Category: observations

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Merry Xmas & All That

I saw these two warmly dressed Asian  Buddhist monks in a large mall outside Boston well after Xmas having great fun in the fake snow with the empty fake gift box while a third monk took their picture.
The basic doctrines of early Buddhism, which remain common to all Buddhism, include the four noble truths : existence is suffering ( dukhka ); suffering has a cause, namely craving and attachment.

John



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Cork

Hello from the small city of Cork in Ireland on the coast south of Dublin, somewhere I think the population, indigenous and expatriate may have been keeping below the radar. The weather for the week has been sunny and clear, my bald head is sunburned, lets hear it for global climate change. 

I had lunch today in an open restaurant above the Old English Market, the oldest covered market in Europe. They have a set menu but if you want something else e.g. the fish of the day, I did and had a nice piece of hake, they go down to the market and fetch it. With a grated carrot and raisin salad, fresh wholegrain bread and butter, mashed potatoes rich with butter and a side of fresh mixed vegetable total €15. 

I inquired as to why a young man working at a stand downstairs was, by his accent, English yet living and working in Cork. He assured me he was Irish but his parents were refugees, part of the exodus that fled Margaret Thatcher’s England for Ireland and thus his accent was English. Who knew.

With my old person’s bus pass in the morning I went to the small central bus station and took the next bus to, Skibbereen, where the Saturday market  had old hippies selling hand made furniture  and organic everything, Rosscanbery, simply beautiful, Kinsale, a small harbor town where 4,000 Spanish soldiers landed in 1601 to help with the war against the English, it must have greatly enriched the lives of the local girls and help explain the “black Irish.”

Yesterday, Sunday I went walking early and decided on an Irish breakfast in the Gresham Hotel, somewhat grander than mine, with a view of the river Lee. I crossed a large lobby went down a hall and asked the young man at the desk for a table for one. He asked for my room number and I told him I wasn’t staying in the hotel. He showed me to my table and asked me to pay at the reception desk on the way out. Poached eggs, Irish bacon the full Irish and a lot of tea. I ambled out later unwatched to the front desk and paid €10. 

The town is a mix of locals with thick brogues, Polish immigrants working in all the restaurants and coffee shops, some who learned English here so with Irish accents. Small numbers of Asians, one working in Marks & Spencer’s with a Thai name badge and an accent so strange I inquired and she told me she grew up in Newcastle in the north of England, and a scattering of Africans. There are students from China to Venezuela and places in between ostensibly here to study English, many also with Irish accents. When their children get through high school and university Ireland will be much improved and never look the same.

They have great book stores in Cork. In Connolly’s a second hand bookstore I asked the owner if he had a copy of Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office”. Mr Connolly, he had lived and worked, among other places, in Brooklyn, Saigon in the 1970s and a small town inland from Darwin and also in Vancouver told me to follow him. In passing he picked the only copy of Post Office from a shelf and arriving at a wall with some photographs pinned on it told me “put your fingers in your mouth” which I of course did. Looking at me and tapping the picture he asked “don’t you think there is a resemblance”, a picture of Bukowski with his fingers in his mouth. And there was, ask my friend Mel he was there.

Before leaving I asked Mr Connolly why having visited all the other exotic places he had chosen to return to Cork, and he told me “why settle for anything less”.

I hope this finds you well and in good spirits,

John

The hotel lobby is full of people who have flown in from Germany and Scandinavia and one couple definitely from Scotland for the upcoming Bob Dylan concert. Mel tried to get us tickets for last week’s Dolly Parton concert but it was sold out. 

Local graffiti.  Be Yourself – Everyone Else is Already Taken. 
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Life in Saigon, Vietnam

Dear Tutu
I have been walking the streets of Saigon for over a week now, not just downtown but in Phu Nhuan, and thought I might better understand how I view it by attempting to describe it a little to you.
There is construction everywhere from small shops and hotels to many very tall buildings. At 0700 from the back of Chau my godaughter’s Vespa the streets are already crowded with motor bikes, people are at work on the sidewalk, little restaurants are busy, Vietnam has started another work day and in the window of a shop in Phu Nhuan I saw a Rolls Royce (RR) for sale. In town I saw a Bentley, the car for those who are too rich for a mere RR, parked outside the old French colonial era Brodard’s Cafe while the owner was inside buying a cake.
I know the recent Chinese experience contradicts my point but for how long can expansion at this rate and with this breadth continue. If we have learned that no economy rises forever when and with what consequences will things slow down here. Or will the decline start first in China, with their cooling economy and rising inflation, and here they will be dragged behind.
Many people I talk with are sending their children to Australia and Singapore for their undergraduate degrees. What impact will those that return make to the local condition.
All this is overlaid with the commercial flurry leading up to Tet, the lunar new year. Not far from Chau’s mother Yen’s home specialised shops are selling gift baskets with imported whiskey, cognac, chocolates, biscuits etc etc. They are also selling 3 litre bottles of Courvoiser, Jack Daniels and 21 year old Chivas.
On the other hand Chau pays a young uneducated Vietnamese / Cambodian girl to clean their house 3 times a week to help her out as she provides the sole support for her family.
Trying to think about this is confused by my experiences in the years I lived here, 1966 to 1975 and my love for Vietnam and admiration for the people I meet every day. What I think changes nothing for these people but it is interesting to try to understand one’s own life. So I guess I am back to the mirror of me.
I am happy to report I have exchanged emails with Claude Carlier.
My best wishes from Saigon where it is 33 degrees and a little humid.
John
Sent from my iPod

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El Nido – Philippines

John, Sam
How from Perth did you guess, yes here I am in Puerto Princesa in the Philippines for Christmas.
However my very excellent adventure continues as follows.
 
Just returned from El Nido which is in Palawan and is well worth a visit but the trip requires stamina or youth and maybe both. Until about 2 years ago when the Japanese funded one there was no paved road to the town and you got there by boat, which probably explains it’s still unspoiled, laid back feel, that and most of the visitors are European backpackers.
 
We went to the bus station here in Puerto Princesa and thanks to additional fold down jump seats and a suicide seat built over the engine between the driver and the front passenger, 13 souls were loaded into a 10 passenger van along with our backpacks, the belongings of the local travelers and sundry freight to be dropped off along the way. The driver, as a mark of solidarity with his less fortunate passengers, who did not have them, opted not to use his seat belt. As we hurtled off in the torrential rain I read the signs posted inside that said “Lexus Van Lines: We Do Not Overload Our Vans Or Drive Above The Posted Speed Limit” For the first 3 hours the narrow road was paved with cement with a theoretical yellow divider line line down the middle. 
 
However as we climbed up into the hills and crossed them the driver adopted an interesting strategy for sharp left turns whereby he approached them from the wrong side of the road thus giving him a wider and more gradual turn and permitting him to keep up his speed. As a distraction I read all the road signs such as Dangerous Curves Ahead, Speed Limit 60Kms and my favorite, Steep Hill Stop And Test Brakes, and gave the driver my spiritual support. He did slow down for the two spots where the road had slid down the cliff and into the sea and where they had gouged a new path into the hillside. The only blase person in the van was a local guy in the suicide seat who with great sang froide or a sense of fatality slumped up against his friend in the front passenger seat and slept for the first 3 hours.
 
We stopped at a road junction and picked up, evidently by appointment, a German couple in their fifties. Since it was impossible to open the sliding side door as the freight and bags jammed against the door, and the lady sleeping against them, would have fallen out the driver opened the rear hatch door and our new German friends climbed over into the back seat and now we were 15 passengers. Then we arrived at the graded but unpaved section of the road and still in the heavy rain hit potholes all the way to El Nido with the Germans enjoying more airborne time per kilometer than the rest of us. I don’t want to remember this part.
Squidos, the oldest foreign owned restaurant in El Nido is the property of an alcoholic Frenchman even older than myself who the first time I met him was wearing a tee shirt that read “The liver is evil, And must be punished.” The day he told me he had been married 4 times, once to a French lady, then a lady from the UK, next an American and currently a Filipina and he was wearing a tee shirt that read “Woman wanted to clean and cook fish, Dig worms and make lures. Must have boat with outboard motor. Please enclose photo of Boat and Motor.” When I inquired if there was any significant difference in being married to 4 ladies from different cultures he responded for him “after the first few months not really.”
 
Squidos like all the other restaurants opens directly onto the street and is really small. Consequently you share your table with other people while waiting hopefully for an extended time for your food. In this way we met Israelis, Germans, French who are everywhere, Norwegians, a Chilean and one evening an American who lives in Hollywood and travels on an Irish passport. When I talked with him I found out about a job new to me. He tours the world for months and sometimes longer researching ocean, water and reef locations for upcoming movies. He was in El Nido selecting locations for what he referred to as Bourne 4 which, as currently planned will open with a “helicopter pull back of one of the islands in the bay.” He was accompanied by an attractive Filipina government handler who was tasked with making sure no local officials or regulations hindered Hollywood’s plans, and other duties as required. He said goodnight, she paid the bill and off they went into the dark. I guess we will have to watch for the opening scene from Bourne 4.
 
Oddest sight, at least so far. Outside the little shack owned by the fisherman renting out 6 place bancas (boats) for the day is a cage with a monkey. One afternoon  when we arrived back from our days outing a young man, who clearly knew the monkey, had extended his hand and the monkey had reached through the bars and was grooming his arm picking off imaginary ticks and clearly enjoying the social contact. I have pictures.
Each evening on getting back to port you tell the boat owner which trip, A, B, C, or D you want to take the next day and what you would like to eat. He then rounds up 5 or 6 people wanting to to the same thing and you leave about 8:30. It takes about an hour to get out to your first island where you snorkel or lay about on the beach and then on to the second island where the two boat guys, irrespective of what food you requested grill you some mackerel over charcoal and serve it up with a cucumber and tomato salad and some cold rice and warm water. Then a nap under a tree and on to the next island. 
Most exciting moment. Coming back from a days outing and crossing a long open stretch between two islands, exposed to the open seas and with heavy waves running, maybe a precursor to the recent storms, I heard the boat driver say the Tagolog equivalent of “oh shit” and looking around saw that the throttle cable had parted and he was holding the throttle in his hand. But since the cable was really a piece of fishing line it was quickly repaired before we came broadside to the waves.
Funniest comment. Outside a miniscule internet cafe seating 6 people and with a big overhead sign saying Singh Internet Cafe a bearded gentleman in a white turban saying to an Englishman, ” I won’t be hard to find, I am the only Singh in town.
Extrapolating from an admittedly very small and somewhat personal sample, and the bancas being very small boats, I estimate about 20 banca loads of tourists pee surreptitiously in El Nido bay daily.
On the return trip from El Nido I pointed out to the van driver that the right rear tire was worn down to the canvas. He laughed it off until the tire blew, fortunately on the unpaved section where he could not get up to an excessive speed. I have a picture of him changing the tire.

I am now  planning to spend Christmas here in Puerto Princesa and just to show, as a recovering Catholic, that there are no hard feelings about my Falls Road Irish childhood, at least on my part, will probably attend mass in the local Cathedral. Then it is on to Vietnam to see my friend have a rest, and give further further consideration to a possible trip to Burma before KFC and Mac Do get there.
A Merry Christmas to you and the family and and to those that you love and hold dear.
Stay well and be good to each other,
John