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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.

It was Wednesday morning and Wuhan airport had been closed for three days by the snow. The media were calling it a snow disaster for Wuhan and people were dying as flimsy roofs were collapsing, built without permit and with no inkling that there would ever be snow like this in Wuhan. Transport routes were cut and fruit and vegetables were not arriving for market. it was this Wednesday that I had chosen for my departure. BMW called the airport and the early news was good. It was open. My friend Michael, who was to have arrived in Wuhan on Sunday, was amazed at my luck.

BMW and I lugged my cases downstairs and along the central driveway of the estate to hail a cab. About half an hour later, fingers freezing and painful we at last found an unoccupied taxi and drove across to Wuhan to be greeted by our friends at the Hangda company. The journey had taken about forty minutes more than usual so by the time they fed us a farewell feast it was time to go to the airport. With their usual generosity they had provided a company car and driver so I was at Tian He Fei Ji Chang at just the right time. I was soon waiting for the gate to open and the runway remained clear. My flight to Korea, where I would transfer to an Australian bound aeroplane, left exactly on time.

The staff were excellent, courteous and attentive on both flights. There was a momentary freezing blast through a gap in the sheltered walkway to the terminal but I had little need of the thermal underwear and heavy Malboro jacket I had worn. After the flight to Australia was aloft and cruising I went to the airport loo and shed the thermals. The temperature was warmish even then, but not too bad.

The journey was as usual with airplane journeys, somewhat boring, low stimulus. My companion was a young Brisbane man who had just been on tour in Europe and was constantly coughing. It sounded pretty nasty and he assured me everyone on his bus tour had succumbed to it. I determined not to allow it to conquer me.

I didn’t sleep a wink and had mild discomfort with my breathing at times, but sipping various drinks kept a dry mouth symptom under control and I consider I did well. We landed in Brisbane at 6.10 a.m.

The whole trip was routine, from -7 degrees in Wuhan to about 23 degrees in Brisbane at a time of year that is often a very unpleasant 30+. There was a small time dissonance about when I was expected by my family but by the time I had converted my cash and bought a phone simcard Peter, my son, arrived to get me. he saved me the problem of trying to haul forty-something kilograms of luggage up a central city station staircase and we were soon in his car on the way home. An hour or two of winding down and chat and I went to sleep for the first time in about thirty hours.

Just before I decided to leave China it began to snow. As I prepared myself psychologically and logistically the temperature descended and it became very difficult for me to leave the house as the cold air entering my lungs made my symptoms immediately worse. The day of departure came nearer and I slowly made sense of my belongings and explored how to arrange them and have them transferred home. BMW gradually focussed on my situation and in the end made all the difference between my bringing the majority of my treasures to Australia or having to leave them behind. In four years I had a nice little collection of paintings, ornaments, and craft items as well as various books and other papers that will help me never to forget the Middle Kingdom.

I had collected various friends too, people who had made my stay in China easier, each in their own way. They are the people who helped me retain my faith in the moral core of China, people who are as much against the opportunists, exploiters, cheats and thieves who darken that great country’s character and give her a deservedly bad reputation throughout the world. I met some of the people who see clearly through all of that and want it changed if they ever get the power to do it. I salute you, my wonderful friends and though I was not able to contact all of you I am sure you know if you are one of the ones I am talking about or if you are one of the others. Don’t be too humble, your humility is one of the ways in which you are better than we brash arrogant Westerners. My friends, those of true spirit, will be treasured in my heart. I hope you keep in touch with me and I will try to keep a habit of contacting you too.

As the snow fell each day I spent time remembering those true friends and organizing those material aids to memory. I gained some control over the symptoms that sent me home though I was unable to overcome them completely. When the day came for departure I was ready.

After asking advice from a few friends about the best carrier to send my ‘Art Gallery’, my collection of gifts, souvenirs and other memorabilia home by it seemed the German company DHL was in the lead. There were two problems. The first was that the impressive web site seemed designed to communicate its information to big companies who could afford to employ someone to attend seminars on ‘Understanding how to ship things through DHL’. As a mere expat teacher who just wanted to send some nice things home to help me remember my time in China I felt snubbed. My friends in the Hangda company said they would have a DHL rep come round to give a quote at a not too horrendous rate and I felt relieved. Then they said I should go to the website, download an invoice form, print it and fill it in ready for the rep’s visit, and I began to hear the word ‘impossible’ chanting in my brain like a work by Philip Glass. Luckily another friend asked if I had tried the Post Office. 

That humble institution had been eliminated early in the search, for reasons such as, reputation for disappearance of items during transit, refusal to take DVDs, slow service, etc. BMW and I checked the website and found my things could be sent for less than half the cost of the German company. Though it was said that DVDs for private use could be delivered by DHL I had decided to leave my 283 disks behind, selling them to BMW who was happy to keep them. We had spent many happy hours watching them together. MONEY was also very important to me by now as I wondered how to re-establish my life again in the wonderful world of Oz where the yellow brick roads require cars that work without too much maintenance or too many repairs.

The Post office won the day after agonies of choices. We were helped by our friend the local shopkeeper to find a strong young woman with a handcart to help us and got boxes from the PO to pack things in. It was a last minute process and not all of my allocations of things to boxes were clever. On Tuesday morning BMW and I and the strong young woman went to the PO with four boxes and a bag of clothes to transfer to another box.

The first box was handed over for checking and when we answered ‘crockery’ to a question about one item the clerk told us it would be broken and tried to take it out. I laughed and told her to leave it in. it was unthinkable at that stage to consider changing anything to another box and giving it to DHL who guarantee there will be no breakages. I had such a struggle to organize things that far that I had no energy to rethink. The big snow in Wuhan was causing all sorts of difficulties including disrupting international postage services. Somehow international mail could not be sent if the PO was not online and the connection had failed every afternoon for a few days. This made me edgy when the box tying process took a very, very long time and other customers came thrusting their goods at the clerk, who would obligingly put our work aside and serve them. Then we were given forms in quintuplicate to fill out and we borrowed a pen and set to work. This branch was out of the largest box size and I thought I would need two, not one but the clerk and I pushed worthy of a wool presser and squeezed clothes and sleeping bag into one. We had to write the address for the sender in Chinese and the receiver in English in prescribed places on each box.

Then we paid a small fee to the box seller/packer/inspector and moved on to the counter marked ‘International’ where a leisurely young man did his job of checking that addresses were in the right place and accepting the boxes for transit to Australia. The clerk’s main job seemed to be to check the quintuplicate forms for legibility and they weren’t. BMW and I returned to the desk with the pens and stamps and glue and  drew over the writing on almost every page of these poor quality duplicating sheets before they were finally accepted. Finally the insouciant young fellow finished weighing the boxes and sticking some of the duplicate forms on them and gave me the bill. I paid and we left. The payment was the only part of the process I was happy with as it really didn’t cost much at all. Much less than DHL. I was told the boxes would not arrive for three months and when I took that in I wished I had been more practical in my packing scheme and realized I would have to buy more undies when I got to Australia. Then I just turned and reeled off out of there into the -7 degree cold and went to the tea shop for a warm drink before going home to do the last of the organizing of my suitcases and carry on backpack.

Hugh stumbled out of the bedroom, drawn toward the kitchen by a savory smell that should not have been there.

‘Good morning,’ said a bright voice and he stared into his medium sized cooking pot where a tiny person had just popped its head above the boiling water to greet him. ‘I am Dumpling Dubya the Jiaozi Fairy and I have just made you breakfast.’

Hugh couldn’t think how to reply. He was never very bright in the morning, so he just said, ‘Why are you green?’

‘I’m a qing cai,’ came the answer. ‘Have some dumplings.’

Hugh grabbed a pair of chopsticks and took the first steaming hot dumpling from the bowl now on the small wooden table.

Wait! The vinegar,’ and a small trickling sound accompanied a brown stream of the best jiaozi cu into the bowl. Wonderful!

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me, we’re friends.’

‘Good.’

Glossary: jiaozi  pron.jow zi. Chinese savoury dumplings, delicious parcels of flour batter around a meat, vegetabel or mixed filling, served hot with vinegar.

cu difficult for Westerners to pronounce. The c is a cross between t and s, said at the same time. cu is vinegar.

xing cai  pron. x varies from sh to s followed by y, so shing or sying, c as above ai as in tie. Closest to shing tie, a vegetable tasty in dumplings.   qing cai (corrected) Q is pronounced ch, as in chip or chook. Thanks for the correction BMW.

There is one type of tragedy in China that I have been hearing about constantly since I came here, but it has never come closer than now. I was chatting with a friend the other night and she told me that she had received bad news from two friends. The first was that the brother of a friend had been killed in a traffic accident. You have heard my opinions on Chinese driving, particularly in Wuhan so I won’t go further this time. The second was a tragedy that has been all too common in China and is as strong an indication as any of the ignorant, self-serving, and callously neglectful attitude to business that is so often found in this spiritually disoriented nation.

When in High School one of my friend’s schoolmates had an accident serious enough to require a blood transfusion. This girl grew up to be clever and attractive, completed a university degree, and left her home town to gain a good job in Beijing, where she met a handsome young man and fell in love. Their love grew, then they decided to marry. They chose to obey the government regulation that young couples must have a medical examination before marriage. That is when tragedy revealed its presence. The young woman is HIV positive.

I can only speculate on other aspects of this tragedy. The fiancee might also have HIV as they have been living together for some time. If he hasn’t it is likely that his family will make them separate, such is the outcome oriented and materialistic attitude to marriage among Chinese, and the power of parents over ‘children’. There are many Chinese who rise above this culture so let me not assume but hope that this young man has sufficient love to care for his beloved through the terrible future as HIV turns into AIDS and she gradually descends to death. Or will the course of her progression be slower than his, if he has it?

How could she have been given infected blood? Ten years ago, when she was given the transfusion, AIDS was well known, and infection prevention strategies were no longer news in the medical world. But teams of blood buyers were touring districts in China buying blood from anyone they could persuade, collecting it with unsterilized equipment. These people were interested in gaining quantity at the cheapest price possible and didn’t give a damn about the welfare of the donors. They would then take the ‘product’ to hospitals and sell it and the hospitals would buy it with scant regard to the integrity of the supply process.

I cried as the enormity of what my friend was telling me hit home. A young woman and young man’s lives ruined. One, and perhaps two people preparing for happiness given instead sentences to early death. The killer an institution that was founded to save lives. When will such crimes cease in this terrible world of ours?

I am pleased to say that my employment experience in China has ended on a good note. My contract was not clear about whether the university I have been working at had to pay me a one way airfare home after teaching for one semester, so I was prepared for the worst. I will name this institution because they chose to interpret the policy in my favour and also gave me my holiday bonus. So today I had the equivalent of a thousand Aussie dollars delivered to me, refunding my fare home and giving me the holiday bonus. Fine people. Thank you to the staff of Huazhong Keji Daxue, Wuchang Fenxiao (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuchang Branch). I wish you all well for the future.

I must say my experience at that University has been entirely satisfactory. Senior staff were cordial in their relations with me and whenever I asked for help they tried their best to accommodate my request, within the limitations of the system they must work within. I particularly thank Professor Gu, for hiring me, Professor Li for being such a helpful and friendly supervisor, Mrs. Liu whose generous approval of financial matters is noted above, Rocky and Amber for being the best foreign liaison officers I can imagine, as well as the staff responsible for classroom equipment who gave me so much help operating the computers for me and helping me change rooms when I needed to use special equipment. Thank you also to teacher Wang, Emil, Ann, and others for your friendship to me.

Goodbye to all of you and you can be sure it is with regret that I faced the realities of my health condition and asked leave to return home.