A speech for the Bremer Forum

It’s hard to pick just one moment in time where I have been content because I have had so many wonderful experiences on this journey. I was born on the 23 July 1960 and so this means that I turned 58 yesterday and I still have the hunger for adventure and for just being stupid and not to take life so seriously. Sometime I wish I had gone down the path of a career because I know if I put my mind to something then you will not stop me, but I haven’t always been this confident.

I realise luck has a big hand to play in my life and I’ve always felt as if someone has been watching over me most of my life, (not god or a religious deity of course) and there are too many instances to tell you about here, but take my word for it.

I wish I had all the toys and the big house and a credit card that just kept on working but alas at the moment I have to play each day as it comes and I have to watch the pennies because there is only just enough coming in to pay the bills, but you know I don’t feel like I have that heavy burden on my shoulders, I feel free and I feel I can do what I want. China has given me the opportunity to reinvent myself and to spend most of my time, writing or being asked to speak at an event where I learn something about the culture, Christ I’ve even made a few short movies. Every day is a challenge, but challenges that can usually be surmounted quite easily.

Life is short and life can be cruel as we all know and so I grabbed this chance to come here and face a new life.

My Ice cream van, what a hoot that was and I and more money than I knew what to do with.

Driving buses may seem mundane but trust me if you had come along for a ride with me you would have got your money’s worth.

1988 off to Australia and an 8000 km drive through the Outback.

First trip to China,

The Colosseum

Scotland, home twice is 2 years and it felt great

I miss my friends in Australia

Ah the Taj Mahal, what an amazing place

The Great Wall of China,

And the final place is Angkor Thom in Cambodia, I’ve been twice but on this occasion I was lucky enough to have this one spot all to myself and I’d never felt so peaceful in my life. These moments are few and far between. I was at one with my surroundings and with the universe and I think you can see that in this picture. This was my moment of Zen.

I was invited once again to go to the Samsung English club, they have a variety of foreigners that go along and I have already been twice this month. The first night we spoke about Technology Addiction, the next night we spoke about Interesting English and Idioms and the like and last night it was all about music. I thought I would take them back to my youth and tell them about some of the music I have listened to over the years. I gave them Thin Lizzy which went down not too bad, the Sex Pistols went down well, Black Sabbath, Donna Summer, The Tramps, David Bowie, Shalamar,

but the one that blew their minds was Prince. I played them “Kiss” by Prince and they didn’t know where to look, it was funny to watch them trying to figure out what it was all about.

The host gave me good feedback and said that this was the biggest meeting they have had to date.

I topped off with showing them Dragon House

The food in Xuzhou was great apart from a handful of dishes. I ate almost everything that was put in front of me apart from the fish, I even ate some cicadas that had been roasted, they were a little crunchy and a wee bit chewy but not bad.

The first place we went to specialised in all things sheep. When we entered the small room it was cameras oot and let the party begin. This was food porn for some I think. Many of the dishes looked amazing, the preparation was perfect which always lulls you into thinking that it will also be delicious which is often not the case.

I thought I was in luck because the waitress brought the dishes to my side of the table and myself and the young Russian girl were thinking this is good. But little did we know we were dealing with professionals that had been in this situation many times and so it went like this.

Don’t touch the food until it’s been photographed and then you can dig in.All the camera’s were on the other side of the table and immediately after the pictures were snapped the vultures dived in and it was an effort just to get the table back round to us to grab some food.

If you have not eaten in a Chinese restaurant then you will not understand but the centre of the table turns and you spin it around and then grab food as it stops in front of you, but the more expert you are the more crafty you are too.

Politeness to the two foreigners only extends so far and then you have to keep a hold of the table with one hand and then use the chopsticks to grab what you can. And some of the women here are pretty strong and you can see that by their physique and the deft way that they can quickly dissect a plate of food.

But to be honest there was no fear of not having enough food because as usual there is too much food brought to the table and there is so much waste. I just hope that they actually do something constructive with the left over food rather than just bin it. Apparently if you finish all the food that is brought to you they will continue to bring more food but when you stop eating and leave all this food, they then realise you are full and finally stop the onslaught.

Two very different outcomes when different cultures come together. We of course think its rude to leave food and so we endeavour to clean our plate but the Chinese read this as these foreigners are greedy bastards.

Click here for all the pictures

I was very lucky to be invited by the Tongcheng Travel company of Suzhou to take part in a trip to Xuzhou which is about 2 ½ hours north of Suzhou when you travel on the high speed train. A very good friend of mine comes from here and she has always told me how good the food is from this part of China and to be honest it did not disappoint, we had so much to choose from and there was an array of food on offer.

I met the rest of the group at the station and my translator for the duration was Ning, a lovely girl who just happens to be married to a Scotsman and so she had little trouble understanding me, although her husband does come from Edinburgh but the less said about that the better I think.

Xuzhou was hot, really hot, but at least the humidity was lower than Suzhou. Leaving the relative comfort of the station to cross the concourse to the bus made me think that this is how an egg must feel when dropped into a frying pan, it was blistering. The bus was cool and so once the door was closed we headed off to our first port of call which was the Tomb of the Chu King (Liu Wu), Zhulin Temple

The detail on the figures and the amount of effort that was put into making this tomb and all the artefacts is incredible. When you enter the tomb on the right hand corridor you are immediately aware of the scale of this place. This tomb has been carved out of very hard rock and you can see all the cuts made by the tools. There are details on the roof as well as the walls. It’s a complete underground palace with 15 chambers including a toilet. There are two alleys parallel to each other which are 19 m apart and there is no more than a 5 mm variance between the two alleys.

It’s an amazing piece of architecture that has been skillfully constructed in the year 127 BC when the variety of tools on offer was very limited. It’s hard to imagine just how difficult it would have been to design and construct such a place and it was completed in 13 years and it covers an area of 700 m2.

I think it would be a great place to stay today because it was so cool inside and it was difficult to drag ourselves away to return to the blistering heat.

We left the tomb and went and had a look at the museum which has the usual bits and pieces but once thing that was really incredible were the “cheat books” There was a collection of books on display that were so small that it’s a wonder that anyone could read them, never mind produce them.

On the wall there was a silk sheet covered in writing and the museum had put a magnifying glass there so that you could see the characters. I have no idea how anyone would be able to write so small and so neatly on a piece of silk and then use it as a cheat sheet. The books are even more amazing when you see the size of them, they are smaller than a pack of cigarettes and yet the writing is neat. It’s the fact that these items were produced so many years ago when they didn’t have modern technology.

These books were created to help the students pass the rigorous exams that lasted over 9 days. The students had to complete 3 out of the 4 pieces of paper that you can see here. Each one took 3 days to complete.

Click here for all the pictures

I was thinking tonight at dinner that the PowerPoint seems very happy 😊

I’m on the high speed train going to a place called Xuzhou about 3 hours north of Suzhou. I’ve been invited to go to a tour in this area for two days which I’m looking forward too, but what I’m not enjoying is the process of getting there. Having to use public transport at the weekend when every Tom, Dick and Harry or Harriet and having their extremely annoying children with them. Of course many of the parents are also fucking annoying because they play music with no headphones. Oh and they talk too fucking loud. The Grandparents are left to look after the kids while the parents take absolutely no responsibility. The result is that the children get out of control and the parents have gone into a coma state.

The smell of shit is in the air and this I would imagine is from some of the young kids but then again when I was in the queue to get info the station someone in front was touching cloth.

The infrastructure may be modern in China but some of the inhabitants have still got a long way to go to becoming civilised and to be aware of others and act in a manner more fitting in public.

I was reminded by Facebook that on the 10th of July 2016 I arrived in London after my long haul business class flight on Cathy Pacific. I also remember that the flight got delayed 3 hours due to the tail end of a typhoon and once again there is a Typhoon in the neighbourhood causing problems. The picture from Facebook is of me standing there wrapped up with the thermal gear on in various locations in London cause it was Baltic and of course this year everyone is passing oot because of the heat. Best summer since the legendary 1976 summer of love. Every 42 years the UK gets a summer that they can remember, I wonder if I’ll see the next one.

Life of course is very different for me, I’m now living in China and for the moment I am enjoying it. So in two years time I will have to renew my visa once more for China and who know where I will end up. Maybe I will still be here or maybe the UK, I guess I’ll just have to see. But one thing is for sure I won’t be posting madly on Facebook every time I pick my nose.

I share a 4 bedroom flat with Sissi, she rents out the other two rooms to Airbnb guests to help pay for the large rent here. Some of the guests are a bit strange but I’m sure they must think that Sissi and I are a bit of an odd couple living in this flat together too. She’s 34 and I’m a wee bit older than that.

One guy is the school kid that is here for a month to do a crash course in English study and he is around 15 or 16 years old. Typically at this age hygiene is not really a concern and so he will go from toilet to kitchen as I’ve said before. Last night however I was forced to speak to him because the stench coming from his shoes was making me feel quite sick. I asked him to put his shoes outside. His Mother was here at the time and he must have told her what I said because within 5 minutes he was back and he took the insoles from the shoes and proceeded to wash them, but at least the shoes were outside. You know you can buy new odour eating insoles for about 3 quid, why would you bother to wash the old ones, it sounds rather stupid to me.

Anyhoo I’ll be glad when he goes and takes his disgusting habits and smells with him.

I think I will start to write about the strange folk that walk through our front door, it’s quite fascinating………….

It was a driech day in Suzhou today and so it was a good day to go to the art gallery and get some culture.

Today’s exhibition seemed to play with light and shadow and there were many different projected images around the gallery giving some unusual effects.

I enjoyed the blue bamboo forest that you have to walk through when you first enter and of course you have to leave by the same route. A bamboo forest bathed in blue light was quite magical.

I have a claim with Westpac Insurance which I submitted back in January and it still has not been resolved, well that’s not technically true because I was informed today that my claim had been finalised because the amount was under my $300 excess on my policy and so I can get lost and stop bothering them. and stop “bothering them” is the way I have felt ever since I first contacted them many moons ago. The first two clowns I spoke to didn’t understand the Queens English and managed to bastardise the information given and so shug@………. got turned into sheg@………, I’m surprised it wasn’t shag@………., which I may say I might start to use to see how folk react. As usual the Australian education system has let its youth down and has been unable to educate them in the ways of foreigners that speak in a far far better manner than they will ever do. E is for epple A is for…….fucked if I know……………..

You have a claim number but it only gives you false hope because you still have to run the gauntlet of incompetence to finally get through to someone that might be able to help you. You try calling from outside Australia and see how long it takes you to get to talk to a person and then when you finally get a real human your hopes are dashed into the abyss because they can’t speak English, only Australian. you will get more sense from a “chatbot” If there was a country that needed AI then this is it!!!!!!

Where is Skippy when you need him? He would have sorted this out in no time.

And so at this point I feel that my old tenants that started me on this path to frustration and damnation are having a right good laugh to themselves knowing that they have well and truly caused the landlord some grief, and may I just say………….” I hope their next shite is a hedgehog” and this also goes to all the folk at Westpac that have been of no use at all in this fiasco.

I wrote a complaint, as you do, through the secure portal on the Westpac website and they do something there that is pure genius and is something that I must congratulate them on. As you submit your lengthy letter, of which you can write 3000 words, the website will all of a sudden say “that we have detected no activity” and then times out and so you lose all you lovely words, I mean this is fuckin pure genius!. The guy that came up with this is a twisted individual and I take my hat off to him. Of course the way around this is to write your 3000 words on the computer and then copy and paste, but then who would know that this is what you do. But maybe the length of time the website refreshes itself is related to the drop down menu for complaint, suggestion or feedback…………………

Like all these necessary evils in life you need to have Insurance, you need to have this, you need to have that just in case something goes wrong and when it does you really need to have the stamina to pursue it and see it through to conclusion. I mean my case got finalised and I wasn’t even informed, these banks don’t give a fuck about you………..you’re just a number in a file somewhere and it’s very rare these days to come across someone in these institutions that can think for themselves, see the right for wrong and do the right thing to bring a resolution to the customer. These consultants are there to strip away everything but the wee piece of meat in the middle of the sandwich. Sorry you didn’t tick section B subsection 2A where it said that if you are blond then you need to stand on one leg and so it goes on. Even if you read and understand the fine print your still on the losing team.

And so now I want to scream and shout and shout at someone in Westpac but until we get subtitles enabled this will not happen…………………………

PS

the automated reply

Thank you for raising your concern with us.

We’ll be in contact with you as soon as possible. However, if you need to contact Westpac urgently, simply:  ( This is a new meaning of the word simply that I was unaware of.)
* Call us on 132 032 (8am-8pm, 7 days)
* Call + 61 2 9293 9270 (24 hours) if you’re overseas, or
* Visit your local Westpac branch (westpac.com.au/locateus).

We look forward to assisting you further.

Yours sincerely

Westpac Banking Corporation
Email: online@westpac.com.au