f..k, f..k and so on. I was worried that if I kept following this series, my vocabulary would be drastically influenced by the scriptwriter or by the real gangsters. Both bad. I am still invested in this story after five episodes. When do we decide enough is enough? How do we become wise enough to quit before we lose even more? This time it may be precious time, but what about next time? Is anything more precious than time?





Investments. I am none the wiser also about how to make money make money. What about the waterfront land I bought for my retirement? When do we give up on duds? The Mrs often cried about my investment flops. For crying out loud, why have I not grown wiser? It needed her to threaten me with divorce if I did not divorce myself from the sharemarket. With global-warming, waterfront land will be the first to go underwater. Will this investment of mine, like so many others, also go under? The same goes for those so-called blue-chip shares. Time has chipped away their value so much that surely now is the time to let them go? Some of those shares still buried in my metal cabinet are of historical value only, as the once-respectable companies have gone bust a very long time ago. That was after the top executives got their big payouts and bonuses, of course. The paper certificates are worth less than toilet paper, for they are too coarse and hard on my body. Will somebody just tell me to bin them? I am none the wiser as to how to destroy this historical evidence of my ineptness in making money make money.





The nun, none the wiser





Give the story a chance to develop. It is rated 5-stars. It must be good, right? If we abandon it too soon, we might miss out on a good thing. Just continue for a little while longer. It will only get better. The best is yet to come! The same sentiments can be applied to friendships and relationships. Should we even begin a relationship? Is anyone ever worth it? There are so many books written about the incompatibility between men and women – we are planets apart. I mean, geesh. These days we are not even supposed to call our wife “wife”. The women think that is misogynistic. When the woman marries, she is upset she is suddenly someone’s wife. “You belong to him. He owns you!” As God said in Genesis 3:16, “I will make your pain in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”  “Wife” has a weak-sounding “f” that does not do it for the modern woman. They do not intend to be mere chattels! They feel it is their time to rule and not be ruled. “Phuieeettt, do not call me your wife! I AM YOUR PARTNER.”  When do we decide enough is enough? How long do we hold on to someone hoping that their incompatibility will disappear or the sparks, long gone, will come back? When should we quit a marriage? For decades, my habitual quirks must have annoyed The Mrs to such an extent that you would think she would have left ages ago. The loud noises I make in the toilet when I wake up, clearing my throat is what I mean. When I spit out the wastes after brushing my teeth, there is that loud growl accompanied by a necessary sound effect that I feel obliged to produce. “Kaurrghh…… Phuieeett!!” I am none the wiser why everything about me annoys everyone. Urghhling.





The other need many of us have is the need to win. My footy club must win every match they play. I wake up during the most unearthly time of the night to barrack for a team of players who may or may not have the interest to play at their best on the night. Yet, there I would be, in my pyjamas, shivering from the cold only the middle of a winter night can deliver. Cheering for my team, Manchester United. Inconsequential to my life really, whether they win or lose. Yet, the need to win or break records is in my psyche. I just went for a pee and strangely, I felt pleased the phone rang, yet again. The record of my phone ringing every time I am inside the toilet remains intact. Since I began working from home in February, my phone rings every time I am in the toilet. I am none the wiser why maintaining that streak pleases me. 





The phenomenon of the tiger parent also stems from the need to win. A long time ago, I was with my family on the backstage of the Opera House. We were still celebrating Second Son’s big win in a national music competition when the lights were being turned off. The security guards knew how to disperse a party without uttering a single word. We all knew it was time to leave. But, I noticed one old Asian man sprawled his hunched sad torso on the stairs outside the green rooms. Totally dejected, the man was being comforted by a friend. Later, I found out he was the tiger father of one of the competitors. I reckoned he took the loss much more badly than his prodigious son. Many years later, his son quit as a lawyer and pursued his passion for music instead. I know of another who changed her profession as a hospital doctor in New York and realised her dream to be a stage actor instead. I am none the wiser why these tiger parents would damage their children’s dreams or passions by imposing their own unrealised goals on them. Why live a dream through their child’s life? It is right to expose our children to as many extracurricular activities as they like but the idea of letting them try a wide and diverse range of disciplines and interests should be to stoke their curiosity. Surely we are not to expect them to excel in everything, especially when they show absolutely no desire to want to continue. As with investing time on the Warrior Nun, sometimes we just do not know when to tell ourselves enough is enough. We ought to quit something or keep away from someone we don’t feel right about before we discover that we have invested too much that it hurts to quit. But, don’t ask me. Like the nun, I am none the wiser. When is the right time and which is the right one. 





I have to add it is the same thing about weeding. Weeding the vegetable patch, I can understand. we don’t want those friggin’ weeds to be nourished with the detritus from our compost bin. It takes a season to prepare a good batch of compost; it would be foolish of us not to pull out the weeds! But, weeding the lawn? Why, right? Green grass is all we want to remind ourselves of the wealthy lords and barons of old England. Is it our sub-conscious aspiring to keep up with the Joneses of old, in actual fact, God’s soldiers – The Crusaders.  The moment we pull out one little weed from our lawn is the moment we dedicate a lifetime to pulling the damn weeds. It’s just like pissing in the rain. The futility of aiming in the right direction to avoid my trousers getting wet has not escaped me. I am also none the wiser why The Mrs continues to pull out the weeds from our front yard. Even ma, at 97, is known to be highly addicted to the task of pulling little green seedlings out from her lawn. To me, green is green. It’s the colour we want. 





In episode 9, the penultimate, I was flabbergasted the angel rescued by the nun justified the use of fear to gain power over the weak.





“Faith is based upon that which cannot be proven.”





“For without faith, there is no manipulation. Without manipulation there is no fear.”





“And without fear, there is no power.” 





Blasphemous, I thought. I am none the wiser why the angel would voice these ideas to the nun. Maybe the final episode will reveal all. I can’t wait to know the truth! Revelation 2:10 can’t screen quick enough! 





A teaser from episode 10.






	


	



			
				


			

			
Dazzled, Then Frazzled
		
	
	

		






I like to think that once upon a time, The Mrs was dazzled by me. A time when I could do no wrong and say no wrong. When everything about me felt right to her. When my opinions mattered, and were always sought. When to her, my crooked teeth were the only crooked thing about me. When all that hung around my neck was a little wooden gourd strung by a sweat-soaked thread and she would still be dazzled by me. When all I had slinging from my shoulder was a cotton linen bag. When the only jacket in my wardrobe was a hand-me-down, almost thread-bare, black cotton jacket that was too thin for winter and too thick for the rest of the year. When my oral hygiene was never questioned and chewing gum wasn’t necessary. When body deodorant was foreign to me and my body odour was never an issue. When she asked me to hang around a bit more, eventhough I felt I may have overstayed after a dinner invitation. Alright, it was a self-invitation. I visited her unannounced at dinner-time and told her I had not eaten all day. But as the years passed, my mere presence had become thorny, the theory I toyed with was that she had become frazzled by my voice, my hair and my words. By me, to be precise. But, I hang on to the idea that it is just a theory. Routine bores and mundane chores are energy-sapping. Maybe it is the daily grind that frazzles us.  





When Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, he dazzled the world with his freshness, his candid words and most of all, his aversion for stuffy political correctness. It was Trump who got most of us interested in American politics for the first time. The late-night shows were as hilarious as any nightly Seinfeld or M.A.S.H. episode. Trump promised to drain the swamp, build the fence, make Mexico pay for it and make America great again. But, we didn’t count on him to tear up the Paris Agreement on climate change or the Iran nuclear deal or the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, or abandon the WHO in the midst of a pandemic. We certainly didn’t think he would risk a Cold War with China let alone a hot one. Least of all, no one expected him to let people die so that the lockdowns in place could be relaxed more quickly than justified. No one thought the most powerful country in the world would also be the worst in containing the pandemic. His political manoeuvres have been ugly and his disdain and disrespect for the law potentially destructive for well-entrenched U.S. government systems and protocols. It is fair to say the majority of Americans are frazzled by this man who has shown little ability to mend the many wrongs in their society. His law and order mantra has been possible only by activating his supporters to violently disrupt mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. Today’s COVID-19 count in the U.S. reached six million cases with a death toll of 183,000. Those not feeling frazzled there have got to be urghhlings! 










 When the first wave of the pandemic arrived on the shores of Australia in February 2020, we were all devastated by the unseen enemy. It was said life would never be the same again. To a large extent, that remains true. Melbourne is again under Stage 4 lockdown, businesses cannot open and are locked up for a second time. Many small ones have not survived, even with the government’s very generous stimulus packages. Many chain stores have called in the liquidators too. Futile fights with greedy shopping centre landlords have only prolonged the agony for shareholders. There have been reports of aggressive and abusive phone calls directed at the Victorian state parliamentarians from people who feel they have lost their freedom, lost their jobs, lost their human rights, or lost loved ones. Yet, not every corner of society is feeling the wrath of the virus. Pockets in the economy are actually doing exceptionally well. The world is seeing high numbers of unemployed and therefore, debt-collectors are rubbing their hands in anticipation of another boom. Gerry Harvey, founder of Harvey Norman could not hide his glee when he said “I’ve never seen anything like this” in his 60 years as a retailer. By “this” he meant the COVID-19-induced boom in home furnishings and electronics. As reported in the Australian Review, same-store sales have soared 40.9 per cent in August and 35.1 per cent in July despite the closure of 18 Melbourne stores. When we can’t travel overseas for our holidays, attend footy games or concerts, or dine out at our favourite restaurants, what do we do with all that stimulus money the government has so kindly given us? We spend it on our house and garden! The likes of Gerry Harvey are dazzled by the gold they have surprisingly found in their bank accounts. In my online business, I have found the local factories all struggling to cope with the prolonged surge in demand. Lead times for orders have ballooned from 2 weeks to 8-10 weeks for many popular custom-made products. Inventories of imported goods are becoming depleted, and supply is becoming very tight in most categories. My business too has been dazzled by a healthy increase in turn-over. We have, however, been pushed to our limits, coping with this unexpected surge in demand with the same number of staff. Now, we are beginning to look and feel frazzled. After all, it has been six months of unrelenting waves of unprecedented demand for our goods and after-sales service. 





Yesterday, First Son introduced me to GPT-3. I was totally enthralled by it. The possibilities dazzled me, and then frazzled me. Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is a language-based deep-learning computer model that uses ordinary words to write complex algorithms by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a matter of seconds. It is developed by OpenAI, a company started by Elon Musk. The quality of the text generated is already almost indistinguishable to that written by humans, but it is self-learning! So watch this space. Using simple English words, GPT-3 enables AI to do impressive work that not long ago could only be done by clever or tertiary-educated humans. Work performed by highly specialised professionals such as accountants, lawyers, doctors and medical specialists, web designers, translators, marketing and sales people, financial advisers, sharemarket brokers, real-estate brokers, etc, etc are all threatened. AI is not only more intelligent, it also possesses self-learning capabilities. Every job that is today done by humans is at risk since AI is faster, smarter and doesn’t forget and doesn’t need to rest. Initially, I was utterly impressed by GPT-3. Every job in my business can be taken over by it. The web design and development can be done in seconds. Live chats can be manned by AI – my customers won’t even realise it is not me answering their questions – all I need do is name GPT-3 after me! Telephone enquiries can also be performed by GPT-3 although I’ll need to tweak it to sound like me, with an Aussie twang laced with some faint Chinese and “islander” accent. Not so much from Manus, Bougainville or Fiji, but Penang. All communication by emails is easily handled by GPT-3. If it can pretend to be Tom Hanks and convince Tom Hanks himself, it can fool any of us when it pretends to be us. The AI researcher Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky observed that GPT-3 can even feign to be wrong. The deliberately deceptive AI troubled me enough to deliver me a sombre night last night. It is already capable of misinformation itself or fake information, we won’t just have State actors and hackers to worry about. With the ability to create portraits of people who don’t exist, it won’t be beyond its intelligence to create a video of a “real” POTUS threatening the world with tariff wars and trade wars. On second thoughts, we already have one. We won’t need GPT-3 to do that. Six years ago, Stephen Hawking warned AI will end mankind. But did he imagine in his wildest dreams that it can be so soon? Here are some words of wisdom from GPT-3. The first example to me is another deception designed to lull us into a false sense of security.





“AI will create jobs if it succeeds and destroy jobs if it fails”





“An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less”





“Art is what we do when we run out of useful skills”





“Science fiction and religion are focused on the same answer: the afterlife and the future”





“Responsibility is for the sane. If you’re crazy, you get freedom”





This last example is my favourite. “Music is the most advanced form of mathematics”





GPT-3 to me means AI will win against humans in any field, eventually. What happens to us when all our jobs are taken by AI? When the machines view us as superfluous to requirement, what will they do to us? I am feeling very frazzled now. 





Check out what GPT-3 can do https://youtu.be/8V20HkoiNtc





First Son’s pup, Murray, likes to play golf when he is frazzled.