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Sichuan Earthquake

God, where are you?

The world has broken and

I am surrounded by death,

It could have been me

And I am so ashamed

I’m here when young lives

They were lives once

Are lying in the broken world

Still like eggs in the market

When snow fills the roof

Bringing it to the ground

Burma Flood

Gods upstairs fighting

crashing and throwing

buckets of water

banging the pails

shaking trees like

rice in a winnow bowl

then the world filled with water

houses drowned and we ran

without hills to help us

no Gods put hills here

our houses were too low

so my daughter drowned

my wife was swept away

she didn’t come back

I am waiting for

government gods in Yangon

to undo the work

of the gods upstairs

but they have not come

my neighbour has the

bad shit another flood

and her body will be

a dry husk of rice

to be planted

never to grow again

This week I watched with mounting horror as the news of the terrible earthquake in Sichuan province of China became worse and worse. Today the floodgates of my heart overflowed when I received news that three of my students have lost friends or relatives in it and that others are waiting anxiously for news of loved ones in the area. Another girl used to impress me with her dedicated participation in an organization of student volunteers who go to poorer areas to help villagers. Today I learned that she was helping a year ago in one of the schools that collapsed and that the village she went to stay in for a week or more has been totally destroyed. I can’t imagine how you feel Christina. Your heart must be full of sorrow and you must be searching for reasons in your mind. Me too. I don’t know why such things happen.

My friend Carole is teaching my classes and that’s how I know about my students’ grief. Carole has been doing the only thing possible at times like these, opening her heart and her arms to comfort her students. I wish I were there to do the same. She cries with them and so do I. Carole sent me a link to a site with lots of tragic photos of scenes in the earthquake zone, including the horror of dead children in the ruins of their schools. Why look at such things? Because to see these made it real to me and I wept uncontrollably, as we all should.

The Chinese government has responded quickly and efficiently, pouring troops into the area to save who can be saved. The photos also illustrate their excellent effort. Well done China.

Let us not forget the people of the Delta area in Burma (Myanmar) whose government has obstructed international efforts to help and perhaps even taken possession of aid supplies without deploying them to the devastated areas. Now the one and a half million people affected by the flood are in danger of epidemics of diseases that flourish in the conditions left by the cyclone, of polluted water and the rise in populations of disease carrying insects. With almost all crops destroyed by the torrential rain and flooding they need food to be given to them and their government is obstructing its delivery. There is a real chance of many thousands more dying for these reasons.

The experience of being a patient in hospital can be quite bizarre. It is an abnormal situation in that it is not a chosen part of anyone’s daily life and the routines and procedures often bear little relationship to the way most of us want our day to go. It is a low stimulus environment, apart from the high stimulus moments when a needle or other sharp object is used to penetrate the skin. In such an environment small things assume inordinate importance.

Meals are a highlight of the day, breaking the monotony of lying in bed hour after hour waiting for the next nurse or doctor to come and make ‘obs’, observations often accompanied by the aforementioned jabs to extract varying quantities of blood or insert a quantity of a healing substance. Bless ‘em, they’re only doing their job of trying to save ones life! I became hyper aware of even small things and had to tell myself it would be inappropriate for me to get angry when I found the butter was missing from my meal allocation twice in a row. My anger management technique was to start saying to myself mentally, ‘The king told the Queen and the Queen told the dairymaid, I do like a little bit of butter to my bread.’ That’s a misquote from A.A.Milne’s ‘Christopher Robin. Eventually I made it an opportunity for communication by telling the meal delivery girl that I would have to request a Commission of enquiry into why there was no butter on my meal tray twice and recited those lines to her. I also told a really beautiful young doctor who was one of the team looking after me. They both loved it. I guess hospitals and their rigid routines can be boring for staff too and a friendly patient can help make their day. I hope so. Glad to be of assistance.

Hey! Look at the strange creatures we have in Brisbane! I was really happy to find these three lovely creatures in George Street, Brisbane. The sculptor, Chris Trotter is very good and you can see more of his work on his website http://www.trotter.com.au/homepage/index2.html  Have a look. I always enjoyed the street sculptures in China and have been pleased to see that Brisbane has progressed in that area since I have been away.

I thought I had finished writing critical appraising articles about China but there is one thing I rediscovered amongst my notes today that I will write because it holds an important caution for tourist thinking of buying electronic goods there and to any young student of mine who might one day think of starting a business in selling electronic goods. Don’t do it this way guys. It is really well known that one should never handle electronic circuits with uncovered hands or fingers. Those circuits are etched so finely that just a trace of oil from the hands can destroy the circuit or just a tiny spark of static electricity can wipe portions of memory, again rendering the circuit useless.

In Wuhan I had two experiences of witnessing shop assistants demonstrating ignorance or blithe disregard of those two essential pieces of knowledge. The first was when I went to buy an auxiliary hard drive for my computer. It was one of those little ones that fit in a small case and connect to the computer through a USB port. The drive came separately from the case and had to be fitted in and the sales assistant knew it was good service for him to put them together for me. I watched horrified as he put his hands all over the circuits on the drive and I had to complain to his boss. Fortunately the boss knew some English and together with my rudimentary Chinese we soon understood each other and he replaced the drive with another, and took great care not to handle the sensitive parts.

Not long after that I went looking to an electronic sales centre for additional RAM for my laptop and rejected stall after stall as I looked at memory sticks lying exposed on the counters and assistants handling the memory sticks with their fingers and ensuring that they would not last long. At last I was relieved to find a shop staffed by a person who obviously knew his work and handled each electronic product carefully by its edges, avoiding contact with the vulnerable circuits.

To Westerners looking forward to shopping in China I tell you that many Chinese shopkeepers do not know much at all about the products they sell. Their job is to sell and to do that they memorise the blurb on the packages and the manufacturers leaflets. They have little understanding of the functions of devices they have in stock and if it is not in their stock they will never have heard of it. The concept of keeping up with the literature has never entered their minds and is certainly not encouraged by the shop bosses. Rule through keeping the peasants ignorant was a common power ploy in Chinese history and perhaps most bosses use it to this day. This disadvantages any customer who wants real information also,of course.

After a few years of experiences of shopping in this kind of environment I found it almost exhilarating when I discovered a shop assistant who had knowledge of his or her product or even the stock she carried, without having to consult senior staff or a book. I remember one charming girl in a cellphone shop who was able to answer questions I put to her and I took two friends there to buy their phones. It was appropriate and a pleasure to praise her for her knowledge and tell her she was exceptional as a shop assistant because of it.

To my Chinese friends, if you are ever in the position of selling make it one of your interests in life to know your field. Find out everything about the rival products and be able to tell the customer about new models that are arriving next week or even in six months time. Then also get to know the products so well you can tell the customers the advantage of one over the other and, with cellphones, what services they can connect to, who will provide the services and at what cost. If you are clear, informed and honest and want the customer’s satisfaction instead of a one time profit you will get repeat business. This stuff is so rare in China, well, Wuhan at least, that you will soon rise above your competitors.

Three more days before I move into my new home. I have been given a lot of household things and furniture but have still had to spend a lot of time reading catalogues, visiting shops, talking to salespeople and finally buying things that are just plain necessary for a householder. I can’t imagine how I would have done if I had no savings at all. By the time I actually move into the place there won’t be much left but I’ll have a place that not only feels comfortable but looks good. That’s important to me. It will have my style stamped on it, even to the extent of disguising the floral pattern of my lovely mother’s good quality three-seater sofa with a couple of Indian cotton bedspreads and a beautiful Yi minority patchwork from China.

I’ll have all the necessities to cook and to eat what I cook and I’ll be able to wash clothes and clean floors. The Queensland government will chip in $200 because I bought a washing machine that is economical in both power and water. However, so far I haven’t arranged for the connection of power and gas and the internet. So far I haven’t been able to make the choice of internet service provider though I have found a site that makes it a little clearer. At least I know that the only company that does a proper national wireless internet service is Big Pond and it is way out of my price range. Now I have to choose a way of getting a home based fast internet service. More research tomorrow as the decision is urgent. After a weekend of arranging my home I will knuckle down and take a professional approach to writing.

The advantage of being regarded as pensionable is that I have a financial base, albeit not one which will keep me very comfortable. That will enable me to build up my writing experience on a hobby level at first and then to the point where I bring in enough money to say goodbye to the pension and become part of the respectable workforce again. There’s the plan, that and being healthy enough to have reasonable quality of life.

My bedroom is furnished and the living room is taking shape. I have two desks but no table to eat from just yet. One of the desks will do at first. I’ll buy a mattress on the day of the move so I’ll be able to sleep in the sheets, under the cool weather quilt, with my head on the pillows that I bought. Sometime next week I’ll be blogging from my new home.

A task that used to be very straightforward has become a complex mental maze today. That is the task of getting a telephone service. It seems to me that Australia’s blind faith in Competition has failed the consumer in this area. The easiest component is the landline, but even with only two service providers competing householders have to find a plan that suits their needs. That sounds good doesn’t it? However, not being an accountant or one of those people who keeps track of every penny and counts phone calls, I have no accurate idea of what my needs are.

It is still worse when one goes to choose a mobile phone service. With numerous companies competing there is a great variety of plans on offer and, frankly, I and most consumers find it a tedious and time-consuming occupation to sift through them all and try to process them so as to truly understand which is the best. Once again, an accountancy degree would be handy. The ability to use a database programme really well might make comparisons easy but unless we have a real understanding of how many local, long distance and international calls and SMS messages we will make in the next year or two there is no way we will finally make an intelligent decision. In the end most of us just find the nicest salesperson to agree with and hope for the best.

As for the strange and supposedly attractive practice these companies have of giving free calls to people who use the same company, do we take a survey of our friends before buying a phone? Yeah, right.

The internet is also a branch of telephony and the situation there is no better. It is still possible to buy a disk that gives a certain number of hours online, but that seems only to apply to dial-up, the slowest way to get online. Broadband can be connected through the phone line or cable and of course there are plans for those two. This time we have to be tech savvy and beaurocratic enough to guess or know how many gigabytes of information we will upload and download over the term of the plan. No way!

I went into a store to sign up for the wireless internet a nice salesperson had recommended the other day and was asked to fill in a form. I had guessed my requirements but the form defeated the seller’s purpose. First I had to put down my home address and my previous address and how long I had stayed there. Four weeks did not seem to be acceptable for the present address. It is only temporary, till I move into my next home. The previous one is in China and they would not understand it if I wrote it. I was required to put down a home phone and did not have one. I have a mobile but for some reason these purveyors of high technology had not understood that some people just don’t want a home phone these days and can be contacted through a cellphone. When I realized that a credit check was required I walked out of the shop. Since I was cheated in China a few years ago I have had a bad credit record, even though I paid my credit cards out as soon as I was financial again it makes no difference.

In the end my question is this. Who foisted this Gordian knot on the Australian people and why? Who is gaining from the impenetrability of the mass of information required to make a good choice of telephone services? How long are we going to have to put up with this unwieldy and unfriendly situation? When are we going to be able to walk into a shop and buy a connection or a phone which will let us make local, STD and ISD calls as we wish, without having to sign up for ’special’ deals and study for days to choose what we want? When will the government realize that the cost of the time taken for Australian people to choose a phone service must run to millions of dollars annually? Let’s change to something simpler.

Author’s note: If anything in this blog does not accurately represent the situation regarding telephony in Australia it is the author’s opinion that it proves his point.

Every day, as I visit shops and go to medical appointments and just wander around, I see people of the Chinese race and always wonder, do they come from China or are they from Singapore or Taiwan or are they Koreans or Japanese or from somewhere else. Brisbane is a pot-pourri of the human race now and so many of the faces that pass me are not European in their origin. I’ve said before that I love this diversity and I feel my life in Australia will be much richer for it. We are located next to Asia and it could even be said that we are just the biggest island in Asia and that the idea we are a little continent in our own right is just a British conceit. Now we are becoming more obviously Asian by welcoming our fellow Asians to join us and transform us.

Much more relaxed and confident than I once was, it is easy for me to greet people with a, Where are you from? It is a good conversation starter and is brightening my days. Occasionally I will meet a mainland Chinese and say, Ni hao. Over the past few days I have clearly overheard some people speaking putonghua (Mandarin) and said, ‘Qing wen, nimen shi Zhonguo ren ma?’ (Hello, are you Chinese?). I had a nice little interaction with a couple in the Centrelink queue and a male student through this question.

I do miss China and my friends there and I hope that I will make some Chinese friends in Brisbane and that they will encourage me to continue with my putonghua and even improve it. When I get into my new home in a week’s time I will set a study programme and try to improve the basic knowledge that can build into conversational ability when I have the opportunity to talk with Chinese people.

The Brisbane bus service is excellent! What a difference from the last time I lived in Brisbane, twenty years ago. In those days it was common to get on a bus and ask what the fare was to your destination and be met with a surly response from a driver who seemed to think you should know how much in advance and have the correct change ready so he could rush on his way. These days the drivers are really helpful and never give you the feeling they are in a hurry. I have seen them get out of their seat to help disabled people and young women with prams. The other day a woman gave the driver her baby to hold while she loaded her pram. The buses have special platforms at the front where luggage or a folding pram can be stowed. Next to those platforms is a row of seats that fold down to make a wheelchair space and there is also a ramp that can be lowered at the front door so a wheelie can mount or dismount the vehicle. I noticed today that there is a special bell that warns the driver that a wheelie wants to get off so he can get the ramp ready. Passengers are encouraged to leave the front seats vacant for the aged and infirm. Drivers drive carefully, without the sudden acceleration and braking that used to throw the passengers around in the past. Congratulations to Brisbane transport for an amazingly effective training programme that has resulted in passengers feeling as though they have been given priority over the timetable. Intelligent improvements to the roadways with lots of exclusive bus lanes has greatly increased reliability of arrival times too. And it is wonderful to sit on a bus again with no one lighting up a cigarette to pollute my air. Wuhan people, just sit and wish you were here!

I have not written lately as I have been very sick but now I am not so bad. Soon after I arrived back in Australia I booked myself into a hospital where they found my heart condition had become much worse. The doctors would not let me go home for nine days, until they had my blood pressure, heart rate, sugar levels, and the level of a substance called warfarin into the normal range. They looked at my heart through a high tech machine and measured its action then told me my heart is operating at one fifth normal efficiency. That’s scary guys! I am going to be the most co-operative patient in the world from here on and take all of my pills every day, eat only healthy food, drink only healthy drinks (even water!) and walk and walk until my heart begins to function more normally and even after that take really good care of myself for the rest of my life.

The main effect on my life is tiredness. I am always at least a little tired. I have found myself a place to live and will move in but I have to ask family members to carry everything for me. I’m just not capable of doing it. If I lift something that would have been no trouble a couple of years back I find myself puffing and panting and having to sit down to get my breath back. There is no way I can take part in carrying furniture up stairs.

Fortunately I have an excellent family who are not only going to help me set up my new place and bring utilities (trucks) and trailers (no not caravans to live in, you Americans, box thingies towed behind a car to carry stuff), but they are giving me so much stuff I wonder where I am going to put it all. What a great new start I will have as I settle in to Australia again.

Australia has a great though often criticised Social Security system and I am eligible for disability support. It is basic but can sustain a person. My hope is to pick up work through the internet and earn as much as I can from home. I am not able to do full-time work but as my health improves through my new lifestyle I should be able to take on more, in stages as I become capable of maintaining the effort.

This blog might make some of you feel a little sad as I have been having a difficult time, however, I am on track for a better future. I will continue to blog and let all my friends who drop in here how I am going. Also I will blog for fun, giving comments and observations of what I see around me and what concerns me or gives me joy in the world.