I sometimes help this young chap with his English and this was his final presentation for the year. I think that this is one of the best short presentations I have seen in a long time and so poignant to many.

I feel trapped, cut off,

In the dark,

No light,

The VPN, my torch,

My sanity,

My saviour,

My umbilical cord has been severed,

My simple pleasures,

My music,

My TV,

My news,

All Smoke and mirrors,

My freedom of choice,

Behind the wall I have no voice,

Banned by Pooh,

They prefer not to see,

Beaten to submission,

Ghostly faces glued to screens,

Watching Propaganda so it seems,

A few years ago it was Tom and Jerry,

But now it’s what you don’t see that I find scary.

Some days in China are a real struggle as I’ve mentioned numerous times before, but there are other days I don’t give a fuck and embrace the possibility of having a bit of fun. For instance when I get off the metro and the door opens and someone is standing in my way I don’t move anymore, I just stop and stare at them which seems to freak most of them out. A Paddington Bear Stare will usually suffice and they will move out the way, although I’m not sure if the look they give me is one of confusion or fear, either way I get a chuckle from it.

Two days a week I travel on the same route and I use the same doors each time because I want to make a quick exit to the escalator or stairwell that is available and so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time where I will not have to go through this rigmarole each time I travel, but then if I get too bored I’ll just change the door I exit through.

 But what I do enjoy on the metro is watching the look of anticipation and expectation on the faces of the folk waiting to board, hoping there is a seat available, and they rush on and quickly scan the carriage and then as the realisation slowly sinks in that there are no empty seats their wee faces fall flat and they look so sad and then they look again just in case they made a mistake, but alas it’s still the same…..nothing has changed……. 🙂

This is when you will see the older generation morph into a mythical being of sorts, they move at warp speed, When the train stops at the next station they have already managed to scan the carriage and are very aware of the subtle body language which betrays those passengers that are getting ready to alight and even if they are at the other end of the carriage they get there in an instant it’s amazing, it’s akin to some Kung Fu master who is at one with his surroundings and can move in a blink of an eye. If you are the one getting ready to alight then you will be amazed at how quickly the vacant seat is occupied as you and your arse are in mid flight to the upright position and as you soon as you reach your full height I can guarantee that your seat has had no time to get cold due to the new arse that has taken up residence.

I have to change trains on one of my journeys and at the interchange station called Hongzhuang I catch the train to Muli. The train begins from Hongzhuang and so when it arrives at the station the train is empty and yet when people queue for this part of the journey they mostly stand in the correct position, something they rarely do at any other station on the network and so they will stand on either side of the door as they should everywhere else, whereas I do not……………I stand bang in the middle because the carriage will be empty. I’m completely baffled by this behaviour and I can feel a PHD coming on.

If you are a people watcher then you need to come to China and live here for a short time and you will not be disappointed, although I will warn you it will push you to the brink of insanity. You have to remember there are about 1.4 Billion people here and so they will eventually wear you down to a broken individual if you let them, some days I feel like a real basket case…………..

Slurping, burping, farting, spitting, flapping gums and even a pair of undies soaking in a basin with skid marks so large that I expected to run into a Wildebeest. No shame, I struggle to understand and to tolerate.

On 11/11 China had its biggest one day sale where after 68 seconds they already had sales of over one Billion US dollars and I took part in this spending spree. I invested in a pair of very large Bluetooth headphones that help me to block out most of the noises currently created within the household. They are really good and they last up to 6 hours, so they say, but from the experience I have had so far I would have to agree with the claims.

The weather here for the last three weeks has been great although the pollution levels are a bit high. No rain and the day temperatures have been around 25c. On Saturday I went to Dongshan with a group of expats to do a bit of hiking, I have been many times before but it’s always good to go for a walk on such a lovely day and it’s always good to get out of the city.

On Sunday around 2pm winter arrived. The predicted cold snap arrived on time and now it is Monday morning and I can certainly report that winter is on the way. I went to the park this morning as usual but still wore my shorts much to the amusement of the locals. The house feels so cold, these concrete block apartments are not well designed and after a few days the walls temperature begins to match the outside air temp and so it does not take long to feel uncomfortable.

On the upside I can now drag out the winter woollies and thermals and it feels good. I quite enjoy the winters here because they are not too cold and feel a little bit warmer than Scotland because it’s not so wet. All I can wish for now is that Sissi’s mother decides it might be too cold here and return home and then life can get back to some form of normality.

A few pictures of the East Gate building.

Sissi’s Mother arrived last week and her presence was felt from the moment she arrived. She brought enough stuff with her that makes me think that she will be here for quite a while, which I may add I am not relishing. It took two trips to the car with the three of us grabbing what we could. There was the liquidiser that gets used every morning to create some disgusting looking black goo which they both eat for breakfast along with a variety of other things. The noise it makes would wake up the dead. There was also a new house plant; it was nice and very welcome. There was so much food that our large double fridge freezer is bursting at the seams just trying to cope.

As soon as she arrived the noise levels increase dramatically because it’s not long before the two of them are arguing about something and when I ask what the problem is I get told, “Nothing is wrong, all is well”. They talk in a local dialect that I cannot understand; and they talk so quick and loud. Food is the number one priority for any Mother of a Chinese family and she has no sooner arrived when almost every utensil, plate, cup and saucer is being used for something. Vegetables are washed over and over again and the preparation takes forever and then they ruin it all by cooking it in copious amounts of oil. The once proud vegetables are now a shadow of their former selves. They lie there on the plate, wilted and oily with all of the goodness long gone, a distant memory………..just like my quiet life.

Dinner, lunch, breakfast in fact at any time of the day when they eat it is quite disgusting. The both eat with so much noise. They eat with their mouths open and the amount of other noises made makes me want to vomit. They seem to eat for the sake of eating rather than enjoying the experience. It’s instinct, something that you do, get up…..go to the loo……….have breakfast……..sleep……it’s all a process with absolutely no enjoyment and the food is consumed as if it was the last meal that they will ever see.

If I can I will put on my headphones or go to my room because I cannot be in the same room when they eat and so I will try and change my routine so that I am not in the house or I get up early in the morning to have breakfast with the hope that the Mother is still in bed, so that I can make my breakfast in peace or at least get it made so that I can sit outside, even although some of the mornings are becoming quite fresh……………I would rather sit outside and freeze my arse off than have to listen to the flapping of gums. But you know, no matter what plan of attack I’m thwarted at every turn. Even if I stay out a while, hoping that lunch has been consumed, I am once more disappointed, because I’ve no sooner returned when they will have something else to eat. They eat constantly and if they are not eating they are preparing the next meal. If the Mother is not eating then she is cleaning something. On the odd occasion she does something else and that will be playing with the phone or watching some stupid TV show where you can hear all manner of stupid noises and canned laughter. Most of the time there is no consideration, the phone is played loud. If there are others around me I wear my headphones if I am listening or watching anything on my phone, even when I work on the computer. I am considerate of others, but like most Chinese they do not give a rats arse. But I’m thinking of getting my own back and buying a really big speaker stack so that I can use it to drown out all the other noises I have to contend with.

To be continued……………………..

For the past few weeks I have been planning my next visa run and then trying to think of the one after that which will be around March next year. The upcoming visa run will take me to Singapore, where I am hoping to catch a glimpse of the Solar Eclipse which is taking place on the 26^th of December. When I was looking at the “Time and Date” website I happened to notice the small pop up which spoke of the next eclipse. I’m lucky that it just happens to coincide with my visa run. I’ll visit Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand before returning to China.

Next year holds so many unknowns for me, I don’t know if I really want to return to China, I don’t know if I will get another visa because I  will be 60 years old and the visas for a longer stay other than a tourist visa have age restrictions so I’m told. I’m not really sure if I want to return to my current accommodation, which is an Airbnb house and for the most part it is OK but other times it interferes with my life and I hate it. Most of the people that have been though here have been OK, but at times it becomes oh so tedious having to cover the same ground with each new person that comes through the door and of course some of them are just a bloody nuisance… If it was a share house with the same folk then that would be ok, and so there is part of me that will come back here because the location is perfect but sometimes the compromises are too great and this may win in the end. So if I don’t live here, where will I live?

I would like to live in the UK for a while but if I do this I will of course have to find employment as I do not have the finances to live there for months on end. I doubt if I can sign on the dole because I haven’t lived there for over 30 years and then this brings its own headaches, too many questions. The last time I did this was back in 1991 when I returned from Australia, I went to the brew to see if I could sign on and it was like the Spanish inquisition trying to get my 30 pieces of silver from them. They had me sitting in a small room sitting opposite the “Brew person” who was sitting behind what looked like bullet proof glass. I brought in my return airline ticket; those were the days when they actually gave you a proper ticket. “Why was I coming back to the UK? Why am I not staying in Australia? And so it went on and eventually after I signed my life away I got me Giro. If I had been a refugee or a newcomer to the UK instead of being a British citizen then maybe the process might have been easier and so I will not hold my breath if I follow this path on my return, although then again maybe the pain of a meeting like this might be worth it, after all the last time I did go back to work for a few weeks and I would have paid my dole money back to the government. Mind you they got very pissed off when I tried to ask for a tax refund on my exit from the country and to this day I feel that there are flags and big notes beside my tax file to inform whoever I talk to that I may be a bit dodgy, which of course is not true of course, mind you I did get done for tax evasion back in the 80’s, but that is another story. I hear that the current dole is around £72 a week and this would be a nice little top up to help me survive a few months in the UK, once again I’ll wait and see what happens and I’ll go the brew and ask a few questions.

I want to go and explore old places and new places, I want to walk the West Highland Way and Hadrian’s Wall and maybe cycle some of the national cycle way, but at the end of the day this all costs money of which I really do not have enough of. If I could stay for maybe 3 month and do what I wish to do and stay in the UK over summer and then depending on what happens with the China thing, the visa etc, then maybe I’ll return here or it’s back to Australia for a bit.

Anyway I think I need to leave China by the end of March 2020 and then I’m thinking of going to Petra, Egypt, Greece and I would love to go to Barcelona before finally arriving in the UK to start my adventures there. On the way back east I’ll fly to Sydney and then go back to Brisbane before my next move. By this time I will have my answer to the visa question and then I will either stay in Australia for a bit and get back into the rat race for a short time to replenish the bank balance, but this will also bring new challenges and so 2020 has many questions but very few answers at this stage, but I will of course deal with each one in due course.

At least I have choices, which is a good thing and I am happy to embrace change and a little uncertainty in the knowing that no matter what I will do all will be well. I have great faith in myself to find a solution to the problems that I encounter along the way and of course “Luck” has played a big part in my life and long may it continue.

I went for lunch today to my local Lanzhou La Mian restaurant, where I go most days, and if I can I try to go around 1 pm because by then the rush hour is over and the restaurant is a lot quieter and I mean that for both the noise levels and the amount of people.

I sat one table back from the front door and I picked this table because it had a new pack of tissues on it, not all tables have this luxury. Shorty after my meal arrived, a young girl sat in front of me at the table right at the door. Five minutes would have gone by and she reached round to grab a tissue, but instead of taking a few she took the whole packet……………I waited for a minute or two to see if she would return them and she did not and so I got up and leaned over her to retrieve them………..some people never cease to amaze me.

Over 30 years ago my Mum, my sister Catherine and friend Jim jumped into the old 1977 Toyota Corolla and headed from the Table lands north to Bundeberg and then to Bargara beach. It was hot and the beach was long and beautiful. The water was just like a hot bath and it was great sitting in a small tidal pool in the evening without the fear of sharks or other nasty beasties creeping up on us, well the mosquitoes were a problem. The hotel was nice but the food was that nouveaux cuisine rubbish, it looked great and it tasted ok but it was damn expensive and not much of it.

The drive the first day had been about 14 hours and so we stayed here for a couple of days before we carried on north till we reached Rockhampton and then flung a left towards Emerald and Sapphire. We stayed in Emerald overnight and continued our quest west until we could go no further at Tennant Creek where we flung a left once more to head south to Ayres Rock.

The daytime temperatures were brutal, 46c if I remember correctly and we could not use the air-conditioning in the car because when we did the poor old thing coughed and spluttered and so for many hundreds of kilometres we had to have the window open just a little to get airflow through the car but it was brutal. Driving at 100 kph and with the added bonus of wind-burn, not wind-chill, but wind-burn made for a very difficult journey indeed.

Ayres Rock is almost in the centre of Australia and you can fly or drive and we chose to drive to experience the Outback in all its glory and to be honest it was a great experience and having my Mum there made it all the better. For the first time in many years she was young again and carefree away from the miserable old bugger that tried to contain her. There is a picture of her standing in the middle of the desert highway in the middle of nowhere with a big smile on her face, I can see it in my mind’s eye now……

So like many other folk that come this way, we come to see a big rock and pay exorbitant prices for the pleasure. When we went, we shared a kind of backpacker cabin arrangement where we had 4 beds to a room. You sat outside to eat and you could watch the big friendly Iguana stroll around looking for scraps and in the distance the rock itself. Ayres rock is big, it’s a huge feature on the landscape and most people come here so that they can experience the desert, the surrounding MacDonnell Ranges and of course to climb the rock. The local Aborigine tribe has decided that they will no longer allow anyone to climb the rock from October because it goes against their beliefs. The rock is on their land and they believe the rock is very sacred to them and so no one will be allowed to climb it anymore.

When I first went to Australia I didn’t know much about them and so over time you begin to learn a thing or two. After living in Australia for 30 years I don’t really have much time for them. The population of Australia is made up from many different races and the Aborigines just happen to be one of them, but they were there first of course and because of this they own the whole of Australia apparently. Over the years they have been given land rights, which is fair enough. They have complained about the brutality they faced at the hands of the British, fair enough. They were hunted for sport, many terrible things happened to them but after listening to them for 30 years about how they were treated by the white man, you begin to get sick of the broken record, especially when many choose not to help themselves. I don’t care if you are black, white or blue……………..there comes a time where you need to just get off your arse and change your situation instead of blaming every wrong decision you made on the invading white man that came to the country. I come from Scotland and the English treated us like shit over the years and it was around the same time as the shit was going down in Australia, but we as a nation we have become quite successful and many of our people have moved on and we don’t get any special treatment, we did not get compensation from the crown………..that’s not to say of course that some folk still do hate the English and I’m sure there are a few in England that don’t like us, but we move on we have to.. I’m a Scottish Aborigine after all. But the Australian Aborigine’s spend their life’s in the past and refuse to move into the present.

If you go to the job centre you will see one lot of jobs for the Aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islanders. No one else can apply for these jobs, no other Australian or immigrant can. Years ago I saw a job in the job centre for an IT trainee that had been advertised for over 6 months and so I went and asked about it. “Are you an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?” “Eh no, I’m Scottish” “Then you can not apply for this job, only they can” “But the job has been there for 6 months and no one seems to be too interested, they seem more at home hanging around the street corners chatting to one another and walking with a limp” “Sorry sir these jobs are only for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.”

And there you go; this is what it is still like in 2019. They have many services that are specific to them and yet they shout about discrimination. Everyone in Australia should be equal regardless of the colour of their skin and yet this is not the case and so how do they think that respect will come to them if they don’t join the rest of society. Every time something goes wrong it’s not their fault. The educated Aborigines are making a fortune of the backs of their poor uneducated.

Millions of dollars have been……….. what’s the word? ………Misappropriated…….. This happens too many times ……

I was having a game of snooker one night in the local RSL club, it was a competition and I got paired up with this Aboriginal guy that worked at the university and after listening to him for a few hours while we played snooker, and by the way we won some chickens that evening, I learned that many of the educated Aborigines are also quite disgusted with their own people and more so of the ones that take advantage of them.

I shared a house with a bunch of Scottish folk in western Sydney in Arakoon Avenue and we had an Aboriginal family living next door to us. We would say hello to each other but sometimes there were fights and sometimes the girls would come over to our house for help and then we would call the police for them and then get abused for calling the police. They stole our washing, how did we know this………because we saw them wearing our clothes, they used our swimming pool and yet when we tried to complain about them we came up against the racist card. One of their kids got knocked down and myself and Tom ran outside and help pick up the corner of the car while someone pulled the young boy from under the car, we helped to save his life. They had a dog which they never looked after and the rest of the street used to feed it, it was a nice dog. One day we phoned the RSPCA to tell them that the owners of the dog were not looking after the dog and could they come and pick it up.  I explained that the dog was friendly and if it was not for the kindness of the neighbours the dog may have starved. She was very interested to listen to my story until I told her that they were Aboriginal and then outcomes the racist card. Oh sorry sir there is nothing we can do about this and as long as the dog is being fed then that is ok. But the owners don’t look after it……………..because they were Aboriginal they would not do anything, because they knew that the race card would be played as it is still done to this day. You can not criticise a person of colour or a minority element within the community.

Opal fuel was developed in 2005 to combat Petrol Sniffing in over 106 communities, one of the favourite pastimes of your average Aborigine back then. The health costs were massive, but it was BP that came to the rescue by changing its formula slightly so that they could not get this high anymore.

There was a story back in the early 90’s about two Aborigines that tried to sue Fosters Beer because they had become alcoholics, If Fosters hadn’t made the beer they would have drunk it and so QED they would not be alcoholics.

Communities in the north of Australia are supposed to be dry (no alcohol) because many were spending their dole money on booze and so the smugglers step in and a new market is created. Prohibition does not work; it just makes some people rich.

To try and combat some of the problems the government have given the members of community that are claiming government support a debit card and no alcohol can be bought using them. The feedback is that they are being discriminated against and they should have the same choices as everybody else and have cash put into the bank. When this happens the children are the ones that suffer. So many adults are irresponsible and the money ends up getting pissed up against the wall. There are so many other issues but I am not going to list them here, but one underlying theme is the lack of ownership for any of the problems that they have, they really need to look inward and begin with educating the young and start to move into the present day.

So I’m not being racist here by the way, I am telling you what I have observed over the years. It’s the immigrants obviously that have built Australia, wave upon wave of them over the years have brought their skills to the country…………maybe it’s making food or making coffee or whatever, but the difference between them and the local indigenous communities is that they have forged a future for themselves and contributed to the growth of the country in a very big way.

Not allowing tourist to climb Ayres Rock I feel is just being done because they can, and not really for the reason they say, which is that it’s a culturally sensitive site. You can climb Ayres Rock and you can appreciate the natural wonder of the place and when you stand on the top of it and look around at the panorama on offer you will see that it is stunning. All over the world tourists go to religious and culturally sensitive sites and buildings and locations and they are happy to share them with the world and let them be amazed at the same time. You can go to many wonderful cathedrals and mosques in the world and you can often climb up to the roof structure and see the wonders of the ancient stone masons. In Florence I climbed up to the top of the cathedral and it was brilliant. I’m not religious in the least but I admire the engineering and the ingenuity of the builders. I also have the same respect for nature, Mother Nature created Ayres Rock, there was no architect, no owner, no builder and it belongs to the world.

The local indigenous people have made a big mistake by putting a ban on this area. People will continue to come and they will climb it anyway. You have to pay $25 for the privilege and many will pay this without a thought. A stupid decision has been made by the local land owners and they are fracturing the reconciliation process. So many people have been pissed off by this. If I ever go to that part of the world again and I have the opportunity to climb the rock I will because it belongs to the world and I will leave my $25 at the bottom of the rock or I’ll post it to the relevant authority.

Update Oct 28^th 2019

I wrote this about a month ago and since that time the rock has been closed and the fine for climbing the rock has been set at $10.000, which is absolutely ridiculous……..I just hope that all those local mobs that made such a commotion about people climbing Ayres Rock start to feel the pinch from the lack of tourist dollars that will hopefully not be spent in that area. After all one of the main reasons to go to see Ayres rock is to climb it, to experience its majesty, to look at the amazing form from the summit and to experience the panoramas and vistas on offer from the top.

If I win lotto and I can happily dispose of $10,000, then you will see me on TV as I climb the rock and maybe I’ll take a bottle of wine for good measure.

There are bigger problems in their communities to tackle than to spend so much time and resources on stopping people from climbing Ayres Rock which for many has been a source of income and joy for the climbers, I for one hope they come to regret their decision.