The heat is still here, although it was a surprise to wake up around 2am feeling chilly. The nights are getting better; the temperature during the day is still lingering way too high. I’ll be off to China in just over a week and I’ll be packing winter woollies, temperature today in Suzhou is only 5C.
I’ve been looking online at Yunnan province and I’m thinking I might head back to Tiger Leaping Gorge as I will be within 100kms of that area and do the three day trek there. I’m really looking forward to getting to the west of China once more.
I’ll be away for a few weeks so I’ve been out in the garden spraying the weeds in between showers, this is why the humidity levels are still quite high. I hope the rains disappear while I’m away or the grass and more importantly the weeds will be in control.
I applied for a job with the NAB bank, I didn’t really want it but you have to keep the brew happy. I got a response and got put through to the second round. One of these psych tests along with maths and multi-tasking. I passed, go figure.
I then got invited to have an interview, fantastic. I read on and it says “click on the link to open interview platform? I mean how rude. If I was going for a job outside of Australia or on the other side of the continent I would oblige but this job is less than 5km away and I ain’t going to comply.
So I complained, I said that I don’t have a webcam and I cannot do an online interview. I got an email from them after a few days.
Went for a ride on the bike this morn, there was a lovely breeze which made it really good. I was completely soaked by the time I returned to the house but felt great and had no guilt whatsoever when I scoffed down a beef burger with cheese and onion, it came from Aldi 🙂
The rest of the day will as follows. After posting head downstairs to the hammock. Take my Rebus book and finish the last few chapters. Maybe have a siesta in the cool of the bunker and then coffee when the sun goes down.
Three weeks to go till I’m on my way to China. I have many things to do, small jobs around the house and garden but because it is so hot it’s really difficult to get motivated. Lying in the hammock watching the world go by is a nice way to pass the hours and I’ve been reading a fair bit. I’ve been going to second hand books shops and picking up books to take with me to China, I’ll end up giving them to my friend Chynna but I’m reading them first. The new rocking chair is great and with it being at the front windows the breeze, when there is one, comes straight through. I really enjoyed this book, something very different from Henning Mankell.
The garden is looking not bad. There have been a few showers and so everything is green and the weeds just keep on appearing and growing at an alarming rate. I’ve had plants that have been in the ground for years and they are being surpassed by weeds that appear overnight. After being away for two months I’ll come back to a jungle unless the rain stops. Rebecca across the road will hopefully cut the grass for me; she has a ride on lawn mower which can get the job done in a fraction of the time.
It was Chinese New Year yesterday. Many messages from friends and I’m really looking to catching up them after 4 years. I deliberately waited till after the New Year to travel and just as well I did, the weather has been playing havoc with planes, trains and automobiles. The Station that I will use in Shanghai cancelled many trains the other day, but hopefully by the time I arrive the weather will have warmed up a bit and the travel chaos will have dissipated.
Today is the anniversary of the death of my Mother, Feb 11. I remember exactly where I was when I got the phone call at around 6 in the morning to tell me that she had taken a stroke and that is was very serious. I was working at Austar on the tech help desk. I managed to fly home a couple of days later and Catherine and I met in Singapore and flew onto Heathrow where we picked up a car and drove north. We got to see Mum and say goodbye before she slipped away a few hours later.
Tomorrow, 12Feb is the funeral of my good friend Stephen Madden, unfortunately I am unable to get home but I will be able to watch the service online. So I will have a wee dram for Mum tonight, only a wee one as I have to get up early in the morn and tomorrow evening I will have another for Steph.
Not much more to comment on, well I could comment on Israel and the genocide being committed by them but I will only get too upset and vocal and will be classed as anti-Semitic. Once I start ranting it will be hard to stop.
I’m in the process of moving everything over to a new hosting company and it seems it is easier said than done. Theory goes that we give access to our cloud and then transfer to new cloud, easy peasy. However due to server timeouts and the like they won’t talk to each other and so I have backed up the website and downloaded it myself and I am now in the process of uploading it to Google drive and then will pass it on the the new hosting guys and hopefully it will all be hunky dory.
I haven’t written much ’cause not much is happening apart from the miserable hot sticky weather that makes it almost unbearable unless you are sat in the air conditioning. The humidity has been so high and the over night temperatures have not fallen below 23C, it’s crazy. Roll on winter!
Four weeks to my travels which is good. I don’t really have much to organise, I fly and then hopefully arrive in Shanghai in once piece. Sissi will organise the accommodation so I really just need to turn up. Once I’m there I’ll organise a few internal trips which is easier to do from there than from here. Hopefully the VPN will work when I arrive so that I can still listen to Tony Blackburn to send me off to sleep at night. I also listen to Craig Charles and sometimes Johnny Walker, mind you he is getting on me tits a wee bit…….plays too much Springsteen for my liking.
So maybe next time I’ll be on the new platform and might even have a new look page, not sure how easy that is with the new crowd.
Oh one thing did happen. I put on a washing, mostly the clothes of worn in the garden and when I was out on the bike. When I went downstairs to check the washing machine the garage door was open…. I’m sure I closed it.
A short time later I went back to get something and again the door is opened, I mean what the fuck? I look for the remote and it’s nowhere to be seen. I’m thinking maybe I dropped it and someone is having a bit of fun. I checked the washing machine and it’s not there. On the line the first load is hanging up and I check the pockets of me troos, and sure enough the remote is happily sitting there freaking oot with all this water and is opening and shutting the door every time there is a decent breeze 😂
The weather has been really humid the last week, as high as 80%. The temperature today is only 30C but that humidity makes it very uncomfortable.
I did the new route that I found, the first hill is very steep and gets the heart pumping. The sweat has already started to come down my face and I have to stop to clear my eyes.
Each hill really pushes the body, the conditions makes every push of the pedals an effort. There’s hardly any breeze to cool the body.
I was out for nearly an hour. I opened the garage door on my return and as I put my bike away I have large spots in front of my eyes as my body struggles with the heat. I fall into the garden chair and skull the rest of my water and after a few minutes all is well and so I decide to do a bit of weeding. Five minutes was enough and by this time I’m completely soaked.
When Christine told me that she got a call from Steph telling her he had days to live I must admit I was very skeptical. The international man of mystery always liked to create drama and make himself look way more exotic than he actually was. However my cynical attitude to his health condition was completely misplaced because Stephen died less than 24 hours after that phone call.
We grew up together, I guess we must have met at the Cochrane House but no idea when. He was a Pape and I was a Prod. He was very opinionated, very moody and when drunk he could start a fight with his shadow. However we had many laughs and many good times and sometimes we crossed the line to the dark side hoping the boys in blue were not around to catch us. He was always game for a laugh and very rarely turned down a challenge and he often got up to mischief and sometimes I tagged along. We never got caught, nearly but we never got caught.
He always had my back, which is something I am very grateful for. The Cochrane House could be absolutely mental at times and there were many fights but I always seemed to come through unscathed. One party that we had turned into a full on war between the rival gangs and many got caught in the crossfire. Stephen got stabbed in the arm after he had been out there in melee doing his bit and I remember walking about after the police and ambulances arrived looking for him as well as everyone else and I found him in one of the ambulances holding his arm, he said “I got stabbed” I said “ Is it sore?” He said “What do you fucking think!” Then we had a good laugh………
There are too many stories, some I can tell and some I will take to my grave. Stephen was a multi-faceted friend whom I enjoyed being with, well not all the time cause sometimes it was scary if it was the Dark Stephen. One thing he did which I never forgot which made me feel a bit resentful towards him was when he recorded our conversations in his car. One night I caught up with him on the way home from Toledo Junction, I was blootered. We had gone to the hamburger stall, sometimes there was one opposite Toledo where there was a beautiful young girl which everybody chatted up. Stephen gave me the impression that he and she had a thing going and I was extremely jealous. No idea if this was true and looking back I very much doubt it.
As we sat in the car eating our food sometime after midnight we were just talking pish really about anyone and everyone. Someone always upsets someone else and it’s at times like these you confide in your friends if you feel someone has done you a wrong turn. As I found out to my utter horror a few days later when we were out and about during daylight hours, he had recorded everything that had been said in the car that night. He loved to get dirt on folk, a bit of blackmail you could say just so he could hold the cards. I was fuckin’ furious and worried at the same time because there were things I should have never spoken about but as we all know the power of alcohol changes everything.
In February 2018 I went home to get a new visa for China. I was in the UK for a month or so. He came to Johnstone for a few days and Christine, Steph and myself spent the day together around Loch Lomond. We had a great day, mind you it was raining but the banter and the laughs were brill. This is what I really enjoyed with Steph, the banter at times was minted and extreme at the same time and nothing was off limits.
I caught up with him in London for the day before I flew back to China, in fact I remember him insisting that we catch up. He had recently retired and he had a £100,000 from a pension burning a hole in his pocket and we discussed what should be done with all this money. Maybe buy a wee bothy in Scotland or flat and rent it out, travel never seemed to be on the agenda. But I remember him saying that as long as Karen and Joseph are taken care of, then all is well. The penny for me never dropped until I got the call from Christine the other day. When I met Stephen in London he was showing remorse for things done in the past and he wanted to right the wrongs he may have done. I just thought it was old age. I never for a minute put two and two together.
Apparently he has had a lung condition for quite a while and I wager that he knew in 2018 the road he was on. We had a great day walking around Soho, Chinatown and along the Thames regaling stories and reminiscing through a frigid London where for the first time in years there was snow on the ground. The big man hug that we gave each other at the end of the day brought a tear to my eye, my subconscious must have picked up on the subtle messages that I completely missed. I never saw him again or spoke to him after that day, not because I didn’t want to but he just never replied. Now I understand why…..
Stephen Madden was a very private man, saying he was complex is an understatement. I always enjoyed seeing him when I went home and talking shit and remembering times before technology. I guess we’ll catch up on the other side one day……….until then big man rest easy………
Picked up my visa this morning in Brisbane. I parked at Indooroopilly and then got the train from there, I really couldn’t do the hour train journey from the Switch one more time.
My plan was to walk back to the car, but before I did that I checked the distance and it was just under 8km. As I headed off it started to drizzle. I’m wearing full sun clothing, big floppy hat, long trousers and arm coverings.
The rain got heavier, there was lightning and then a peel of thunder as I got on to the river side. The heavens opened.
I listened to a podcast and then music. Two hours later I’m still nowhere near the end, it was only then that the penny dropped. Because I’m following the river the distance is a lot more, nearly twice as much.
Half way into the walk I’m completely drookit, my white T has turned see through showing off my marvellous physique. My feet are soggy, and the bum bag that my phone and passport is in, is wet.
Because my feet are wet, my feet are complaining a little. I don’t like walking with wet feet.
Nearly three hours after setting off I’m back at the car. I’d been clever enough to bring another shirt and towel…thankfully.
My passport is wet, my new visa is slightly soggy… Not good. In the car I leave the passport on the dash, however there’s not much sun. I hold the passport near the vents to help dry it. I’m sure it will survive just like I did.
I ended up walking over 14km. Although mostly flat but I don’t think I’ll be doing much more today.
I haven’t been out on the bike for ages, I’ve been doing more walking recently and so I went out about 7am and even by then it was 24C. The humidity is still high and after only a short time the sweat is everywhere.
I stayed local and ended up exploring an area I’ve only ever driven passed and it turned out to be not bad. Of course there’s always a big hill and this one was five minutes into the ride, it got the heart pumping.
A mixture of suburbia and acreage which at this time of the morning was very quiet. Once out on the road the breeze was enough to stay cool. My average speed was only about 12 Kph, but I was in no hurry and even if I wanted to my legs were not up to the task. Muscle memory kicked in along with the dull ache of resistance. But it felt good!
I’ve been wanting to get back out on the bike for weeks but reneged at the last moment and choosing to walk instead, but this morning’s ride has only encouraged me to get back on me bike.
Of course when you do this you can have a greasy breakfast to celebrate.
I wake up at night in a daze not really knowing why, but something or someone has had the temerity to cause this disruption to my slumber. One culprit is the possum, it uses the roof as a race track. It’s heavy claws bounce off the tin roof and make a hell of a clatter.
They run along the power lines attached to the eaves and then get onto the tree branches that overhang the roofs. I’m sure it’s a competition to see who can run the length of the street the quickest.
An even louder noise and more disturbing noise will appear out of the blue. This noise is as if there is a kettle drum outside being smashed to within an inch of its life. It turns out that this noise is caused by one of the many fruit bats gorging on the abundance of mangoes in the park to the back of the house, they get too greedy and grab one that’s too big for them and drop it mid flight………they are scattered everywhere around the garden.
The noise is generated when the mangoes bounce off the roofs of the many sheds around. My shed is 12m x 6m and it’s not very full and so it magnifys the thump as they make contact with the roof.
2023 a year of reflection, 2023 a year of rest, Repair the mind, Repair the soul, A year for travel, Before things unravel,
I stumbled at Petra, And twisted my leg, It sharpened my focus, But had nightmares of dread, In a blink of an eye your world can change, Make the most of today even if it rains.
I gave the house a new lick of paint, Fixed the retaining wall of Pisa, No longer does it lean, New stairs and gardens, New plants and rocks, And a few pairs of comfy jocks.
A road trip to Sydney via the moon, Caught up with old friends, Hopefully see them again soon, At the end of Autumn still no rain, The ground cracking, The plants in pain, Water tank empty,
Bad news arrived via the ether, Ann & Mairi passed away, Too young and gone to soon. Sad times but good to be home, Saw a few friends and managed to roam.
The flight was long, Emirates A380, Caught Covid, No taste, no appetite, no energy, Lost a few kilos…. Bonus.
As the year comes to an end I’m in a better place, Mentally and physically, A new focus plans to be made, So welcome 2024
