The Wise One And The Wise Guy

“Hey, urghhling!” Poe caught my attention yesterday. The American writer, Edgar Alan Poe is his eponym. He has not addressed me personally for quite some time. We lost touch for four decades and did not meet again until four years ago. Even after such a long absence, I was able to recognise him instantly and even from a distance. His gait has not changed, his arms still hardly swing when he walks. During our school days, we were equally lanky and thin. That may be why we were seated together in the last row of our class. A good mate, we got on really well. We were both less smart than most at the front rows. He was in the Red Cross, whereas I joined the Boy Scouts. The more our paths deviated, the more the girls who crossed our paths were different. Poe still has his trademark spectacles and thick black eyebrows, as recognisable as Martin Scorsese’s. Those thick black frames have come back in fashion with a vengeance after an absence of almost half a century. Now, Poe does not look so unique anymore, it is as if his trademark has been stolen by modern wannabes. He has been wearing the same style frames since he was seven, I recall. They not only accentuate his good looks and hide his somewhat narrow face, they also promote him as intellectual and honest. Amazing benefits from a modest pair of glasses, right? I have a sudden desire to acquire a pair, a visit to OPSM will have to happen soon. On second thoughts, they will not suit me. I do not possess his glittering, penetrating eyes that are paired with his baby-smooth face and innocent smile. Big thick black frames with matching thick black hair, he was a goody goody and a bookworm in school. Today, his big thick black frames are matched with thinning black hair, but he has lost that angelic appearance. Maybe it is the nature of a hotelier that has made him lose the aura of purity. It’s quite alright, he is sixty-one years old after all. He’d be happier to know he looks worldly and sophisticated instead of wise and “square”.

“Sometimes, we have to choose between right or kind.” Poe’s advice to me contained only nine words, but I was floored by it. We usually focus on what’s right or wrong. Be it in mathematics, morals, law, or knowledge, we strive to choose what is right. But, right or kind? Wrong or kind? The notion of kindness having precedence over right or wrong is refreshing. Kindness is not just a factor to consider but it is the strategic imperative? Kindness makes right or wrong irrelevant, it has become a veritable Mount Everest for man’s pursuit in life. There is much wisdom in Poe’s nine words. He is the wise one amongst my virtual friends. Well, they remain virtual until the next physical reunion. Kudos to them for trying to prove they are real though, the food pics that make me suddenly hungry and their alluring holiday pics they send often persuade me these robust and boisterous friends are not mere figments of my imagination. I’m thankful they do not try any harder. I read in a magazine that today’s tweeny boppers – the denarian – are sharing their dick pics to presumably prove their existence in the real world. Which begs the question, which is more real, the virtual world we live in or the dreary physical one? All these thoughts remind me of the concepts of vatta and nirodha in the Dhamma. Through the cycle of rebirths, the Buddha teaches us to refrain from the vatta, to achieve the ultimate pursuit, a rebirth into a formless realm where suffering and unhappiness are absent. Vatta is the unceasing pursuit of sankharas, bodily cravings, desires, wealth, power and so on. These may be attained usually with much struggle and stress but unfortunately, their common attribute is their impermanence. We cannot enjoy them forever, their very nature causes us pain and suffering, for they are packaged with their exact opposites, such as jealousy, wrath, hatred. Nirodha, the cessation of the sankaras, is the way to lead us to the ultimate goal, not kindness, neither right nor wrong but nirvana, in the realm of the formless. The modern denarian will be most displeased there though, they won’t have their dicks to share around.

“Urghhling, stop being the wise guy.” Someone shouted in the fray. I suspect it was Yap The Alloy, himself a self-confessed wise guy. He is called that because of his impeccable memory; it is never rusty. There was much commotion following Stan’s tiff with me. Well, it was a one-way rant, if truth be told. Yap The Alloy kept using that word, but he’s poor at spelling, writing it as trooth. The trooth and nothing but the trooth, he was adamant to get to the truth of the discussion. You see, two other friends, Stephen and Stan sided with another friend, Stevros, who took umbrage at a self-inflicted injury to his ego. I was talking about True Grits who do not let their teeth recede from anything in life that grits them. Like any well-trained bulldog, True Grits will sink their teeth into any issue and not let go until the problem is dealt with. They don’t resile or recede from trouble or loss. Stevros in a rage, accused me of attacking his receding teeth. “What? Receding teeth?” I have heard of receding gums and receding hairline. Tooth erosion also. But what is a receding tooth, Stevros?” I innocently asked. No one was aware of his poor dental hygiene until he highlighted it. And then, everyone belted out the chorus in perfect harmony.

“Don’t be a wise guy, urghhling.

Listen to the wise one, let’s sing.

Talk about dental health, don’t go mental about wealth.

Lie with an emoticon, life is happy and smooth.

It’s no con, tales about one’s tooth reveal the truth.”

The wise guy echoes what has been in my mind lately. “Emoticons are so vague and offer a convenient escape. When caught, just offer the excuse old men don’t know what they truly mean.” Emoticons have got me into trouble a few times. Unlike in the physical world where I am adept in reading body language and quick to discern mood changes from inflections of tone, in the virtual world, there are no hints to help me gauge the mood of the person. Apart from someone shouting loudly – in big capital letters – deciphering someone’s real intent or real emotions is virtually impossible in the virtual world. Using misleading emoticons can easily hide the person’s true emotions. The experience with Stevros The Greek was just such a case. His remarks were accompanied by laughing and winking emoticons and then suddenly, without any hint or warning, he blew his top. I call Stevros, “The Greek” because he’s all Greek to me, impossible to understand. One minute, jovial and talkative, in the next sentence, he is piling on bile and anger at me. Venting one’s spleen on old mates is incomprehensible at our age. We are sexagenarians, better we be sexy than reprehensible. Urghhling.

Humble, He Mumbled

At the time of writing, donations for three student students of SJK Chung Hwa School have reached RM13,600, and that’s just from the small chat group of fellow alumni of Penang’s Lasaints (combined from La Salle and SXI) that I belong to. There will be monies raised from other larger groups that I am unaware of, some including the then beautiful girls from Form 6. For the past two weeks, the constant ding, ding, ding on my phone sounded like my old cash register. Every ding a progress report, as another donation increases the collection a little. Every ding also represents a rejection of my view that everyone of us is an urghhling. Urghh, ugly earthlings. The three siblings recently lost both parents. There is universal concern for their wellbeing, what would be more important for them once their meagre living expenses are taken care of? Education, of course. That has been the reason for our impetus to raise more money. Sweet. It does not matter how much each contributes, every little bit helps and is loudly appreciated; but noticeably, on the list are two names, Anonymous and Anonymous 2. In local parlance, it’s Bo Mia and Bo Mia 2. They raise many questions in my mind. Why not reveal their name? After all, it is for a great cause, generous, caring, considerate, therapeutic, maybe even holistic. Why not disclose their identities? Are they serving a penance in Penang? Are they embarrassed by the paltry size of their contribution? Are they contrite about a wrong doing but too proud to admit wrong and this is their path to reduce guilt? “Humble”, Ty-Phoon rumbled. “They are just humble.” Humble is his go-to word this week. Humble meal, humble outlook, humble abode, this all came about due to his confusion about the correct application of the words austere and frugal. Maybe they want to give, full stop. They do not see a need for disclosure; maybe they don’t derive any pleasure from being mentioned or is it to avoid being tainted as selfish, extending a kind hand to extend one’s reputation? They want to feel the purity of giving? In a way then, that will also become a selfish act. To give in order to gain a benefit isn’t so righteous, right? The urghhling in me says it could be they want to keep it out of Their Mrs’ prying eyes. Which reminds me. The comments about my “honest (although cynical) and authentic writing” from yet another friend yesterday floored me. I flippantly disregarded the opinion about my cynicism a few weeks ago but another one?! It made me sit up and pause. The ugliness of humans is obvious and undeniable. History tells us about the never ending wars around the world, massacres, genocides, rapes and plunder, child sexual abuse especially by holy preachers, torture and capital punishment endorsed and executed by the state, the indiscriminate killing eg e.g. Agent Orange in Vietnam, and at the forefront of recent news, the US abandonment and betrayal of their long time ally, the Kurds. I can go on and on and on about man’s many atrocities and animal cruelty. Ugly urghhling stories are everywhere, we hardly have to go looking for them. They easily pop up during everyday conversations and dominate our daily news bulletin. It is not true that I focus on talking about them. I prefer not to dwell on ugliness, it’s not cynicism that makes me feel the exasperation about the bad choices we humans make. Are we so short-sighted we can’t even accept greed is not good?

A friend suggested I have positive thoughts before I transform my jumbled ideas into meaningful words. “Hey! I’m writing about urghhlings, how to be positive?” I protested before deciding to make a conscious effort to write about the good side of humans. I must placate my readers’ growing impatience with my cynicism – perceived or otherwise – about the ugliness of earthlings. It’s timely that I put on my Libran hat and prove to the doubters I do possess the dominant Libran traits of balance and harmony. I have a fixation on balance and fairness, to the frequent chagrin of The Mrs. Many a time, all she wants is my blind bias for her. “It matters not if you don’t agree with me! Just publicly stand by me!”, she often chastises me. But, that’s like squeezing blood out of stone for a Libran. Which is totally illogical. After all, the Libra is the only zodiac sign that is inanimate, no blood can be gotten from a set of weighing scales.

Anyway, do not let me digress, let me stay the course and think of the positives. I am fearful this will be a rather short blog, so I may have to resort to ramble on about nothing of consequence. Usually, when I write, my fingers can’t keep up with the torrent of outpouring ideas that flood the page. “Why don’t you use Siri to help you type? Your mind won’t be unduly slowed down by your fingers.” a helpful friend suggested. “Nah, I’m old-fashioned yet old without fashion.” I offered a truthful analysis of myself. For this blog, I think my fingers will manage easily. “There won’t be a tsunami of positives to swamp me” I countered. “Ouch, am I being cynical again?”

Alright, let me write about some recent positives. The Mrs is scheduled to go for her hip operation the day after tomorrow. A few caring friends have started the cacophony of good wishes and prayers for her. A beautiful friend with the same initials as Louis Vuitton, has been suffering from excruciating pain from all sorts of ailments. He had both his knees replaced earlier this year but is again traumatised by severe neck pain arising from cervical arthritis. We have been concerned about his mental health too, having been weighed down by long spells of debilitating pain. Yet, LV sent a message to let me know he is praying for The Mrs. “May the Lord grant her a smooth operation and a speedy recovery.” LV prayed. A beautiful human being, praying for others when he deserves all the good tidings himself. Selfless, thoughtful and caring. Of course, I promptly thanked him for his kind thoughts. So, why did I rattle off a series of silly remarks that detract and distract from his thoughtful prayers? “Would God know it’s her right hip this time?” “Thanks so much LV but please first make sure God is not preoccupied with more pressing issues.” “Honestly, we should be more considerate about God’s free time and respite. Can’t afford for the Old Bloke to work for eternity without enjoying a ‘me time’ hobby or immersing Himself in a relaxing respite.” “Seriously, I do think we are very gung-ho to automatically ask for favours whenever we feel like it. That’s not being considerate I think. There are others more in need, why should we jump the queue. Can you not see God madly juggling at trying to fulfil every single Urghhling’s requests?” I should be ashamed of myself. Why be so unthinkingly brutal to fire off a litany of questions? Why not be gracious and acknowledge LV’s kindness with a simple Thank You and stop there? WA Gan’s remark was short but instructive. “I have noticed that Bro LV prays hard for others but not for himself.” LV’s reply was equally damning of me “Others are more important than me……” Both remarks shut me up. I am so ugly. The Mrs has been right all along, since 1979. “You’re ugly and only fit to appear as a bandit 土匪 (Thu Fei) in Run Run Shaw movies.” LV, I am sorry for my bad behaviour. I truly am an urghhling.

There is always beauty around us – sometimes we just need to look for them – unless we are in a rose garden.

My favourite climbing roses, the Climbing Cinderella.

Sometimes we don’t need to look for beauty. The door knocks and when you open it, beauty sails in, as it did just now. Geoff, a good friend who used to be a chef in his previous life in Beijing, brought his famed Nanjing duck and a platter of pork and crab buns for us. A long drive to get here, he prepared them knowing that The Mrs will be getting her hip replaced in two days’ time. How beautiful, how thoughtful and caring. He knew I’d be home alone for the next few days, what can be more comforting than his Nanjing duck and special buns in the absence of The Mrs?

Which should I go for first?

Geoff with his platter of delicious buns and famed Nanjing Duck

Thank you, to all of you for opening my eyes to the beauty around us and pointing out the flaws in this urghhling. The cynic in me unfortunately still says that there is much more ugliness in this world and the world can not recover its pristine and virgin qualities unless all, if not most, urghhlings are gone.

My Shadow Self, A Shadow Of Myself

During my toddler years, I was often pre-occupied with my shadow. It intrigued me that there was something that obeyed my every command. When I marched, it marched with the same beat, when I kicked, it kicked with the same vigour. If I punched, it would not rebel, it punched as hard. When I jumped, it instantly jumped, as if it could anticipate my every thought and every action. Not only were we perfectly synchronised, we were inseparable out in the field during the day. It became my best buddy until Shiny, my shiny black pup, replaced it a few years later. We incessantly conversed quietly between ourselves during my childhood, my shadow self was a shadow of myself. There was never any outburst from it; it kept itself in tune with me at all times. No dissent, no debate, no expression of doubt. A good mate.

It was not until when I was in Form 1, at aged 13, that I had my first close encounter with my dark shadow self. Having passed the Standard 6 exams, the following two years should have been honeymoon years when the slightest scent of the opposite sex would ignite untold passion and red-hot interest in the female body. Instead, my parents who had a strong hold on my freedom, had a restraining order on the whole household. Apart from official Boy Scout activities, I was not allowed to venture far after school, which effectively meant the opportunity to survey the neighbourhood for pretty girls was much curtailed. My hormones were raging inside but all I had to occupy my after-school hours were the scrunched up paper balls in my parents’ dry-cleaning shop. They became the soccer balls that I dribbled with, my faultless technique as impressive as Pele’s. Newspaper accounts described that the ball seemed tied to his boots as he waltzed past three, four, five defenders. Similar headlines were imagined in my mind, my paper footballs seemed tied to my Japanese rubber slippers. All the while though, my shadow self was protesting, turning dark. Beneath the surface of my being, deep under many layers of my psyche, lurked the awakening shadow self. I attributed it to the shadow self maturing faster than me. It was not accepting at all of the imposed house rules whereas the more docile me was content to obey the authority of the adults, any adult to be precise. It was Carl Jung who explained to me what the shadow self is. It is the entirety of the unconscious, that which the conscious ego does not identify in itself; the shadow is the unknown side of us. “The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself”. It is therefore usually the dark side of our personality, the repressed memories, negative thoughts and emotions, and the bad characteristics that we refuse to see when we look into the mirror. Of course, for those with low self-esteem, the unknown self could in fact be the positive traits that are hidden in one’s shadow. As time passed by, I was aware of the growing conflict between the two personalities. It did not matter that I tried to keep the dark shadow from the truth. It knew all the goings-on in my life, and uncannily, also all that it missed, such as the beach gatherings, hiking excursions to Pantai Kerachut and up Penang Hill. It was especially vile and livid at missing the very few dance parties that I was invited to but declined. After the night when I walked out of a disco party in Hotel Merlin without even bidding the host goodnight, my shadow self and I had our first major altercation. As I think back about this, a searing regret impugns my self righteousness. Wow. It was right after all. It was impolite of me not to thank her for the kind invitation and I should have spun a yarn about a stomach-ache or indigestion before excusing myself. But, no. I just sneaked out without a word, as if I had walked into the wrong birthday party and knew none of the revellers. The dark shadow was violently confrontational, it tore up my ego and destroyed my self confidence for the next few years following that incident. The host was a lovely girl who had, I believe, taken a fancy of my Dirty Harry persona. It was all acting, of course, but she would not have known that. A pretty girl with the most sparkling eyes and shortish curls, she was forthright, gregarious and witty. Atypical in the 20th century, she was like today’s modern women, packed full of self confidence and vigour, they stride the limelight and procure whatever they fancy. My shadow self liked her very much but my conscious mind mistook her outward manner as wayward. She, a lawyer’s daughter, had a few days earlier invited me to her home near a beach in Tanjung Bunga. An architecturally designed home, the 60’s feel was evident throughout. The portico had skinny metal posts which complemented the skinny silver painted metal fencing that divided a big sparkling kidney-shaped pool with a spa from a multi-coloured mosaic tiled courtyard where they were starting a barbecue. The large expanse of floor-to-ceiling gleaming glass windows in the family room let in bright playful sun rays which bounced off colourful bean bags and canary yellow coloured lampshades. The showcase furniture in the lounge was undoubtedly the white baby grand. ” Guess who plays the piano? I do!” she cheekily answers her own question. As I surveyed the interior of her home, I immediately felt the urge of wanting a pair of sunglasses, the kind that Clint Eastwood wore in Dirty Harry. But, I didn’t know where to buy them, and did not have any pocket money anyway. She was happy to see me and said so with her body language. She introduced me to her friends who were sipping beer whilst skewering meat and shrimps for the barbecue. I ran out of words very quickly, subduing the shadow self from making its appearance. It was up to no good, keen on breaking my resolve to remain a vegetarian. (I was not familiar with the word pescetarian at that age.) I left the party without partaking in the beer, excused myself and made a quick escape, using my vegetarianism as a perfect excuse to leave the party. For many weeks after, my shadow self and I clashed heatedly and repeatedly over my hasty and unsocial exit. The dark shadow was beginning to overwhelm the conscious mind, the latter becoming paralysed with indecision and inaction. The lawyer’s daughter made another indirect contact, via a mutual friend. This time, it would be a weekend in an Englishman’s bungalow up in the cool green surrounds of Penang Hill. The dark shadow won the battle of the mind, the conscious mind reluctantly accepted her invitation. “It’s fine, there will be dozens of people there, just keep a low profile.” It was a miserable weekend to forget. The dark shadow tried desperately to stop me but at the end of the stay, I wrote her a short note to thank her for her attention but we simply were not of the same world. I was uncomfortable outside the confines of a dry cleaning environment. Her parents were English-speaking, professionally trained and adopted a western culture in which the Beatles and Elvis ruled. I was at home with Cantonese songs and Cantonese profanities, normalised by the workers in the dry cleaning workshop. The acknowledgment of the shadow and therefore the eventual assimilation of the shadow was necessary to break the impasse, without which the conscious mind was being bogged down by paralysis of logical decision making. Every event incurred the consternation of the shadow, it was almost debilitating for the conscious self. I wasn’t day-dreaming, I was fully engaged in mind games with the shadow self. Awareness of the dark shadow wasn’t enough. It required its integration with the conscious mind to enable a peaceful if not productive existence. I believed that the combined forces of the shadow self and the conscious mind substantially improved and broadened the individual’s character. I was right. I recently discovered this quote from Carl Jung. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

*Will your shadow self reduce you to a shadow of your former self?*

Pheasant For A Peasant

Ty-Phoon, a stellar student in High School, calls himself 大風, inexplicably oblivious to the destructive forces of the “Big Wind”. In regions from Hong Kong to Taiwan and Japan, autumn is notoriously their typhoon season. I did not want to sound inquisitive to ask him why he would voluntarily associate himself with death and destruction, suffice to conclude that at some moment in our lives, our dark side escapes from our deep psyche – our “shadow self”, as Carl Jung called it, and this is his time. A self-described peasant, he shared a photo of his lunch today. A scrumptious plate of rice with shiitake mushroom, long beans and fish curry; I was surprised he called it humble. “Humble?” I asked. He reasoned that due to the recent confusion between austere and frugal, humble seemed a much safer word to choose. “You sound like a self-described peasant who dismisses his meal as paltry when feasting on pheasants.” I could not resist remarking. In the old days, the wealthy landowners threw lavish parties; formal entertainments accompanied by big feasts which invariably included roasted pheasants. On one such occasion called the Feast of the Pheasants, the Duke of Burgundy invited noblemen to a banquet, with the purpose of organising a crusade against the Turks who had overrun Constantinople in 1453. Pheasants were not for the peasants. Ty-Phoon would say I am just blowing up a storm in a teacup. Pheasants today are farmed mostly for sports. These birds are pale cousins of those in the wild. Born and bred in compact surroundings, they are cruelly debeaked to prevent cannibalism from aggressive behaviour brought about by the crowded environment imposed on them. Once these “flight birds” are released into the “wild”, they are easy pickings for the wealthy members of exclusive hunting clubs. They see man as a source of their daily meals rather than their eventual killer. The rest of the farmed birds called the “meat birds”, are destined for posh restaurants and eateries. Either as meat birds or flight birds, these pheasants will inevitably face their black swan day. The friendly farmer who diligently and unfailingly feeds them daily wins their trust but one day, it is the same farmer who will be responsible for their deaths. Unexpected to them but in reality, it was bound to happen.

Many of us have encouraged Ty-Phoon to write his story. It would make a really good read. We have been sharing snippets of our lives since we re-connected recently. I can only say his life stories are, by far, the more interesting. He retorts that the other side is always greener. True, but looking at his lunch, my food is definitely a lot greener.

This is his story. A century ago, three under-nourished men landed on the piers of George Town after a perilous journey across the seas from China. Two brothers and a nephew left their homeland in search for a better life and a more promising future. But with only a rattan basket each, the big blackish type with a tight cover, they arrived in their new world without a plan A or a plan B. At the pier, they sought the only means of transport, the trishaw, to convey them to a bus station which was a short distance away. They figured a bus would take them farthest away from where they were. Most arrivals would settle in the town they arrived at but these men wanted their journey to continue. There were no local maps then, so the three men simply left it to the trishaw pullers to take them to any bus station. They were taken to the The Prangin Canal Bus Terminal. It was no different from any other major bus terminal. There were many different buses going to different parts of the island, how would the newly arrivals know which to pick? The men chose to board the blue Hin Company bus, it was the first one to depart and it looked clean enough. That was how they started their journey northwards. Not knowing where to alight, they paid the fare for the furthest travel, the last stop for that route was the remote village of Telok Bahang. It was at the kopitiam that Ty-Phoon’s future maternal grandpa overheard the men seeking accommodation and employment. Fate would have it that grandpa hired them. At that time, grandpa was the owner of thirty acres of farmland, the majority of which was untouched. The three men were god-sent, grandpa had the land but lacked good hardworking labourers. Before too long, grandpa married off one of his daughters to the eldest of the three men. They impressed him with their tireless work ethic and enthusiasm for learning. She was only 15, and soon would become Ty-Phoon’s mother. The three Chinamen were all Phoons from Guangzhou province. The lucky one who married the 15 year old -was Ty-Phoon’s dear father. Was it Ty-Phoon’s destiny to be born or was it his parents’ destiny to meet and fall in love? Or was that just the random outcome of a chain of events? Fate, what some consider as the power that controls and determines everything that happens. The Phoons may celebrate their fate that the blue bus took them to Telok Bahang but for the pheasants, it would be wrong to think it was fate that got them shot. No, it was the farmer’s plan all along. It wasn’t fate, it was the urghhling.

The Idiotes, The Young Urghhling

He sat at the back of the class. It suited him fine, even though it strained his eyes to read the blackboard from the distance. The often hastily wiped board leaves a whitish layer, why did the teacher not understand white chalk on whitish blackboard makes a poor medium for boys sitting at the back of the class? He told his mother he was sat at the back because of his height. That makes sense, why should the shorter boys miss out on their lessons if the teacher’s writing on the blackboard is blocked by big fat boys and those with long necks? It is true he was one of the taller ones but it is also true the smart ones sat at the front of the class. The less bright ones somehow congregated towards the back rows. But, this fact was not shared with his mum. He saw no reason to add more anxiety to her life. The more devious and mischievous ones sat along the middle column of the class. Any brief lapse by the voluptuous teacher with the mini skirts, when her sitting position was unladylike, would enable those boys to feast their happy eyes on her white briefs. She was the first person to teach him to have a simple wardrobe. It obviates the need to ponder about which clothes to wear and how to match them. A full set of white briefs will do; somehow, she did not extend her minimalist philosophy to her external clothing. “Everything is going well in school, Ma. It is interesting to be in the teacher’s class. I did not fail any subject.” The goal in school was to get through it unscathed, not about how many A’s as long as there are no F’s. It only dawned on him many years after he became a father that it was not normal to turn up for class and not know there was a test that day. Even in first year university, when he sat for the first semester’s exams, he did so with the wrong assumption that only the end of year exams mattered. He thought it was the same as school in Penang, he could always catch up at the end of the year. What an idiot, right? Publicly, he loathes to be called that. He was chuffed when one day, he discovered the word “idiotes”. He has been using it ever since to describe himself. It is a measure of his self-deluding honesty, to acknowledge his idiocy by referring to himself in that old Greek word which in fact means ” a private, selfish person”.

The idiotes did not visit the beautiful beaches of Penang often during his childhood – no, I shall prevent him from stretching the truth here – he hardly visited the beautiful beaches of Penang throughout his life. His parents feared he would drown in the ghost-infested seas of Penang. A quiet and self-absorbed boy, he described himself as shy when he meant reclusive, quiet when he meant empty of thought. Usually trapped in a world of his own, he was prone to day-dream. Unsurprisingly, his dreams were more real to him than his physical reality. On a beach in Tanjung Bungah, he was in a trance-like state, hurling little stones at the sea, visualising himself killing serpents in the water. The little boy, barely eight at the time, somehow landed a stone on his little sister’s head. She was some twenty five meters away, at the edge of the water. It is still incomprehensible to him today, to understand where his puny arm found such strength that day. “So sorry, little sister. That scar is for you to remember me by.” 2nd Grand-uncle madly smoked his cigarette to produce ashes, which miraculously stopped the bleeding. Her injury was not in vain, he learned something new. That was the first hint of the emergence of the urghhling.

The following year, on a visit to a rubber plantation with his father, the boy saved a cute black puppy of pariah breed from becoming a certain aphrodisiac meal. The boy named his best friend Shiny due to its gleaming fur. Shiny would grow up to become his best buddy and soulmate, well, the best soulmate possible – one that is an avid listener who never opines an opposing view. In a family dominated by girls, the idiotes was no match for his siblings. In his mind, they treated him unfairly, were blind and deaf to his good character and always ganged up against him even when mindless of competing facts. Non-violent by nature, he was frequently bullied by his sisters, many of them exhibited symptoms of trichotillomania, but the focus was on his hair and not their own. Many years later, Shiny would die of a broken heart, when the family home was bereft of family members, some had gone away on a short holiday; others, like the boy, had left home to “further their studies”. In those days, full-time studies were only carried out further away from home, usually overseas. Those who stayed back generally worked full-time and studied part-time or stopped their studies altogether. “So sorry, Shiny. Guilt still bothers me that you died alone. He was my dog, my pal, my soulmate. I let him down.” The emergence of the urghhling was by now undeniable.

He displayed signs of his incertitude about his adolescence by being remarkably quick to protect his ego. When he was in standard 5, he imagined himself to be a hero, as cool as James Dean in “The Rebel Without A Cause”. In truth, his resemblance with the rebel stopped at both being troubled young boys, socially estranged and awkward. When the Malay teacher twisted and deformed his nipples in full view of the class, he stepped off the teacher’s platform and bowed to his fellow school mates. They cheered and whistled at his audacity to challenge the teacher’s authority. To this day, they remain ignorant of the fact that the delinquent boy merely did not understand the Malay word for “understand” (faham). He wasn’t rebelling against the deviant teacher with his perpetual side to side head-shaking when continually asked “faham kah? faham kah? tak faham?” as the enraged teacher increased the frequency and intensity of the twisting.

That young idiotes was me. It was probably in 1972 when I read about Hong Kong people eating the raw brains of screaming monkeys. It angered me. It permanently injured my respect for human beings. Sure, the Law of Nature is clear and absolute, the natural hierarchy for all living things is set like jelly. Who are we to question such laws? It is the survival of the fittest. The stronger animals will eat the weaker ones, and the smarter ones will eat the less brainy ones. Humans are smarter than monkeys, and so, some monkeys will have to sacrifice their brains. Two decades later when served live oysters in Adelaide, instead of being repulsed at eating some living thing alive and raw, I discovered to my horror that I actually relished in their consumption. The realisation that I am also an urghhling has muted my abhorrence of such despicable treatment of living things. All predators feed on raw meat of live prey. Who changed the rules for humans? We are supposed to be sophisticated, refined and therefore civil. Civil man does not eat raw flesh of living things.

A beautiful friend who calls himself Ty-Phoon admitted to his wayward childhood too; fighting Malay kids who lived on his grandfather’s land at his pleasure, accusing them of theft and wilful destruction without much evidence. He even accused them of poisoning their dogs! Again, without evidence. They fought their wars with homemade catapults, each comprising an elastic band of knitted rubber bands or a rectangular cutout from a discarded bicycle inner tube and a Y-shape stick preferably from Jambu Batu wood. They honed their skills on innocent birds nesting high up on tree tops and on thieving bats feasting on ripe chikus. See, the Law of Nature applies even to young kids. They saw their right to maim and kill smaller birds and bats that are judged guilty of eating fruit from trees.

This story cannot end without the tale of the friend with the flaxen hair. He insists it is sun-bleached but sometimes I’m more convinced it is more ginger than flaxen. He happens to admit he too is an idiotes, a local one from Jelutong. In his early teens, he came across a gorgeous looking girl guide who wore the cutest pigtails you’d ever see. He was a shy withdrawn Boy Scout from the 7th Georgetown North. At a campfire on a pleasant October night, their eyes met fleetingly. He smiled and she smiled back. They exchanged a sweet convivial conversation but that occurred in his mind only. Modesty prevented her from asking him his name. Idiocy stopped him from blurting out a simple “Hello.” They sat opposite each other all night singing happy meaningless songs about “Ging Gang Gooley, Gooley” and one about a laughing Kookaburra that sat on an old gum tree. The warmth of the campfire, the licking naked flames of the fire, the crackling of wood and the scent of burnt leaves and firewood lent them to a romantic setting. An unforgettable experience for the sixteen year old flaxen haired lad. He understood from his spies that her name was Janet, and Janet remained secret, deep in his heart and cherished all through his life. Alas, that was their only meeting. Fate was unkind to both of them, he consoles himself on every lonely night since. Recently, he found a photo of that gathering all those years ago. There she is! As radiant as the first time their eyes met and their hearts melted from each other’s smiles. By then, he was already a sixty-year-old retiree but the young-at-heart will continue to act foolishly, as The Mrs would say. The old man shared the photo with all his friends in their chat group, hoping that somehow, somewhere, someone would recognise Janet and let him know she is fine and life is good to her. He said he would die a happy man if his Janet’s life has been happy and rewarding. A chorus went up in the chats soon after her photo was posted. “That’s not Janet! That’s Susan!!” A real idiotes, this friend with the flaxen hair. Urghhling.

P.S. The bloke with the flaxen hair is a product of my imagination. His story is not.

Kurds And Curds

What would it be like to be a Kurd today? A fighter, fearsome and victorious. A modern-day warrior whose proud DNA hails from a 10th century Iranian ethnic group. After the Mongol period, Kurdish dynasties ruled vast lands and many Kurdish quarters flourished in Iraq, Egypt and Jerusalem. Dynasties and empires do not last forever. The displacement of the Kurds saw mass destruction and massacres during the reign of the Safavid Shah, Tamasp 1 (ruled 1524-1576). Many Kurds were scattered into faraway places including central Persia. These refugees became the nucleus of modern Kurdish enclaves. Less than a century before this crackdown that created the diaspora, the Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Ottoman Empire was at its zenith when the Kurds were being displaced from their homelands. Throughout the history of the Empire, there were Kurdish uprisings but the Kurds were never able to win any real independent state for themselves. In WW1, the Ottomans sided with the Germans. Their defeat meant the Turks’ Middle Eastern territories were carved up and divided between the British and the French. After the Turks won independence from the Allied Forces, they formed the Republic of Turkey. Woodrow Wilson guaranteed the Kurds the British would secure Kurdish independence in the Treaty of Sevres, a promise they subsequently broke. Despite the betrayal, in WW2, the Kurds helped the Allies defeat the pro-Nazi Iraqi coup. Mr. Trump was wrong when he tried to justify his decision to allow Turkey to attack the Kurds by saying “they didn’t help us in the Second World War.” Furthermore, in 1971-74, the Kurdish Peshmerga fought as US allies against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Fast forward to the present. The official White House statement disputed what many have said, that POTUS gave Turkey’s president, Mr. Erdogan, the green light to attack the Kurds in Syria. “We gave them a very clear red light. I’ve been involved in those red lights and I know the President did that on Sunday.” the official said. He did not identify who “we” were. Maybe Mr. Trump was not a party to “we”. It is difficult to believe that Ankara would be belligerent and brave enough to so quickly disregard and disobey Mr. Trump, had he given them a very clear red light. The alternative truth appears to be more swallowable. The two men had a telephone conversation, immediately after which the Americans pulled out of northern Syria. The day after US troops left, Turkish jets and artillery bombarded Syria’s Ras al Ain, and their howitzers shelled the Kurds in Tel Abyad. Turkey’s Defence Ministry announced they had killed 227 militants and lost one soldier in the three days. “Soldier” sounds heroic, the good guy. “Militants” are always the baddies. The power of words. But the Kurds are not the baddies in this arena. They have been America’s staunchest ally in the fight against Daesh in Syria. ISIS had in our recent history carved up huge areas of Iraq and Syria, and formed an islamic Caliphate. Atrocities were so vile and abhorrent that they shocked the whole world. ISIS started life in 1999 as a small band of fighters led by the Jordanian, al-Zarqawi. After Saddam Hussein was killed during the US invasion of Iraq, his military was disbanded by the US-led coalition. The members of his Ba’ath party turned rogue and joined ISIS. It would not be inaccurate to conclude that the growth of ISIS was hastened from the false American claim about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Kurdish fighters are the backbone of the US backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Formed in October 2015 when ISIS looked victorious, it was the SDF that achieved key victories in major ISIS strongholds. In under four years, ISIS was a spent force, losing all their territorial conquests. The world owes a lot to these Kurdish fighters, without them, would the collapse of the Caliphate have been so swift? Instead of thanking them and remembering their sacrifices, what have the Americans done to show their admiration and appreciation for these Kurdish fighters? They betrayed them. “Stabbed in the back” is what some Kurds said. Abandoned. Some condemn the “green light” as one of the worst foreign policy blunders of the Trump administration. Merely a blunder? The wrath and denunciation should be louder than thunder. This is not a simple mistake. Let me spell it out. To me, the Americans are guilty of aiding and abetting in the murder of the Kurds. Mr. Trump calls up Mr Erdogan late on a Sunday night and informs him he will be moving his troops away from the Kurds. Furthermore, he tells Mr. Erdogan that if Turkey attacks them, the US troops will not interfere. Mr. Trump then publicly announces the arrangement to the world. Less than three days later, the Turkish forces moved into the area vacated by the American troops and started bombing the Kurds. That to me is much more evil than simply abandoning their ally. The White House had also falsely claimed that the United States was solely bearing the burden of imprisoning the ISIS fighters in camps and Mr. Trump threatened to unleash them to Europe. The truth is they are being held by the SDF. The “blunder” by Mr. Trump could be catastrophic should these prisoners-of-war escape whilst their captors are distracted by the Turkish attacks. Just a year ago, on 26th September 2018, Mr. Trump acknowledged the Kurds as great allies of America. “They fought with us. They died with us. Tens of thousands of Kurds died fighting ISIS. We don’t forget. I don’t forget.” Has Mr. Trump forgotten? Or, does he simply not care? There is no fabric of decency or morality about the man. Americans should cower with shame; they have blood on their hands. The man they elected President has destroyed all the greatness and glory their country accumulated through sweat, blood and tears of their ancestors. This betrayal brings into sharp focus what it means to be their ally. Their word is hollow and meaningless. Without trust, there can be no healthy relationship. It is disappointing to watch the Australian PM stand firm and defend Mr. Trump’s murderous betrayal. Can anyone be so blind to the treachery, the abhorrence, the betrayal, the perfidy? It was a big relief to find no other Western leader with such an impairment.

A further disappointment was to hit the airwaves. Although many leaders of the free world were scathing of the Turkey-US arrangement, it was unexpected to hear Mr. Trump trumpeting about the “love-fest” his trade negotiators enjoyed with China. It feels unjust and wrong that the treacherous one gets immediate gratification for his vile and callous decision which will not only see the massacre of Kurdish fighters and innocent Kurds, but also the potential re-emergence of ISIS and further despair for those in that part of the world. Although unwritten and unsigned, Mr. Trump boasted that the agreement with China will deliver some USD 50 billion worth of agricultural exports to the “Great Patriot Farmers” of America. That is a lot of soy beans for the Chinese to make their bean curd. This is not surprising, I suppose, since they love their tofu.

The Morning After

I woke up feeling somewhat blithe about life. Finally, it sinks in, I am truly a senior citizen. There is no longer the need for any pretentious actions or words to please others. It is exhilarating. The air smells fresher, cleaner, intoxicating. I can be myself, warts and all. I can look into the mirror and be comfortable with the ugly reflection of a sixty-one-year-old bloke. Who cares what others think? So what if they frown at my behaviour? Be it childish, selfish, impulsive or even irrational. So long as we are not abusive, repulsive or dismissive of other people’s rights, we have every right to be honest with ourselves and therefore with them, right? Writing has been a catharsis for me. Past demons have since not returned and I am more apt in keeping my emotions in check now. I can be blithely ignorant of societal norms, be who I want to be and not be subjected to restrictive rules that try to mould me into someone different. In actual fact, I have shown little regard for unsolicited opinions for much of my adult life. Maybe, that is the unintended benefit of being my own boss in my own business for almost thirty years. I am indifferent to what people say about me. “Be silent! You’re truculent.” Even today, I am described as argumentative, provocative, even annoying. Unintended consequences, perhaps, for being honest and direct or foolish. I rather prefer to call a spade a spade – after determining it is a spade – there’s no need to beat around the bush. After all, I am not in politics and I see being political as being untrue to myself.

But, who am I kidding? I forget I have someone in my life who I refer to as The Mrs, she who must be obeyed unless I fancy an “eventful” day or week. My uncontrolled sneeze from a Spring allergy roused The Mrs from her deep sleep. That woke me up too. Time to get ready for work. And then it dawns on me, it is Saturday today! I can continue with my dream. It’s reassuring to note that ageing has not interfered with both the ionotropic receptors and metabotropic GABA receptors that inhibit me from acting out my dreams during REM phase of deep sleep. It is these receptors that prevent us from physically moving during our dreams. If either receptor is blocked, The Mrs might very well wake up totally bruised by my kungfu kicks and Superman punches which I execute with perfection in my dreams. Unfortunately, she will not get the opportunity to experience my stupendous sexual prowess which I repeatedly exhibit in my dreams. The difference between reality and dreams sometimes is opportunity. Other times, it is our physical impairment that limits us from our full potential. Having gotten a year older – a silly notion, since ageing is a daily occurrence – I woke up with a renewed resolution to improve my physical fitness, and as silly as it may sound, the incentive comes from the sudden enthusiasm to gain a better physique rather than a quest to demonstrate to The Mrs the prowess I possess in my dreams. Dinner finished late last night, breaking my fast of sixteen hours will be at 1.15pm today. Whilst indulging in a strong cup of black coffee, my Kiwi friend directs my attention to an article in the Weekend Australian. “Hey bro, 61 is the new 41!” John is a real nice guy who recently retired as a GP. He is the bloke who inspired me to go out and buy a floral shirt. A rare breed, he refused to charge those patients who couldn’t afford his fees. The newspaper article is about an international study of mortality. Singapore, three days ago, emerged as the world’s most competitive economy. It is also ranked number one in life expectancy. For me, that is incongruous, intense competition leads to stress which usually means a blight on life expectancy. Australia is ranked 12 in life expectancy (82.4 years) and 14 in healthy life expectancy (70.4 years). This means that since 1990, my life expectancy has increased 5.5 years but of this increase, four years has been in “health-adjusted” life expectancy. So, what’s the point of living longer but in less than full health?

As I dwell on the prospect of enjoying only nine more years of healthy life, my eldest son uncannily shares with me a podcast about Ben Greenfield’s top basic and ancestral anti-ageing tactics. Greenfield talks about lobsters with the capability to prevent the shrinking of the telomeres, thereby slowing down ageing. Lobsters can live for hundreds of years by producing an enzyme called telomerase that acts to constantly fix the bits of the telomere that are lost with each cell division. Similarly the humming bird doesn’t die as early as we expect as they can produce their own endogenous antioxidants. Their internal degradation is slow even though they have extremely high metabolism. The immortal jellyfish is called that because it can live forever; the sexually mature jellyfish has the ability to revert to an immature one using a cell development process called cell transdifferentiation which transforms differentiated cells into new cells. Greenfield recommends a multi model approach to slow down the ageing process, after analysing societies that show a high concentration of centenarians. These are his twelve rules. The 13th is mine.

1. Don’t smoke. Avoid air pollution. Clean up the air around you. Outfit your home with an air filtration system. Air pollution has been linked in epidemiological studies to increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Reduce cortisol or stress hormones by adding plants that exude polyphenols to your environment.

2. High intake of wild herbs, bitter plants and spices e.g. Kale, Turmeric, Dandelion. These provide a hormesis response when taking things that, in large amounts are bad for us can actually help us in small amounts. Read Eating On The Wild Side by Jo Robinson.

3. Avoid processed packaged foods, they usually contain sugar and vegetable oil which wreck our blood sugar level, and inflammation (CRP level).

4. Consume legumes. Purple potato and taro. Select lowest glycemic index (GI) foods that are slow-release carbohydrates.

5. Exercise. Use standing work stations, walk as much as possible and casually lift things during the day, avoid sitting down. Going to the gym should be an option, we ought to get enough exercise during our normal day engaging in low level activity.

6. Social physical interaction. Eat at the dinner table with family. Mingle with friends. Chat and laugh.

7. One drink a day for females, two for males. Gin or vodka mixed with bitters. Bitters are packed with immune boosters, help suppress appetite, ease indigestion and help detox the liver. Non-herbicide wine is also beneficial as it is high in antioxidants.

8. Calorie restriction, e.g. Intermittent Fasting. Daily 14-16 hour fast. Cellular autophagy occurs when the body is deprived of food during fasting. Read The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo.

9. Purpose of existence. We must be able to have a single succinct statement of our purpose in life. What makes our day fly past? Do things that make us forget to eat and poo.

10. Avoid stress. Breathe. Learn to breathe to control stress.

11. Spiritual discipline. Meditation, silence, solitude, prayer. Or writing a simple daily journal of three things that you are grateful for.

12. Engage in sex. When your body knows you’re trying to make babies on a regular basis, it will realise your organs need to be healthy, robust and virile. Nature doesn’t keep living organisms around for a long time unless it knows it is useful for the propagation of the species.

13. Eat slowly. This allows you to digest the food you eat properly. An indirect benefit from this is we consume a lot less given the same time to eat. My mother is the perfect example; a slow eater and therefore eats till she is only 70% full.

This is the morning after. Now I am ready for the final phase of my life.

From Plain Sailing To Plain And Ailing

I belong to the lucky generation. For me and my mates, our challenges in primary school were not about winning school prizes but winning kite-flying competitions with the meanest, sharpest strings laced with gently pounded coarse glass powder and glue. We were more concerned about which fighting spiders to keep safe from the cheeky friends with sticky hands who were keen to swap their meek ones when no one was looking. It was a mini miracle that none of us got our fingers sliced off by the lethal kite strings although Tua Pui Soo aka Fatty Soo lost half his fatty thigh when he accidentally landed on the sharp edge of a mirror as he slid off the workbench of the glass shop from where we salvaged the glass to weaponise our kite strings.

Every year, we had our four seasons; some years, the marbles season was shorter which meant a longer “Gantok” or spinning top season. My favourite top was not so much prized for spinning the longest but rather for destroying the opponent’s tops. It was a fearsome destroyer, its original puny tip substituted with a thicker and sharpened iron tip. The aim of the game was to destroy the other tops by throwing the spinning top at them. While firmly grasping a string that had been tightly wound around the stem, the centrifugal force generated by the unwinding motion of the string will propel the spinning top onto the ground. The skill is to land your top on the others, thereby breaking them into smithereens. Killer top, I called mine fondly. There was also a season for collectible cards of movie stars. To increase our collection, we would take part in a game of “high fives” with our cards. The card that lands face up wins and the winner assumes ownership of the losing card. There was a season when I was totally invincible with a particularly favourite card. Alright, I have carried this burden of guilt for over 50 years; it is time to confess. It was a very dishonest and sly way of cheating my cousins. The way to always win is to cheat, of course. The law of probability states that. When I was lucky enough to collect two identical cards, I glued them together, back to back, so that both faces appear on either side. To ensure my winning way continued, all I had to do was hide one face side against my palm. When the card fell, it did not matter which side it landed on. Victory was guaranteed, see? In primary school, I did not care about exams or detention classes for being late. I led a mostly carefree and happy life. There were very few troubled moments, such as encounters with the ghosts in the house. But, that is another story. Other troubling moments were when my parents quarrelled. As a kid, such episodes felt frequent and frightening. My father roared like a lion but it did not help that my mother was unfazed by his roars. Maybe she knew barking dogs never bite. They never engaged in deploying missiles either, nothing got thrown at each other. Maybe I hid my killer top well. There was one incident when the bar stool lost its wooden legs though. We know from the Wu Assassins, wood is the weakest of all the elements. The Wood Wu did not even make an entrance in the Netflix series. The wooden legs were no match for the Earth Wu and the Iron Wu. Maybe it ultimately got destroyed by the Fire Wu. I did not dare ask my father if he burned them. When we got to high school, we switched from chasing one another during recess time to chasing lanky school girls with long hair. For those with rare victories such as winning a date with a girl – any girl at all – the immediate challenge was to keep her from being swooned over by a competitor. Life was mainly plain sailing for most of us, apart from one catastrophe or two. An example of a catastrophe would be walking a mile to catch a secret glimpse of the lanky girl with long hair at her balcony only to find a pack of hungry wolf-like boys at her door showing off their gleaming motorcycles which had been delivered hot off the showroom. Another catastrophe would be to lose your girlfriend to a school friend just nine weeks after you had left home to study overseas. Receiving a letter from her that informs you “the wolves are at my door” would have been catastrophic for someone whose life was plain sailing, right?

It was still plain sailing when I fell in love, seriously this time. Not puppy love, not an infatuation, not a fleeting crush. The one who made me feel crushed when she disarmingly said no to my request to join her on a morning jog. It was either a meeting arranged in heaven – a chance meeting to cross her path whilst jogging around her neighbourhood, or a sneaky surveillance strategy learned from Le Carre spy novels. Chance meetings are good storylines for love stories, so I shall stick to that. Years later, she told me her “no” was not a rejection. She would have loved to go jogging with me, “but you need to give me advance notice so I don’t leave my house without brushing my teeth. No one expects to meet anyone at six in the morning!” Ah, so considerate! So honest! We had many more chance meetings, especially in the uni library. She was predictably “bumped into” on the 2nd floor. After a few times, she disappeared. I bumped into her again when I ventured to the 3rd floor. She had her head buried in the books, yet I found a way to say hello to her. Our chance meetings would occur even if she happened to hide herself on the 6th floor. It did not dawn on me that she possibly was trying to avoid me. That is what chance meetings mean, no matter what, we would always meet. She rented a flat in Randwick. I was flatting in Kingsford with Gerald, a childhood friend from Penang. Randwick is a good twenty minute walk up a steep slope. I would buy my milk and bread from Franklins in Randwick and then drop by her flat in Silver Street. “Oh, I just happened to be shopping in your neighbourhood.” I stuttered as she opened her door hesitatingly. “Why? Isn’t it more convenient in Kingsford?” she asked, with feigned interest. I decided silence was a better answer. We do not question why chance meetings happen. We both were in the Commerce faculty in Uni of NSW, one of the biggest faculties in the uni, if not the biggest. Fate was indeed kind, somehow we ended up in the same tutorials and the same lecture halls. It never crossed my mind to attend evening tutorials but she did. “You get to learn from adult students who work full time rather than mingle with full time students who do not have practical work experience.” So sensible. Suddenly, I was attending evening classes too. But, I put that down to chance. It was plain sailing in those days. Education was free, apart from student union dues and costly textbooks. I only needed to work on weekends to make ends meet. During those student days, we didn’t eat out except for the occasional Big Mac or Filet O’fish. Entertainment came in the form of a 12 inch teevee and a cassette player that regularly played Joan Baez. Lunch never varied all year in my first year of uni, it comprised of one strawberry and peanut butter sandwich washed down with 250ml of full cream milk. Our chance meetings continued in the second year of Uni. It was only recently that I found out from Gerald why the girls felt safe with us. Safe and disinterested at us, to be exact. Somehow, they thought we were gay. Just because we were always seen together, like the moon and stars. Thankfully, my many chance meetings with the girl developed into a romance in our third year. I was soon helping her with her vegetable patches. She was more preoccupied with the snow pea, winter melon and long bean harvests than what Plato and Socrates had to say in our Philosophy classes. It’s upsetting to be reminded that she got a C (credit) for Philosophy whereas I got a P (pass). Her assignments were copied from mine, except she replaced my words with simpler ones. Due to the effort spent in her garden, my uni results went from D’s (Distinctions) and High D’s to C’s and P’s in my final year.

Once we graduated, we both found good jobs in Sydney’s CBD. A month later, we got married. Neither of us proposed. It was just plainly obvious that the two of us would marry each other. That’s fate, right? I became a father at 24. Then the twins came along in double-quick time. After that, life became plain. That’s a choice, you see. I still adhere to the idea that to bring up a young family, we do need to have a plain lifestyle that is stable and secure. A tumultuous or exciting one would be destabilising and distracting for kids, right? A plain life was by no means a boring life. The kids were a bundle of joy, they showered me with enthusiastic, effusive welcomes when I got home after work. I was chasing corporate ladders which eventually led me to a managerial position in Adelaide. Not long after that, we had the October 1987 sharemarket crash. The ailing economy saw interest rates shoot up to an unimaginable level of 19% p.a. Life was no longer plain sailing. I lost all the gains from a previously rampant sharemarket. Ready to totally divest the share portfolio and convert the profit into an apartment in Coogee, a brief procrastination saw a total wipe-out after the crash. After two decades of running my own business, we ended up with an ailing business that almost did not survive the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Now that I have turned 61, I look back at life and marvel at how much it has changed, from writing aerogrammes and sending telegrams in the 70’s to dial-up Internet in the 80’s. We witnessed the demise of the cassette tapes, facsimile machines, laser disks and compact disks. Now, there is 5G to look forward to even before we are connected to the fibre optic national broadband network. Technology is advancing at a rapid rate but so are my years. Life rudely awakens me when I realise The Mrs and I have been empty nesters for sixteen years already. Many loved ones have already left this world and I am starting to hear about ailments and debilitating health matters almost on a daily basis. Recently, I learned that cervical arthritic pain has nothing to do with the cervix. News about school friends’ ailments bombard our daily chats. Someone had open heart surgery, another had his brain tumour removed, some are diabetic. There is one with knee replacements, another with a hip replacement, and a few sufferers of mental depression. Ageing is not fun, it is no longer plain sailing. Anything and everything that made us laugh uncontrollably now seem a distant memory. I found a feel-good story though. On the 9th October, Duke University announced that humans have salamander-like ability to regrow cartilage in joints. Hopefully soon, hip replacements will be a thing of the past. There will be more medical breakthroughs! I am still the dude with the positive attitude. We cried when we lost our marbles in school, but now we shan’t cry if or when we lose our marbles.

Tattersall All In Tatters

Amanda Tattersall, like many in the Western media, is hellbent on distorting the truth about what is happening in Hong Kong. When professional media commentators and journalists spin alternative truths about events that may affect millions of people and result in anarchy and death, they leave their own credibility in tatters. Urghhlings. Why do they communicate falsities? When I watch the news, there are often instances when journalists and writers deliberately use the wrong word disparagingly. It is not only unfair reporting but can be sinisterly dangerous. They could well encourage warped views or worse, inspire evil as a result, intentionally or not.

Tattersall is well credentialed, a scholar and a change maker who is an academic in the University of Sydney. Funded by Halloran Trust of the University, she has ample resources to get to the truth about Hong Kong. There are many private citizens from many parts of the world who have travelled to Hong Kong on their own budgets to discover the truth for themselves. Professionals like Tattersall continue to spin her conversations such as in The Conversation and distort the truth. Western media willingly report the violence by the police, whereas the mob violence is rarely mentioned. Google generally only shows images of police violence when you search for protesters violence in Hong Kong. A quick internet search will show support for the students coming from all sides of society including the elderly, and will lead you to conclude that it is the police waging assault on the facts. Nothing is mentioned of the biased assault on the facts by Western media. For us in the West, we need to rely on information from news outlets such as Channel News Asia; one of their headlines said “You don’t know what you’re doing” as Hong Kong’s elders hit back at protesters. Otherwise, there is little balance in the reporting by Western media. Every coin has two sides. The repercussions of distorting the truth is for their conscience to face.

In her article on 1st October 2019, Tattersall asserts that Hong Kong is “crippled with an undemocratic Legislative Council” and Hong Kongers are “terrified” not to to win democratic rights. Why does she not start by informing her readers that under British rule for 155 years, they were not given any democratic rights at all? There was never any universal suffrage; she misleads the uninformed that “Beijing will continue to encroach on their political freedoms.” It is her choice of words that grates on me. I have underlined them in the quotes that follow. Would she ever use the word “weapon” to refer to riot control equipment used by any Western police force? She writes, “Riot control weapons were deployed against the protesters and those near the protests were subject to random searches.” In any violent street protest, is it unreasonable for the police to conduct searches on those arrested at the scene? Is it really random that those arrested were at the scene?

She continues, “Always an asymmetric war, students initially responded in self-defence – using umbrellas, helmets and masks to hold their position on the streets.” This is not a war! Please do not help start one. If the protesters did not resort to violent conduct, bashing anyone including senior citizens who disagree with their opinions or object to their destructive behaviour, disrupt transport systems, throw Molotov cocktails, and attack and damage government buildings, why would there be a need for self-defence? No, they initiated a violent, destructive campaign and physically harmed the police. That is not self-defence.

The last time tear gas was used by Australian police was to put down a riot in 2005, at the Christmas Island migrant detention centre. No one accused the police of using excessive force; tear gas was never considered a weapon. But, in Tattersall’s article, she further distorts the facts: “As the police’s weapons have become more excessive – tear gas fired in train stations, rubber bullets shot into faces, sponge grenades, water cannons – the students’ responses have become increasingly indignant.” Here she implies the students are reacting to unwarranted police brutality. Which police and anti-riot force would not protect their own personnel and quell unrest that have turned violent? Are tear gas and water cannons not standard equipment used by most of the authorities in the world? Excessive? She continues to call them weapons implying instruments that maim and kill. Shooting rubber bullets into faces implies deliberate action by the police. I would like to see her and her ilk handle a violent group of people hellbent on exacting physical harm on those who try to uphold the law. To describe the students’ response as indignant is a joke. Although an author, she obviously does not understand the word. Can protesters be considered merely annoyed or angry when they force the closure of a major international airport, cause billions of lost revenues every month to the city’s businesses – a decrease of over 50% in August retail sales (according to the city’s Retail Management Association), their worst performance in history – destroy business premises and beat up anyone including elderly citizens who try to reason with them? To be fair, she accurately reports that the students (The Braves, she repeatedly calls them), have “engaged in targeted actions like street fires, petrol bombs and vandalism to public infrastructure and government sites, like the city’s mass transit system.” But, she softens their violence by using words such as “targeted actions” and “vandalism”. Come on, Tattersall, vandalism?! I think she is a vandal to civil rights. Where is the balanced reporting? Half the population just want to get on with making a livelihood, juggling work with family commitments, and saving whatever they can for a better future. What about their civil rights to enjoy peace, prosperity and security? In their fight for freedom of rights, the protesters deny others the basic right of freedom of movement? Surely, Western media cannot be blind to such blatant curtailing of freedom to travel to and from work? If any person dares to storm into a government building, tears down the Aussie flag, throws it into the River Torrens, hoists up another nation’s flag, that person would be quickly hauled into prison as a traitor. But, the likes of Tattersall will choose to remain silent on such unpatriotic behaviour as shown by some young Hong Kong protesters.

Tattersall reveals her devious intent at the end of her article. She coaxes The Braves to follow the successful strategies used in the French Revolution. “Perhaps history can provide some inspiration”. “In Paris, the protesters fought street battles and built barricades, but the leaders also built for themselves the kind of state they envisioned living in. They constructed their own National Assembly, which advanced the idea of universal male suffrage.” She asks her readers to imagine the protesters creating their own Legislative Assembly. In short, she is inciting the students to overthrow the government of Hong Kong. She is fully aware that protesters may die in their war (her word) against China. I fear for The Braves, learned people like Tattersall should not lead them to their graves. The governments of Hong Kong and China have been extremely restrained so far in bringing back law and order to Asia’s premier financial center. Not a single protester has been killed even though the violent mobs have been attacking police and fire-bombing public places on their daily rampage for almost six months. Tourist numbers dropped over 51% in September. How much more self-inflicted damage will be tolerated before authorities take measures to end this debacle? Let us hope the inflicted damage does not turn into a bloodbath. Urghhling.

Here is the link to her article. https://theconversation.com/amp/with-no-end-in-sight-and-the-world-losing-interest-the-hong-kong-protesters-need-a-new-script-124007

On Australia’s own doorstep, West Papua, we saw violent crackdowns by the Indonesian military in recent weeks. Yet, Australian media and Australian governments have been relatively silent over the deaths of many student protesters – estimated at thirty-three – in Jayapura and Wamena. The official pronouncement from the foreign affairs department is lame, that all sides of the conflict should exercise “absolute restraint”. Now, why don’t we all exercise absolute restraint with regard to Hong Kong also? Especially those like Amanda Tattersall. Inciting a civil war similar to the French Revolution is simply criminal.

An elderly man beaten up by young Hong Kong protesters

Sagacious Yet Salacious

As I adjust the settings of the electronic bike in my living room to “mountain climbing” for target resistance, and “450” for target calories, I have difficulty in changing the age setting to “61”. I am not quite there yet, I remind myself. This morning, I intended to write about the creek I designed three years ago. It starts from the rear of the garden where the Adelaide Hills loom large, and meanders down a gentle slope revealing its three small waterfalls as the water glistens against the warm morning ray, and makes that soothing, healing sound of water falling softly on smoothen pebbles that cover the waterproof lining of the creek’s bed. Once upon a time, I wished I would reincarnate into a river pebble. To me, that is eternal peace in a tranquil, beautiful and unspoilt natural setting. Older folk tend to think they are sagacious with their choices in later life. We vote in the right governments, do we not ? It is those disinterested in politics, economic and environmental policies who vote in the wrong side, such as the rednecks of America in the 2016 presidential election. I digress. “Why call it a creek and not a brook?” Keith asks. Knowing my peculiar inclination to use words that rhyme, he continues to sell the idea of blogging about my brook. “You can blog about your chook by the brook, whilst you write a book in the nook. Share with us about the “water-feature expert” crook who strung you along. She invoiced you for expert advice that did not fix your string algae blooms.” The creek winds down across a bedrock of local Adelaide Hills moss stones and ends in a 12’ x 4’ pond. Fung Shui rules were unknowingly followed, the pond is a central feature of the garden; it also lends itself as a very beautiful water feature for the U-shape living quarters of the house. Keith, it’s a creek to me and not a brook. A daily reminder not to be “ Up the creek without a paddle”. We are sagacious, remember? At our age, especially, we cannot be up shit creek. We will not be afforded a second chance now if we get into financial difficulties or get entwined in an awkward predicament without any clear easy solution. Never be without a paddle! Not at our age! I did consider myself in deep shit and up the creek without a paddle for the past two months. The sudden loss of pond water during late winter baffled me. It had been raining regularly yet the water level kept receding slowly but surely. But, exactly a month ago, the notion of “normal evaporation” as the days started to warm up after winter was pronounced as fake news by the property’s owner. She hauled me over and questioned my nonsensical theory of why water was continually been added to the pond by the floating system. “There has to be a major leak!” she announced. For the past month, I had been busily scrutinising the flow of the creek, measuring in millimeters the rate of “evaporation”, and examining every single square centimetre of pond lining. “Where is the leak? Is it from the creek? Please, please, do not let it be from the pond!” The water-feature “expert” told me “you might as well start all over again if the main pond is leaking.” The sense of foreboding was intensified when another “expert” gave me his conclusive evidence that this is “all too hard to fix”. “Even if the leak is in the creek, and you found where it is, you’d never be able to fix it. It would be a nightmare to remove the rocks to re-line the creek”. That sounded like a death warrant for the creek and pond. Where will I find a new home for my koi fish? Some say desperation is the mother of inventions or in my case, creative thinking. With no one willing to take on this job to fix the leak, I was soon on my knees, not begging, not praying, but doubling down with serious intent to find the leak! I imagined I was a crime scene investigator. The weather had been kind, the short, dry spell made it easy to look for damp patches on the ground, a clear indicator of the presence of water! Unfortunately, the meticulous combing of every millimeter of land adjoining the creek found no such evidence. Time to plead regret to the owner. As I was leaving the creek, I felt a stone was out of place. Aesthetically pleasing but strategically wrong, I felt. All I did was move it 2mm away from the edge of the big rock. Since then, the pond does not leak anymore! Sagacious, aren’t I?

The stone on front left is not aesthetically positioned

Last night, there was noisy chatter in a chat group of sagacious old men. Somehow, the discussion about the health benefits of having a foot massage turned salacious. What’s-his-name refers to his favourite masseuse as number 8, short for 008. He is a numbers man, tends to strike it lucky with lotteries, Powerball and Tatts lotto. Or do they call it Empat Ekor over in Malaysia? Lucky with numbers, he is undoubtedly also a “ladies man”. He regularly visits his favourite number 8 for what he calls a “foot” massage. It’s usually his left foot, he elaborates. Although he is not prone to ignore his right foot, it too gets serious attention by number 8 sometimes. Not wanting to appear ignorant, I do not dare ask him what “serious attention” means. What’s-his-name, the salacious one, soon diverts the health discussion to one with sexual connotations. He would, of course, strongly disagree. Sex, and lots of it, is a prerequisite to good health for men. ”Have you not kept yourself up-to-date?” He enquires incredulously. We have to clean and clear our “pipes”, he implores. “We, men, are bedevilled with the threat of prostate cancer. Yes, foot massages are vital for our organs.” he spruiks. “and we do not ignore the other ‘leg’. With intense massage, if we are lucky, it may even grow to a foot long”. Salacious. Fallacious! Urghhling.