Photos

I finally figured out how to upload photos from my phone to my blog. Here are some from my trip to Hong kong. But I still don't know know how to change or add pictures on the sidebars, because my phone is not communicating with my laptop.

Medical Report

 I was trying to keep track the other day of all the health problems I have had in the last couple years, for posterity, ya know, and I came up with this list: 

1. Lacunar stroke

2. Sinus infection

3. Eye infection

4. Eye virus

5. Hernia surgery

6. Stomach virus

7. Multiple herniated discs in back and neck

Impressive, isn't it? I reckon bad health is the one thing I've done well in life. 

I'm doing physical therapy for the back problem, but it's a real drag. Not the physical therapy, but the back and neck pain. The physical therapy is mostly pleasant, but I don't know that it is helping much. 

Okies

They say the damn Okies are filthy and stupid. They have no morals. They are sexual maniacs. They are thieves. They will steal anything. They don't understand the concept of possession.

--The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Remind you of anything? Does a word come to mind which might replace Okies in our present day conversation? 

How about this: 

They are killers and rapists. They are lunatics, released from jails and asylums, criminals, the the worst of the worst.

Bad hombres.

Most of all, they are not us. 

Hungry, desperate, ragged, pitiful, and hopeful, they came in the early 1930s from the dust bowl, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi and elsewhere, out of financial ruin, looking for a better life, looking for honest work, dreaming modest dreams, only to be rejected by those who already possessed the dreams, for greed knows no greater foe then the want of others.

They came a thousand miles over their own trail of tears to find that the doors of bounty were locked against them and that the green paradise of California and all of its fruits were not to be had by the likes of them.

Killers, rapists, thieves, criminals.

Farmers, harvesters, mechanics, laborers.

Men, women, children, babies.

Suffering, hoping, dreaming, starving, dying. 

Go back where you came from, they were told. Or by God we will send you back by force.

Because you are not us.

 

James

 My only reaction, really, to Percival Everett's novel James, a retelling of the Huckleberry Finn story through the viewpoint of Jim the slave, has been to revisit Twain's inimitable masterpiece. And dat's all I'm gwynna say 'bout dat.

Crime

 I was talking to a random guy on Facebook this morning who was upset about immigrants coming here and committing violent crimes. I pointed out that statistically American citizens have a higher violent crime rate than immigrants. 

Well of course! he exclaimed. There are a lot more American citizens. 

No, no, you don't understand, I said. These are per capita statistics. It means that taking three groups of equal number, legal immigrants commit significantly fewer violent crimes than American citizens. Illegal immigrants commit fewer yet. 

Well I don't care, he said. We don't need illegal immigrants coming here and committing violent crimes. 

Yes, I said, legal violent crimes are much preferable, aren't they?

With this, comically, he enthusiastically agreed, failing to catch the irony.

Hong Kong

 There are very many people in the world. Most of them are in Hong Kong. This, anyway, was my takeaway from my first experience of the place. Moreover, one finds that most of them are walking in the opposing direction from oneself on any given outing. 

All kidding aside ... I found the city quite engaging and pleasant.

But wait, let me start from the beginning. 

A couple weeks ago, we (Evelyn and I) departed from Denpasar, Bali, bound for Hong Kong by way of Singapore. It seems that a direct flight is very expensive, so we had to stop in Singapore, stay the night in the airport, and then catch a morning flight to Hong Kong. 

Evelyn arranged all the details of our trip, while I just did what I was told. To the best of my ability. We immediately faced a glitch in the plan. It was her understanding that there are sleeping chairs at the Singapore airport (not chairs that sleep, mind you, but chairs in which a person can sleep). And there are. Trouble was, they were all occupied by sleeping people. 

So we slept on the floor. Evelyn made a little bed for me (bless her well-intentioned heart) with a thin blanket and some balled up clothes for a pillow, but sleep, for the most part, eluded me. I remember sleeping on the ground as a young man, out camping for instance, but an old man's broken body does not do so well on a hard surface. I spent much of the night wandering about, ordering coffee, smoking in the suffocating smoking lounge, returning from time to time to the nest to give it another try. I did finally go to sleep some time in the middle of the night, only to be awakened by a security  guard who for some reason needed to see my passport and airline ticket at 4 a.m. 

After that, I was done. Rough and ready to catch my flight to Hong Kong. In only five hours.

Arriving there, and emerging at last from the maze-like airport, we found ourselves emersed in chilly air, 13 c, and oh how pleasant this was for me, after fifteen years in the sweltering tropics. Just like home! And by that, I mean Portland. And as for my companion, she had never in her life felt anything like 13 c. Talk about exotic! 

She had scheduled the first part of our stay in a little travel hotel operated by the Salvation Army (for some reason). The room was cozy, up on the 9th floor, and free breakfast was available, but the curious thing was that although the room had air-conditioning, it had no heat. And the bed arrangement was two separate single beds, one on each side of the room, so there was no body heat to be had either, other than one's own. Nonetheless, it was fine anyway, at least for me. I'm already used to sleeping with the AC on the lowest temperate setting back in Bali. 

My first challenge--everything else having been done for me, to include hotel arrangements, bus schedules, train schedules, scheduled destinations and activities--was to find a place where one could smoke. Smoking, you see, is not popular in Hong Kong and is pretty tightly restricted to designated locations, as is the case in Singapore as well. So I walked down the street in that wonderful bracing chilly air (now 12 c) and happened upon a fellow smoker lurking in an alleyway. It's not that you can't smoke, he told me. You can smoke pretty much anywhere, as long as it is outside and nowhere near a no smoking sign. The only thing is that the habit is frowned upon and so people tend to slip into alleys or behind walls or whatever. And so we had our little smoker's conversation in broken English, no Chinese of course. As with Bali, many of the people in Hong Kong are able to speak a simple form of English.

Over the next few days, we visited the city center, the "Peak" above the city, which in the evening is colorfully lit all along the riverside and features parades of brilliantly lit boats. We travelled to Hong Kong island, took a cable car over the hills in order to see "the Big Buddha" (well, Evelyn saw it, not I, given that you need to climb about a hundred stairs to get there). I just hung around in "the traditional village, which is just kind of like an outdoor mall really, had a coffee, ate some caramel corn and looked for official smoking places. Smoking is especially prohibited at tourist sites, but there is always a wall somewhere to hide behind, which I found along with a half dozen Russians. 

Next we went to another traditional village, this one actually authentically traditional. It was called Tai O, a little fishing village with narrow little streets lined with (what else) fish products of all sorts. I found it quite charming, picturesque. 

In the evening, we roamed the city again, or a very small part of it, actually, and came upon a dessert restaurant selling only pudding. But delicious pudding it was! I had the warm egg pudding and have been looking for another like ever since, although to no avail. Evelyn had some kind of black bean pudding. 

On the last day, we had to change hotels, as ours at the Salvation Army was booked. Our room at this new hotel was tiny indeed, and the bathroom, including shower, was about the size of a closet. A small closet. Really brought home the meaning of "water closet". 

"How can it be?" I asked Evelyn. 

"Why? What? What's wrong with it?"

"You mean, aside from everything?" 

Ah well, but we made do. Millions of people are starving in China, my parents used to say when we did not like our food. Millions, apparently, are also showering in closets. 

Our trip ended with another stopover, this time in Vietnam. Once again, Evelyn said there were to have been little sleeping rooms. Once again, there weren't, and we slept on the floor. Well, not on the floor, but on the row of plastic chairs, on which Evelyn prepared for me a bed of bundled up clothes and a makeshift pillow. I should say that Evelyn slept, while I, for the most part, explored the hushed hallways of the rather decrepit Ho Chi Minh City airport. And drank coffee. Time enough to sleep on the plane home anyway. 

(Naturally, we took a whole lot of photos on our trip and I wish I could post some here, but my laptop has stopped cooperating with my phone. No clue why. It used to work just fine).

The Grapes of Wrath for Our Times.

 "I need to think," the tenant said. "We all need to think. Surely there is a way to stop this. It's not like lightning or an earthquake. Terrible things are being done by men, and by God, we can stop it."

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (my translation from the Indonesian) 

Here is an excerpt from the past which rings a sad bell in our own time, I reckon. As with the farmers in Steinbeck's novel, we too, we common citizens, are being bulldozed by relentless events, by a government, in our case,  overwhelmingly empowered by control of the presidency, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and even the highest court in the nation. And what do we do? We have squandered our power, which was our vote, and much of what we voted for, both Democrat and Republican, is not what is being done. Instead, our hard won benefits, our privileges, our freedoms, our pride as a nation is being overrun, ground under the wheels of this impervious machine that we call our government. It is lightning, contrary to what the farmer said. It is an earthquake. Or it might as well be. We stand and watch, not knowing which foot to move. Thousands of people are losing their jobs, institutions enacted by Congress in our name are being dismantled, the stock market is crashing, the economy is on the verge of recession, and, yes, the price of eggs is going up. And what do we do other than stand in place and say this cannot happen? And why do we say so? It is because the truth, the reality is unbearable. But here we are for the next 4 years at the very least. So cover your heads, folks. The sky is indeed falling.