Living in about 10 countries – as I have – makes one really immune to Nationalism, which is how I like it.
So far I have lived in the following countries:-
England,
Australia,
Tasmania,
England (again),
Singapore,
England (again),
Holland,
France,
Angola,
China,
The Philippines
Malaysia,
Australia (again),
And that is all…..
Towards the end of our stay in Angola I was unlucky enough to catch malaria one day. It seems there are two types of malaria, the one that most people get, and which reoccurs at regular intervals for the rest of your life, or the other main sort, cerebral malaria, which basically kills you in about 72 hours of it kicking in.
Being me, I of course had the cerebral variety.
If you live in a malaria area, after about three months, you have to stop taking anti-malaria medicines, as they will wreck your liver apparently, so you are then dependent on insect repellant to protect yourself. And as I discovered, if you leave even a tiny part of exposed skin uncoated with this repellant, the very small and totally silent Anopheles mosquito will find it and set too to slurp up your blood, and as payment, will give you a good vein full of malaria parasites.
As chance would have it, when the malaria struck me, I was up country in Huambo, visiting and supposedly helping the Halo Trust deminers with various computer problems. As it turned out, this was extremely lucky for me, as I was in an area where malaria was horribly common, and all the local Angolan doctors knew all about it – unlike the worthy western doctors one tended to see in Luanda who habitually treated people with malaria symptoms for flu, as a colleague who was infected on the same day as I was, and who as a result of the misdiagnosis almost died and had to be evacuated to South Africa when it was belatedly realised he was on the point of dying from cerebral malaria, and not simply suffering from a bad go of flu.
The first I knew of my infection was when I developed a nasty head ache one evening, and a general feeling of illness.. Nothing very specific, but I felt lousy. So I took to my bed and thought to simply sleep it off and be better the following morning. Not to be.
As the night passed, my head ache got worse, and I had bad stomach aches and dizziness attacks… But I managed to sleep more or less. However the following morning I told the others that I would spend the day in bed, assuming that a day’s rest and lots of paracetamol would fix me up.
But as the day went on, I began to develop a serious fever and started to hallucinate, and began to feel sicker and more lousy than I had ever felt in my life. One minute I was unbelievably cold, shaking violently and totally uncontrollably, the next I was boiling hot and sweating. And all the while feeling sicker and more awful by the minute. My head was aching fit to bust, my stomach was bloated and hurt like hell, I was dizzy, so much so that there was no way I could stand up, but even lying down the world was spinning around me.
I have never felt so bad in my entire life, and it simply kept getting worse, so when I was in the cold phase of my fever, I was scared I was going to break my teeth as I was shaking so hard and my teeth were chattering so hard.
Luckily Nathanial came back to the house in the early afternoon, took one look at me, and grabbed his malaria test kit, and stuck a pin in my finger to get some blood for the test. It showed that I had malaria, so he picked me up and slung me in the landrover and off we went to the nearest hospital were in no time a large and friendly Angolan doctor saw me, he also took one look, didn’t bother with any tests but simply gave me some medicine or other which was apparently for malaria, and amazingly and miraculously, in a matter of minutes most of the symptoms had disappeared and I felt almost human again.
Once I was more or less back in the word of the living, he explained what the prognosis was if I hadn’t managed to see a doctor before another night had passed – simply put, I would have been dead.
A very sobering thought believe you me.
Anyhow, thanks to whatever the medicine was that he had given me, I didn’t die (you may be surprised to read), and he prescribed some medicine that I would have to take for the next month or so, and told me the worst possible news as well – no beer for at least a month!
Amazingly enough, by the following day I felt well enough to get back to the work I was in Huambo to carry out for the Halo Trust guys, and in due time returned to Luanda and my normal daily life in Angola… None the worse for my malaria experience. But I do have an enormous sympathy for the millions of people every year who are not as lucky as I was, and who die because of malaria. And thus I am a supporter of the Gate’s Foundation’s work in anti-malaria studies in Africa.
And of course, extremely glad that Nathaniel was there to save me as well!!!! Quite literally his prompt actions saved my life, for which I am eternally grateful to him of course.
Chicken racing…… An attraction in Outback Australia.
About a year ago, we discovered a really odd thing in Tambo (A town in the outback which we visited). A hotel there advertised Chicken Racing, which was unusual enough, but they also added free showers to this… So we were fascinated by the free showers (Travelling around Outback Australia we were seriously attracted by the mention of Free Showers) and also by the idea of Chicken Racing and also the idea of eating there…..
What fascinated us was the idea of Chicken Racing, we were intrigued and curious about this… The idea was really strange. So we went and set up our camp (by a river as I recall) and then walked back to the hotel where it was all happening.
So, we went in to the hotel, had showers and then went down and walked through to a back yard, where a lot of people were already gathered, and we sat down by a sort of chicken run, but one that was arranged in a style reminiscent of a Roman Chariot racing circuit (but small). In due time the various chickens were introduced to us, one by one. And they were introduced to us as heroes, one by one. They were variously talked up. The various “heroes” were introduced to us. Their pedigrees were discussed and their various races were discussed at great length.
In due time the way that the races where held were discussed. It appeared that they chased a remote control truck which ran around the course and the chooks chased it.. There was food in it, which was why the chooks chased it.
In due time, the race began, after a load of preparation and bets were laid, some of the bets were amazing! Up to $400 in one case!
The chooks raced around the course, following the truck, except for one, that simply stood still and waited for the truck to come around again….
In due time a winner was declared (not the chook that waited for the truck), and the winner was declared and then the various bets were collected.
And that was it……It was a fascinating event, and finished off with a supper in the pub, which was delicious!
We spent the last weekend, well, actually four days, in a splendid camp with a bunch of our friends. This camp site was a Hipcamp, which is a member of the organisation of Hipcamp (https://www.hipcamp.com/en-AU). We went there with a bunch of friends from our walking group, well actually all of them came to this campsite, so we were there with all our friends!We
This was the place and our vehicles are all over the place….
We had great fun here….. And we really enjoyed ourselves totally.
Our pooch, Gizmo, who always accompanied us in all our various camping exhibitions…. Plus the kitchen.
Local wildlife…. A Goana, this one was about 1 meter long…. This was the second Goana we saw.
We made a sort of rough Tent to protect us from the vicious sun!
We needed 4 wheel drive vehicles to get to the camp site, it was a really rough track.
So all in all, we had a REALLY good time there, all with our 4 wheel drive vehicles, in order to get to the camp site. We had an all wheel drive X-Trail – but we also have a Suzuki Vitara – As one does! But that is Lotty’s car, and it is really rough, so we don’t use it on these trips.
Prince Phillip was born in Corfu, in the most unlikely named place, which was in Corfu town, It was called Mon Repos. Yes, really it was! So in fact, he was a Greek and not British. Just felt like saying that…. Not any reason, merely I felt like saying that.
When Greece was anti-British, as Britain was being horrid about Cypress and looked like Greece was about to go to war with Britain over Cypress, I found myself in Greece, to my horror, and I was really nervous about admitting that I was British. And a Greek said a most remarkable thing to me, when I did admit that I was British. He said, or words to that effect, “Their argument was with the British Government, not the British people, and that therefore I was OK”. I was overwhelmed by this……..
As I said in another post the other day, I used to see the women carrying water to the cafe on the beach at Glyfada, when I was on the beach there. These women used to carry water on their heads, not simply a bit of water, but about 50 litres! They used to carry this on their heads as they walked down the hill (the village they lived in was above the beach at Glyfada). Can you imagine the strength of these women, water weighed 50 kilos, and they walked down the hill with it! Amazing!
While we were living in Beijing, our son approached us with the suggestion that we should build a house with him in Australia – where he was living at the time with his – then- wife. We had intended to retire to France where we could afford to buy a house, in rural France of course.
Our house, as it was actually built!
But we had realised that should he settle in Australia, and we would then be unable to see him apart from brief visits every so aften – we anticipated that our pensions wouldnt allow us to really visit him in Oz. So this seemed like a really good suggestion.
So we made a change in our plans, so no more rural France, but rural Australia instead.
Somehow we couldn’t get our heads around the idea of planning the house, or where it might go. We knew that it would be outside Brisbane, as our son and his wife had settled down there and made a start in getting life organised there. But we knew that it wouldn’t be inside Brisbane, but in one of the country villages that were all around Brisbane.
My son and his wife settled on Samford as a start, we of course, had no idea about this, and felt that one village was as good as another.
The planning phase was gone into in our last period in Beijing, and our first phase of our work in the Philippines, which to be honest we were not too involved in. But happily Jake and Caroline (his wife) were more than happy to busy themselves with. So they rented themselves a house in Fig Tree Pocket (an unlikely named suburb of Brisbane) and lived there happily while they tried to buy a property outside Samford.
This proved to be rather hard, as all the flat properties were much more than we could afford, so it was a case of buying an almost verticle chunk of land. Which they finally did, on top of a hill about half way between Samford village and a place called Dayboro.
This property was part of a Nature Corridor, which meant that we wouldn’t be able to clear all the trees as they were protected for koalas – which was fine with us. So all the tree felling was restricted to the actual site of the house, plus about 20 meters all around the house.
So, that was a commitment……. We had a chunk of Australia to our names, and we now had to think of the house, what sort it would be, and how it would be built.
So, a kit house seemed like a good plan to us all, so we found a place near Sydney that made such kits, and our son and Caroline went ahead and ordered a long single room wide house. We would have the section to the East and they would have the section to the West, a much bigger section, as they were already breeding and needed room for a number of kids.
In another installement I will descibe the whole dreadful experience of building a house, anywhere, not just in Australia………….
Between about 2006 and 2009 we lived and worked in Beijing, Lotty in one International School (Beijing City International School) and I in the Western Academy Beijing (WAB). I was employed as what they called their Production Engineer, which effectively was the equivalent of what I used to do at the Roundhouse in London, in other words, I functioned as their Production Manager, being responsible for the sound and lighting crew of the school. As we had something like 7 venues to deal with, and as they tended to start each morning at about 8 am and finish some time in the evening – with rock concerts, classical concerts, film shows or whatever, we tended to work for about 70 hours a week.
I had a number of Chinese guys working with me, so I found it relatively easy to learn Mandarin (the Chinese dialect spoken in Beijing, and thus the official language of China), except that it is a tonal language, and the tone used can change the meaning of a word totally – for example, the word “Mar”, can mean the following:- Horse, Wife, Arrow and who knows what more? So if you happen to get the tone wrong, you could be saying something like, “I shot my wife at a straw target”, or “I would like to introduce you to my arrow”. When the Chinese use their tones, it is very subtle, and hardly noticeable, but for us Long Noses (Western foreigners) it is extremely tricky! Which makes a language that on the face of it is very simple and logical, incredibly hard to use properly, so I spent my entire time making that sort of mistake – oh well……
While we were living there, the number of cars increased exponentially. When we got there, most people still used bicycles, but by the time we left, every week another 10 000 cars were registered in Beijing alone! This, of course, caused huge traffic jams, sometimes they were up to 100 km long!!!!
Also, the Chinese hadn’t grown up with cars, the way we in the west had done, so they did the most extraordinary things when in cars, or even when simply crossing the road. For example, when driving on a motorway, if they happened to miss their turning, they were perfectly happy to turn around, and drive against the other traffic until they got to their turning, and then leave the motorway. I have seen the crew of a police car happily having a picnic on the hard shoulder of a motor way, and I have also seen a shepherd happily putting his herd of sheep across a motorway – altogether extraordinary!
Also, in all the cities, the two opposing lanes of the roads have large, and very secure, fences on them, to stop people crossing the road anywhere but at the places intended for them to cross – this because people tended to simply wander across the roads anywhere they happened to be – the results of many, many years of only bikes on the roads.
Another hang-over from the days of no cars (for the ordinary people), when an official is being driven somewhere, they have a total right of way, so all other vehicles have to give way to them and their hugely important passenger(s), and the military have even more right of way than the politicians – so if you happen to be driving in Beijing, watch out for large cars with special number plates, they have, and will take, an absolute right of way!
In another post, I shall dwell on yet more curiosities of life in Beijing – a city that I truly enjoyed living in.
I have just read an amazingly funny and anarchic book called Golden Biker, written by the splendidly named Alexander von Eisenhart Rothe which apart from anything else disproves totally the idea that Germans have no sense of humour.
This wonderful ebook which is a sort of “The Marx brothers Meet Easy Rider” story is set in contemporary India and tells the tale of a most unlikely group of people who are – for a whole range of idiotic reasons – chasing each other across India.
I can do no better than quote, rather fully, from the author’s own description of this story. This description sets the tone of the story and is written in the same style as the story itself, so it will give you a good idea of the atmosphere of the ebook:
Brought together in India through a series of hare-brained adventures are Arthur, an old bohemian from Cologne; Albert, otherwise known as Bear, a snack bar owner who emigrated to Goa; Gerd, a German businessman with a mid-life crisis; and Sherie, a stunningly good-looking prostitute from Bombay.
Together, they embark on a mission to find a mystic figure in the Himalayas: The Golden Biker, who supposedly cruises through the mountains on a golden motorbike, to punish the evildoers and give to those who mean well some of his no less mystical marihuana… known among aficionados as the best grass in the world.
However, the route the foursome has to undertake riding some ancient motorbikes called Enfield Bullets, across all of India is rather long and full of danger. Increasingly so, if you have a gang of ill-tempered Indian Mafiosi, two permanently stoned Israeli secret service guys, a gang of politically correct gypsies, one involuntary guru, a stark-naked blowgun expert, a muddle brained but fanatical old Nazi including his private army, as well as two freelance killers from Bombay at your heels.
Continue reading “Ebook Review – Golden Biker; An Insane Romp Through India.”Recently we (Lotty and I) went for a trip to the north of Brisbane, our first time to the middle of Queensland, and it was an amazing experience – to put it mildly!
The first thing that it showed us was how damn big Australia actually is – we drove for days and hardly covered any ground on our map of Queensland. The trip north was reasonably quickly done, as we were signed into a Yoga Retreat at an area called Mission Beach, about almost 2000 km north of Brisbane, so we simply went up the coastal road, which was for the most part, a motorway.
Once the Retreat was over, we headed further north, through Cairns and onto Daintree, where we camped for a few days. Whilst there, we indulged in a river expedition to gaze at the millions of different birds who live in the rain forest up there – and in passing, also gazed in horrid awe at the huge crocodiles who live in that river.
We also saw cattle drinking from the river, with a female crocodile about 2 meters away from them – happily she didn’t grab any of the cattle, presumably she was full?
We then set out to get back to Brisbane, but this time taking our time about it, and using the “inner” road, so we could see the actual scenery of Queensland.
This was an odd experience, not least because of the distances between towns (mostly actually small villages). We quickly came upon road signs that said that the next village was about 400 km away. And that was actually how it was! The road disappeared into a geometric vanishing point.
A typical landscape, and the road which disappears into the distance.
And the only thing we saw on this road (apart from the very occasional village) were trees and Termite nests and very occasionally, another vehicle.
We passed small villages, small towns and occasionally even ghost towns, sundry old buildings, but no one living there, which was odd, but given that most of these villages were built by prospectors who when the gold, coal or whatever mineral they were after was finished, simply moved on, leaving their town to rot. Odd though.
And to cap it all, on the last leg of our journey we found ourselves in a forest, just about 200 km north of where we live, this forest was about 100 km wide, and the road through it was simply a dirt track, so for about 100 km we bumped along a very rough road – which caused my back to be screwed up for several weeks after our trip – the infamous corrugated dirt tracks of the Australian outback!
So, an amazing trip which told us a wee bit more about the country we are living in.. an amazing place!
If you have ever travelled in this area, please let us know via the comments below, so we can share your experiences.
Just before the time that the CIA caused a coup in Greece, popularly known as “The Colonel’s Coup” I found myself wandering around in Crete – an amazingly wonderful and slightly alarming place in those days – about the mid-60’s. A lot of the men walked around with huge and highly decorated knives in their belts, which I gathered they were altogether prepared to use at the drop of a hat.
I got a lift across the island from the guy who was in charge of security at the huge American Airbase on the island, who told me that he had to regularly get airmen taken off the island with no warning as there were fathers, brothers and male cousins looking for them as they had spoken to local girls – a definite no-no.
Anyhow, all that aside, I was heading for a village called Matala which I had heard about – a place where a load of Travelers were living in what we thought were Roman Burial Caves (it turns out they were actually Neolithic living caves) and I thought that might be a pleasant way to spend some time.
So I duly arrived in the village of Matala, which in those days was more or less deserted, just a few houses were inhabited and I seem to recall there was one café and a bakers shop and a couple of inhabited houses. However, the caves, which were on the opposite side of the bay from the village was almost full of people who could be described as Hippies, though they were mostly part time Hippies, not the real thing. So I wandered along the beach to the caves and hunted for one that was empty, which I found on about the third level of the caves, so I moved into it and made it my temporary home.
General view of the caves – mine was in the top layer on its own.
It was in fact a very pleasant cave to live in, as it had a front door and a window that gave a view over the bay and to the – then tiny – and almost deserted village of Matala. It also had a bed, which was simply a flat area dug out of the wall of the cave which had obviously been intended ( we thought) for the dead Romans, but it now turns out was the original beds of the Neolithics who lived there and who had dug the caves out.
On a slightly gruesome note, during the war, the Cretan Resistance used the caves – we were told – to dump the dead bodies of the German soldiers they had killed, so there were quite a few human bones knocking around the caves, which the people living in the caves used as jewelry which was rather odd… Young girls wandering around with Human collar bones on string around their necks.
All that aside, the people who lived in the caves formed a friendly and close-knit group of people, much given to communal meals around bonfires to gaze at the stunning sunsets over the sea and I had no trouble fitting into the group.
So I spent a couple of months pleasantly in among these good souls, enjoying the peace and tranquility of living in the Cave Community and then headed out again to further explore Crete – An amazing island full of the most extra-ordinary people. I mean the actual Cretans here, they were still living in those days as they had for centuries. The film Zorba the Greek gave a very actual picture of how it was in those days – both the good and the bad aspects. Notably the police were all mainland Greeks, as the government in Greece knew damn well that when dealing with an “honour killing” or some similar, there was no way that a Cretan cop would deal with it as a crime. Odd folk I found.
They all had an enormous admiration for Australia as Australian soldiers had apparently had the same enthousiasm for killing German soldiers as the Cretans when Germany invaded Crete, so many an elderly Cretan villager expressed happily how Australian soldiers had killed German paratroopers with their knives – Gruesome!
Here is a video that I came across on Youtube of a bunch of elderly women describing how they passed their time on Matala in their youth. Altogether rather amazing – seeing how those Hippy like young girls I knew then had grown up into really rather reasonable adults…..
Fun, eh?
If this post sparks any thoughts in you, please share them via the comments section below – simply scroll on down and you will see it. We will be really appreciative of any thoughts you might have on the topic of how people deal with life, deal with living in historical ruins and similar…
OZTHOUGHTS 