Time to catch up...

Lordy, I've been totally woeful.  Part of it is a lack of an itchy photo finger - but mainly its just MASSIVE SLACKNESS.  But the slackness has not extended to the physical realm, where I've been hard at work trying to shed pounds (somewhat successfully) and get fit (more successfully) for an October and November brace of bike tours.  My big plans for Taiwan in October evaporated under the twin suns of work and boys holidays not lining up on the one hand and indifference on behalf of the other parties.  I think I have to accept that this is my thing only.  Bloody hell.  Getting a bit long in the tooth for only pounding the pedals and pavements, I got back into the swimming, though have taken to Clearwater Bay's first beach which is guarded by 302 stairs - meaning that it is without day trippers.  Instead I have a regular haul of only the hardest and toughest grannies and grandpa's, a group of about 10, who I see many times a week and engage in a lovely "we don't share a language, but know each other so lets chat and gesticulate".  It's very cool.

The view from the balcony of the beach house - it's so lovely

Evan's skim board has taken a bit of a pounding - we mixed up the epoxy and did a big fix.

We've had a couple of days of dodgy air - sunrise through some quality South China smog - the shark nets and beach biscuits down below (this is 200 stairs up).

Dylan and Courtney have left to go and study in the UK.  They've been here for such a lovely chunk of time that it feels like they've left all over again - and I suppose that is the drift of life, universe like, expanding, apart, with everything moving away from everything else like dots on a balloon being blown up.  Before they left Dylan asked me to take a couple of CV type linkedin pics for him - which was a rare treat.  I set the lights up, and asked Aiden to stand in front of them so I could measure the light; he's delightfully theatric and insincere - made me giggle:

And here's Dilly-boy, looking dapper for London-life.

 

Sunday between trips

 

Bio photo for work and The Pickle

I need a new bio photo for work stuff, so got that organised today (it is satan hot and air-filthy outside, city is some crazy some restless).  What spurred it was that I have to speak at a thing in a couple of weeks and sent my usual taken by an office photographer, much loathed 6 year old photo - and thought to myself, that's one of those bio pics that people send you that was taken a decade ago. Anyway, the delight of it is getting Ev to stand there with his arms up to focus the camera... so nice.

An I think to myself - this looks like a passport photo, but at least it is clean, and doesn't look like I'm a fifty year old dishing out photos taken at forty..

Birthday boy

(Birthday collage - stuffin aroond)

WTF is with us all?

I think, good Josh, that this one should start off with a raver warning... beware, rave below...

You know life is good when you LOVE almost all of it, the people, the changes and challenges, the evolution of self, work; that's where I'm at right now - in that weird space where I feel like I prefer not being on holiday.  Maybe that's because of a good holiday though.  Either way, enjoying the people in my life (though wish we lived not so far apart), a real feeling of purpose at work, and in that my profession of education, wild doses of exercise, lots of sleep ... the secret I guess is a patch of limited travel (though I have plans to make that sensational too).

The backdrop however is challenging - Hong Kong itself is going through a dark patch that is reminiscent of some of the challenges SA faces, indeed that the world faces. Here's a paragraph from the South China Post (interestingly a publication now owned by Jack Ma - definitely not anti-Beijing)

Do Beijing and Hong Kong officials really know what they’re up against? Those millions of people who have taken to the streets over the past seven weeks aren’t ordinary protesters. They are the product of a city that is tough to live in, that was created and shaped by forebears who were even more resilient.

Given what they’ve endured and been forced to accept, only the foolhardy would fail to take them seriously now that they have decided enough is enough.

Pampered senior officials with luxury government-provided housing and cars, hefty salaries, reasonable working conditions and generous pensions aren’t likely to relate  to ordinary Hongkongers. The squeezed

living, unaffordable rents, crowded commutes and long working hours of the majority are foreign to those who formulate the policies that govern Hong Kong. They would therefore have little, if any, comprehension of what is driving people onto the streets and the anger that has been mounting. Ignoring and doing nothing to placate is bad enough; trying to shut down avenues of protest and silence will only lead to disaster.

And I think that sums it up - the haves and the have nots - young people here fed up with being the celluloid that the film-script lives of the powerful are written on.  The result... stuff grinds to a halt - this is one of my initially failed trips to work earlier this week (the subway has been an effective target of protest; on this day I got as far as North Point - it took half an hour to get out of the bowels of the building.

I like the photo because of the looking guy on the left 

So I write this on the day that we've all had to go home - because of a typhoon this time (Macy delightfully quips that even Mother Nature thinks that Hong Kong needs a break :-), and I read the following in the Daily Maverick about South Africa:

And those are seriously tragic numbers, along with the fact that the economy contracted 3.2% in the first half of the year...literally W.T.F?!?  And then you remember - Jacob Zuma, corruption, state capture (and its fightback).

Earlier this week I read an article in the NY Times - I can't remember what it was about, but it had this delightful photo from a trump rally (many thanks NYT):

There's a lot to be seen in this pic - aside from the scary midfield mouth with its pearly-white gnashers (for example the African American dude, who seems surely in the wrong place? Nope).  The part that I'm going to call out is this, a zoom-in on the auntie on the left...

In particular her Rolex and house-sized De Beer's special.  And all of this reminded me of the pre-liberation Apartheid days.  Back then, there was an Afrikaans Band called the Gereformeerde Blues Band, whose front man was a delightful human called Johannes Kerkorrel (both words are a play on the Gereformeerde Kerk - the Apartheid Church - his name translating into the delightfully obscene "Johnny Church-organ".  They were a leftist alternative Afrikaans band, and one of their songs was "BMW".  And here are it's words (I don't think much translation is required... but if necessary, get help, it's delightfully ironic and comes off their album "Eet Kreef" (Eat Crayfish, but probably more directly translated into the Eat Cake of French revolution fame).

Ons ry 'n BMW
Ons ry 'n BMW
Ons gaan elke jaar oorsee
Ons ry 'n BMW
Ons sal jou nie 'n lift gee
Ons ry 'n BMW
Vir rylopers sê ons nee
Ons ry 'n BMW
Moet ons alles dan verniet weggee?
Nee!
Ons ry 'n BMW
Polina gaan maak vir die miesies tee!
Ons drink net suurlemoentee
Ons ry 'n BMW
Ons stem vir die PFP, die KP, die NP

Alles met 'n P, net nie die ANC, nee!
Ons ry 'n BMW
Moeni politiek praat hier nie,
Ons sal blou moord skree
Ons ry 'n BMW
Kan iemand asseblief my sonbril aangee?
En het enigiemand nog 'n idee?

The essence of the song is the savage un-generosity of the wealthy, their determination to stoop to any indignity, including fascism, just to hang onto their material goods.

And I think that is the thread that connects the fascist past to the Trumpist and Hong Kong present, along with the realities of the unemployed and the down-trodden.  The people clinging are made miserable by their lack of generosity and humanity, the people wanting are bereft of opportunity but fed an endless stream of desire, and beware those who have nothing to lose.  If you haven't seen The Great Hack (Netflix Documentary) try and give it a watch - savage stuff.

In case you think this is preachy - it's really not - here I am, playing my part in the great cesspool of a species gone nuts - and as I said at the beginning - really happy, but also slightly guilty and struggling to know what to do to contribute positively.

Eating pizza with the boys

Having a drink on Mils beach ... while Rome burns.

So what to do?  And Education feels like it's deeply part of the solution - learning - to work things out collectively, in collective interest.  I'll part with a description of Paulo Friere's educational dichotomy - reading the Pedagogy of Freedom at the moment - the stuff that the species needs, or else...

"There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the 'practice of freedom', the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

Paradise holiday villa in Bali - chillin with the Schats in Villa Asante, Canggu

We went to Bali for a week, and stayed at Pieter and Robyn's house.  This was something that Ange was really keen on, on Robyn has been saying to me for ages - "you guys must come to Bali".  But I'm thinking to myself - I don't really like crowds and population pressure wasted places - I want unspoiled (being spoiled by SA, which while getting alarmingly more populated in my life-time, still really is often pristine).  I think this about Bali, because I've been there before - Seminyak, Kuta, and to some extent it felt like a giant Aussie trailer park - so to speak (and not that I would necessarily mind that).  Anyway - I was just wrong wrong wrong.  The place is super-populated and mildly hammered - but it was fantastic.  For a range of reasons.  Two of them being Canggu, and being with the Schats crew - in their totally fabulous house - and by that, I mean this (what you can't see in this pic are the volleyball court and garden behind me, and details like table tennis tables and cracking sound system which are lurking in the shadows under the open area on the left.  Serious holiday chill-zone, unrivaled.  I was keeping my HK habit going and was up early to go running without fiendish traffic - so this pic below is the early morning scene.

Asante means thank you in Swahili - thank you indeed

Aiden and Evan soaking up some pool - time.