While I was working and living in China, I had a number of experiences that were – for me – tricky to deal with. I had all manner of work related experiences and life experiences.
One such work experience was the way we worked in the school I was employed in (Western Academy Beijing – better known as WAB) . As I have said we worked a hell of a lot of hours, much like the Roundhouse Theatre. We worked from about 7 o’clock to about 11 o’clock every day, starting from the Early Learners Centre and working until about 11 o’clock in the evening with a rock show, and in between we had films, and other entertainments. So basically it was non-stop all day long. Sometimes we had a relaxed day, which we celebrated!!!
But generally we worked all the hours that we were sent.
Normally we worked from about 10 until about 6 in the evening. With exceptions!
When we had Pop Concerts, we worked until they were finished (obviously), quite often they were added to by other International Schools in Beijing which was fun. I drew upon my professional experience a lot for these concerts – shades of my Roundhouse days – in was much the same. It was a mix of groups, a Heavy Metal group or a folk group, following on from each other, a real mix of groups! In my Roundhouse days we never mixed them up in that way, we tended to have a “type” of group, so Heavy Metal with Heavy Metal and such like….. Ah Doctor John!
We worked on these which was one thing we did, but otherwise we worked on kids talking or another thing…. We were really impressed by the kids presenting themselves…. They were so professional. Striding around the stage as if they possessed it.
We used to have demonstrations of the lights, in which we had the kids standing around the stage and shone different coloured lights on them. Which was intriguing. We discovered that blue gels in spotlights had a really weird effect. If we shone blue, simply blue lights on the kids, they were hard to focus and the weird thing was that they sort of were hard to see clearly. Odd effect.
So we worked all the hours that God sent, and generally functioned as serious professional roadies, which was entertaining, so the long hours really didn’t matter.
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.
Further to my worries about communicating that I referred to the other day, I am having increased trouble communicating with anyone. So much so, that I am avoiding at all times conversations with anyone……. So much so, that I am rapidly gaining the impression of the “strong, silent, man”. I am silent in conversations….. This is not a new thing, as I was also silent for my whole life, avoiding chat with anyone with a fanatical effort at all times. I was the one that at a party stood silently apart, and took no part in general chat. This was a real problem when I was working in museums and such like, when they had an opening party for a new exhibition, I used to stand apart, silently…. Taking no part in the various festivities.
I talked to my colleagues, but not to others who I didn’t know, which was embarrassing for me and useless for the institute I worked for. The idea of a Production Manager or a model maker who was silent was an embarrassment for all concerned! I used to hold conversations in my head, but not aloud! Which was embarrassing and rather pointless!
My life is going upside down, as I live life here. My life in Australia is going upside down and frazzled while I watch. I am currently deep inside a language loss, which is really bothersome. My inner language is not effected, but the language I use everyday to talk to others is really deeply effected. I frequently find myself suffering from a language loss when talking to others.
Yesterday, I was at the library for a rather easy to solve problem (I was there to get my ereader sorted out), and I found myself completely speechless when I attempted to explain why I was there to the bloke from the library, I simply was at a loss for words when I tried to explain why I was there. Totally! I find myself at a loss for words frequently, even with my wife!
A lot of time I find myself giving the wrong answer to a question, I say no when I mean yes…. It is horrid!
I find myself in conversations with good friends, which go completely the wrong way, I want to say, ‘yes’, but I say ‘no……’
Also, I am having problems with spelling, I cant find words, which I know really well, I simply can’t find them, and I more or less forget ideas. The other day I was telling a friend about the Spooky Men’s Chorale, and could I remember what they were called…. Forget it!
All sorts of problems are happening to me, and I seem to be going gaga rather rapidly, which is really distressing!
However, it is absolutely my spoken language, my thoughts are still the same as always, in other words, I have no difficulty “thinking” thoughts, but expressing them is hell.
I have come across an extremely unusual artist in the last few days, a most extraordinary artist, whose work appeals to me! His work has attracted to me in the most unusual fashion.
So, let us see his work and then go on about it.
He goes about his work in the most unusual way…. As you can see. He says in his website that he gets inspiration from his wandering mind….. He says it all in his website.
Redmer Hoekstra (1982) graduated from the Art Academy in Zwolle as a visual artist and illustrator in 2009. “I’ve always loved alienation and fantasizing, daydreaming. As a child I had all kinds of theories about how the world worked. At the Academy I was able to rediscover this and process this in to my work. How things work is a fascination of mine and in many drawings you can find this. I open up appliances and objects and freely change what is inside. Often a subject gets a completely different feeling or meaning. I play with form, meaning and function, while new combinations arise. Often surprising, strange and funny but also with a strange kind of logic, a fantastic and surreal world.
I find my inspiration riding the train or on the road, where my mind can float through the landscape and new connections between things appear. A philosophical view of the world and myself. Who am I? What is my reality and how do I get to decide how it looks and works? They are pen drawings on paper. I work with fine liners . By shading I create light and space, which gives a drawing life. It is important to draw as realistically as possible, to make the alienation most powerful. It’s a laborious and almost artisanal technique . A drawing on average takes 32 to 40 hours.
So all that remains is to illustrate this blog with his work……..
So, there you have it…. His artistic endeavours.
His art is attractive, and I love it, the weirdness of it, and the unusual way he goes about his artwork, drawing it as opposed to using lithography or etching attracts me too.
It remains only to post his website…… That way you will be able to get in touch with him, or – even -buy some of his artwork! https://www.redmerhoekstra.nl/
Not only the original USA one, but also a rather younger Australian one are there to give us free ebooks at the click of a mouse. The reason perhaps for there being two of them is that the copyright laws in the two countries are different. In the USA a book is covered by copyright for at least 70 years after the death of the author, in Australia on the other hand, it is only protected for 58 years, which means that books written as recently as about 1955 can be found on that site, as opposed to the USA site whose most recent ebook has to be from about 1943 – a very different era of writing.
Admittedly the USA site is much larger, and has a remarkably wide range of ebooks on offer, and in a number of languages, but the Aussies are catching up quite well.
Strictly speaking, the way copyright laws work, it is illegal for someone living in the USA to download an ebook written in say, 1955, as that ebook would still be under copyright in the USA, whilst the same ebook may be downloaded perfectly legally by someone living in Australia – yet another example of how the Internet makes a nonsense of so many national laws.
Happily for those of you who do not live in Australia, unlike Amazon et. al, the Aussie Gutenberg doesn’t give a damn where you live, and will perfectly happily allow all you good citizens of the USA to download ebooks published in 1955 without a care in the world. This is how it should be on the Internet of course.
Anyhow, I just thought you might like to know that there are two Gutenbergs, each with a completely different collection of ebooks for your reading pleasure, and in all standard ebook formats as well.
So off you go to check them both out and see what amazing reading matter you can find for yourself there…. But, sadly if Stephen King is your sort of writer, you won’t find anything of that ilk there.
Nationalism is rubbish, as an idea, and as a way of thinking. The idea of feeling proud of your nation is silly. The idea of being proud of your nationality is absurd too.
I wonder why they feel obliged to have a national flag flying on their property. It is silly and a waste of a flag having it fluttering above your property, unless it is the Angolan flag, which is a curious mix of a communist flag and Angolan.
The Angolan Flag… In all its glory!
The idea of nationalism is absurd, as all peoples in the world are consumed with the same ideas – earning a living, rearing their kids and enjoying life, universal ideas and needs, and being bothered about your nationalism is absurd. I have lived in a number of countries, 10 to be exact, and I am convinced that nationalism is absurd, I can’t imagine what it is based upon. Is your country better than another one? Nope, they are all the same, people trying to earn a living, rear their kids and so on.
The idea of Nationalism as it is based on nothing really apart from a mixed up idea of “My country, right or wrong”, which is really not really an idea.
“I hope that people will come to realise that there is one race – the human race – and we are all members of it” in the immortal words of Philosopher Margaret Attwood.
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!
OZTHOUGHTS 