Initial belles lettres

I’d been writing my own travel diaries and sending postcards to loved ones during my sojourns around the globe. Naturally I took up blogging, once I was aware of it. Way back in March 2005 I was about to start the next venture into a mysterious culture… Japanese! I started writing in the (Google hosted) blog o vfowler during preparations for my first work gig as an English language teacher. In 161 posts, such as Ending of Sleepless in Brunswick, and bike police, I began to indite some of my misunderstandings and musings for the next year and bit.

Fulfilling a personal multi-purpose

As a public travel diary, my first blog served several purposes brilliantly. First, it allowed me to communicate with family and friends back home. Second, it gave me a place to practise writing and publish some news style articles combined with my photos. I’d started my flickr account at the same time, so it was a great tie in. Third, my travel narratives sufficed as the base script upon which I proudly produced my DVD trilogy – something like a slide-show on steroids.

This blog that your reading right now, vfowler blog, didn’t have a lot of direction initially. Mostly it was my laboratory for experimentation in what was possible on a self hosted WordPress powered blog. With the bells and whistles of additional media formats (audio and video), mapping, tags, categories, search, monthly archives, RSS, podcasts and vodcasts, interactive polls, calendars, communications and so on… I guess this is a web 2.0 blog. Currently vfowler blog is doubling as my required course blog for NET11.

Blogs for others

I kicked off a blog for my English students to practice writing with a real audience. At http://hawthornenglishclass.wordpress.com is where most of my class first understand the term blog – I still find this amazing. Thanks largely to my best friend, I’ve come to learn the flexibility of WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) and have been punching out a couple of sites for friends using it.

Citizen Journalism – unlikely

http://www.nowpublic.com claims The News is NowPublic.com, albeit with a by-line of Crowd Powered Media. Generally I agree with James Farmer’s post Citizen journalism sucks, that there ought to be a level of professionalism associated with the term journalism. (Farmer, 2006) Sadly, I’d also concur that the average citizen is not very good at the skills involved. Only through teaching English as a second language have I come to realise how poor the average punter is with his/her first language. I studied photography at university and have some awareness of what makes a better photograph. Now the odds of the average camera wielding person producing an acceptable shot are improving. Still, my preference is to see the kind of photos that get into Lonely Planet publications rather than the rubbish that comes from my mobile phone camera. Needless to say, it frightens me when garbage is published.

Content is king

Whilst the average citizen isn’t skilled enough for publishing to a broad public audience, there are no fewer than millions of high calibre blogs out there appealing to our many niches and interests. Blogs are at home when new content is frequently published. Just like newspapers, one way to measure the quality of the content is by readership. The really great content is always forwarded on to others, similar to the way we discuss news articles that have impacted upon us. Although, how far reaching a blog post is, may be less important than reaching the right audience.

References

Farmer, J (2006 , October 5). Citizen journalism sucks. Retrieved August 18, 2008, from The Age Blogs website: http://blogs.theage.com.au/media/archives/2006/10/citizen_journal.html

My old passport has expired. It’s so sad. The Post Office staff cut the corners off it and all!

Never mind. With an electronic chip and a photo of me that looks like a hardened criminal, the all new passport arrived yesterday. I wonder what stamps I can collect this time… Where do you see yourself during the next 10 years?

Our actual marriage was a year ago today in the sweltering heat of down-town Jinan, China. Changes (David Bowie) is one word to cover a lot of our story since. The love continues growing and I happened to remember today is our anniversary. What did I find for a gift…?

A fellow teacher mentioned their first anniversary gifts were those funky paper lamps. To inspire our future journeys together, I surprised my super wife with the fact that today is the day and gave us this neat book, 501 must visit destinations.

Next Sunday we’re going to the Great Ocean Road. It’ll be the first time for Amy and she aims to nail the remaining four-hundred-and-ninety odd destinations. Let’s go!

Leaving Anhui after a week holiday, all full of love, was simply the greatest.

6 weeks later, leaving my wife at Jinan airport, I bawled my eyes out. My handkerchief soaked with tears and sniffles jerking my whole body. Nothing the airline staff could do, would comfort me in the least. I was grateful that my colleague and mate Ivan was there to drag my sulking corpse onto each of the flights.

Peter Gabriel – Shock the monkey

Amy is born in the year of the monkey. It was most auspicious to have recently discovered that my birth date falls in the year of the tiger where

• Their energy and love of life are stimulating.
• Tigers are romantic, passionate, and playful.
• They love life and want to live it to the fullest.

If you prefer the alternative low down on your Chinese zodiac, check out Snarling Tiger, Dirty Rat: A Short and Nasty Guide to Embracing Your Inner Beast (by Stella Hyde). The Mating Mistakes combination of a tiger and a monkey are :

Monkeys know how to ride you, and you love having your fur groomed. But then they tease you, and you lose your temper and roar and look foolish.

Amy’s visa came through so quick, it definitely smashed all the Olympic records. A much needed 40kg baggage allowance ticket was found and finally we are counting down the hours. I have arranged Monday off work and my dad has come to help with airport transfer bright and early on Monday morning!

Naturally I’ll be occupied, taking care of MY wife. To keep the rest of you entertained on Monday, don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity :

27^th August; the day the whole world is waiting for.
Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky, starting August. It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate on 27^th August when Mars comes within 34.65 million miles of Earth. Be sure to watch the sky on 27^th August at 10:30pm. It will look like Earth has 2 moons. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.

石首君 (shi shou jun) is my Chinese name – “Wow!”

After finishing the third week of our teaching English program in Jianzhu University, a little get together was organised by fellow teacher Chris Murphy. Thus far we hadn’t had much opportunity to meet our local counterparts. Amongst the throng of conversations between Australians, Germans, Americans, Chinese, I was entertaining with tales of encounters during my holiday in China 1 year ago. I was lucky to have met one amazing teacher named Amy. Her attentive listening and understanding certainly sparked my curiosity…

Two days later, Chris and Amy were going to visit a local tailor. To quench my curiosity, I decided to tag along. With patience, Amy was happy to teach me some important phrases in the Chinese language. Then our first date was on Thursday night, the 5th of April. A memorable evening spent in her cousin’s restaurant, we enjoyed the top 3 dishes chosen from the menu of the 10 most popular dishes! I was quickly starting to realise just how alluring and delightful a person Amy is. She walked me home afterward, our conversation filling the night air along the streets of her hometown.

Unfortunately Amy could not join us for the Easter weekend trip to Qingdao. Her work occupied her, so it wasn’t until the following Friday that we met again. A kind student named Jesse gave me his seat on the bus, making it my Good Friday. Saturday stirred so much romantic feeling between us as we strolled along the riverside walkways and bridges of the spring city. Our friendship more than flourished that weekend.

The following Friday was also a good one. I had to ask Valentin to directly invite Amy to his birthday party as she is a little shy to arrive at a party as a friend of another guest. This tactic worked wonderfully and I was so happy that we’d met again. In the ensuing week we started to get excited about the forthcoming May holiday and made plans to take a trip together.

A barbecue, beers and karaoke night with several friends singing together was a joyful evening after work on the Thursday.

Our holiday together was truly the making of us as a couple. Each day of the holiday brought us closer together. From sharing accommodation and fantastic meals together everyday, brilliant deep conversation, tests of trust, superb experiences in the World Heritage villages, hiking around the forests, mountains and valleys, abundant intimate moments, our faith in each other as the right combination grew and grew. We returned from our holiday, as boyfriend and girlfriend.

Thereafter, our relationship blossomed and we began to live together in Jinan.

On Sunday I took my boyfriend Vernon to the hospital, because he had some skin problems. We arranged to meet with Wang Yina, one of our friends, also a doctor in Jinan. My daddy went to see Wang Yina at the same time, and by luck that was the first time for daddy and my boyfriend to meet each other. Actually, at the very beginning, Vernon and I were a little worried about whether my daddy will love him or not, but when they saw each other, they met just like old friends, and love each other with beautiful smiles. One week later, we had a great lunch with daddy and his best friend, uncle Liu. Daddy chose a traditional Chinese restaurant for Vernon and he loved it. Although daddy and uncle’s English is really poor, with gesture, body language, a little Chinese spoken by Vernon and some translation by myself, we all communicated perfectly. Every one of us enjoyed the lunch and we received the blessing from daddy: “You are lucky to find each other. Best wishes to you two.”

It was on May 26th that I proposed to Amy. I could not get the flowers I really wanted to give her, but I knelt on one knee and declared my love to her. Yes! She said she would marry me and I became the happiest man on Earth.

Family, friends, colleagues, and even our students haven’t stopped congratulating us since. The registry of our marriage on the 5th of June was a steaming hot day in Jinan. It required ice-creams both before and after the registration was complete! We celebrated that evening over dinner with Amy’s best friend. I later surprised my wife with a 1-week married candle lit dinner.

I am completely over-the-moon happy that we have both found the right person to be with, and that we love each other. As husband and wife, we are now making the preparations to continue our life together, in love forever.Romeo + Juliet Volume 2 – Kissing You (Love Theme)

Amy and 3 dragon fountains

Meeting Amy started a special something in my life.

Tan Dun – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon | To The South

The test of whether I was a good guy began a few weeks later, without my knowledge whatsoever. For the May holiday week, the 2 of us jumped aboard a southbound train for a mountain retreat in Anhui province. Visiting locations of several gorgeous scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon certainly excited us. Also the ancient villages we stayed in, were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in late 2000, the same period when the film was released. I have to admit I was more than a little surprised to find the name of the first place we visited, is Lovers’ Valley.

Here, everyone is surrounded by it, drenched in it, soaked in it. Love is everywhere It’s not only written in the gardens but also painted on the rock floor – of course in red, the Chinese colour for love!

But wait, there’s more! Not only chock-a-block full of love, the valley also has gorgeous waterfalls, a sea of bamboo, and a free show of the sky high trapeze trio!

We’d spent such a long time in Lovers’ Valley that the third destination for the day had to be cancelled. Onto the second place we visited, The Phoenix Source. Since the main Chinese symbol of womanhood is the phoenix (whereas the dragon is the male counterpart) this relentless gushing could easily be thought of as an ongoing re-birth origin of water. A day in China inevitably involves that water turning to tea.

An insanely early wake-up time lead us to a just-as-crazy queue for the gondola. Worth the wait though, the Cloud Valley Temple cable car hoisted us up the Eastern Steps in just a few minutes and with spectacular views the whole way. And here we are among the heights of Huángshān 黄山.

Despite being on a rather populated summit, we discovered a phenomenon whereby we would ask others to take a photo of us, males would pan the camera until Amy is almost out of the frame and I would appear as the main feature – not what either of us really wanted. (Often we would resort to simply taking the shot ourselves.)

Cruising around from summit to summit, the stairways were so narrow, high and precarious, we were crouching and clasping on to safety rails, full of fear. From Brightness Top (1840m) we walked past the Turtle Carrying Gold Turtle and climbed up the Ladder On The Clouds to Lotus Peak (1864m), then steeply down to the narrow brink of the Jade Screen viewing balcony and finally down through a cave to the Standing Horse Bridge.

Despite being carried all the way up, Amy and I still found it rather tiring to only descend so many stairs. The next few days were spent stumbling around on tender calves and aching Achilles’.

Some of our students used to think Australia Day is April Fool’s Day! Finishing work on Friday afternoon, we tasted a sizzlin’ lunch, tested the Blue Mountain coffee in the newly discovered campus cafe, and toasted to our survival of another week, (ignore that the bus driver nearly killed us, starting to drive away as we alighted!)

Easter was next on the calendar, and our crew were doubtful the bunny would find us here in the big smoke. More likely a dragon would. In true Aussie style, a little holiday was planned, and we headed for the seaside town of QingDao. Our train had obviously been updated with a wonderful TV and no volume control. The “find a hotel” project got derailed as our stomachs began to rumble.

Last Thursday night I enjoyed dinner with 1 of China’s top 5 people, a meal of the top 3 dishes ordered from the restaurant’s top 10 list. Time for a little variety, there’s only so much great Chinese food one can handle. The posh hotel buffet lunch certainly filled our bellies. Just one more choc-coated marshmallow stick for the road…

An evening stroll along the pier to walk off the lunch kilos. There are hints of St Kilda pier and for the first time in ages, I think of home…

With 3 Chinese kids, I played some hacky sack out front of the St Michael’s church on Easter Sunday morning. Mornings in China start from 6AM for me! Somehow it’s easy for others to get up and practise their tai-chi, a sword version, fan dancing, and similar physical activities at the crack of dawn. I spotted an elderly man practising his thrusting – use it or lose it, that’s his motto!

Fruitless shopping is a popular past-time for many locals. I have to admit, I’ve joined in, but like most males, my shopping is exclusively results oriented. The latest success was an incense burner and a few sticks. At long last, my days of showering with drains stinking of sewer stench are over!

It was on the return train to Jinan when I encountered a re-occurrence of my worst nightmare. Along with the No spitting and the Don’t throw dirty things on the floor signs, it appears the No smoking sign is the only ignorable one. The volume of cigarette consumption in the small, enclosed public space, was more than enough to make me sick. It sent my head reeling, filled my lungs with crap and tore my throat and nasal passages to shreds.

Smokers’ Paradise
Cigarette smoking is widespread among men in China… Most Chinese people do not seem to be at all worried about the links between smoking and health problems. It is very hard to escape from other people’s cigarettes in restaurants.

I am more sensitive to filthy air than I wish. Particularly when I am eating, it is so uncomfortable, I am on the lookout for smoke free venues. More so, my option of children in the future is being hijacked. I used to be worried about radiation half-lives from living in Hiroshima for a year. Then I read this from The Age website.

Infertility increasing in China: report
April 9, 2007 – 6:19PM
Pollution, stress, smoking and multiple abortions are all leading to a rise in infertility in China, which may affect up to one-tenth of Chinese couples, Xinhua news agency says.

I spent Monday as sick as a dog, just laying about. Back at work on Tuesday with a horrible case of the flu and the students are filling up the toilets with cigarette butts and burning up all the oxygen in the already tainted air. Can you fault them when they are merely following the model of their school dean?

I honestly didn’t believe extreme culture shock was possible on one’s second visit… How utterly foolish of me! In fact so bizarre and amazingly different to my first visit, so distant to the clichés of Shanghai shoppers and Beijing bush-hankies, this little part of China shall be henceforth known as the twilight zone.
Talking Heads – Road to nowhere

Sorry, in fact the bush-hankies are popular, even here in the zone. The haark-and-spit is not exactly rampant in the streets, but to my horror I witnessed a female student spitting in the hallway on her way to class!

Should I mention my lack of fire-fighting training? It was after all, only a small fire we had in class last week.

In order to survive here, you’ll need a truck load of tools, including the house engineer gear. I’m not kidding! Be prepared to fix your own domestic disasters, ranging from electric failures and carpentry cock-ups to plumbing problems.

To help you out, I’ll give you a few handy bits. 菜鸟 Newbie Mandarin can be learnt from Ken Carrol and Jenny via some lessons on chinesepod.com So be sure to study up on:

• 菜鸟151 Don’t Drink the Water
• 菜鸟157 Power Outage
• 菜鸟158 Trip to the Supermarket

Here’s a couple of additions, thanks to one of my students and one of the Chinese English teachers. To solve the problem of bastardly shopkeepers reluctant to give a lot of small change, you could buy something worth 1 yuan and slap a fiver down on the counter. A bit of a pain if you can’t be arsed going shopping everyday. So here’s your Pin yin phrase to ask for change of a fiver:

ke yi gei wo huan wu ge yi kuai de ling qian ma?

Okay so the wu part is the 5, but don’t bother trying for 10 because you won’t get it. Next I have a variant of the “Can I take a photo of you?” question on every polite photographer’s mind, (despite the fact that politeness has a completely different meaning in the zone!)

wo neng gei ni zhao xiang ma?

Need this in another language? Check the forum at “May I take your picture” – add translations for as many languages as possible! Speaking of languages, if you’re into gaining some ability to read the written lingo while in the zone, try to learn Chinese characters, 中文.

Now reward yourself. There’s plenty of great food and you can afford to splash out as often as you want. Carnivores beware, just remember the 6 to 66 rule, ie. food should be kept below 6 or above 66 degrees or the devil will sting you in the ring. Beer is cheap, about 42 cents (Australian) for a 600ml bottle. We’re off to Qingdao this weekend to see what’s left after the Germans departed, 1914 – thankfully the beer factory remains.

Running Bull Productions proudly presents 2 nights of back-to-back screenings of the digital impressions slide-show trilogy, including the première of a Tibetan travel tale. Following on from where we left off in chunks of China, the third part of the trilogy takes on altitude, a different culture in far-flung lands, and concludes the story.

I hope you can make it on either night, Friday the 9th of March or Saturday the 10th of March, from 6pm at my house. The program for each evening is :

• 6pm Japan – a year in the life
• 7pm chunks of China
• 8pm a Tibetan travel tale

Please enjoy the poster and YouTube preview (1 minute and 11 seconds) before you see the main feature!

Some photos from Saturday night‘s screening.

Like everything, there are pros and cons of the transport systems in this town. This is the technical term for a transport breakdown in Melbourne. The upshot is, we get compensation… well, kind of.

Monthly and longer ticketholders will get compensation from Connex for January for the large number of cancelled and delayed trains.

If you’re feeling affluent and want to improve on the cons, feel free to put your money where your mouth is. Melbourne’s transport companies only get 35% of operating costs recovered from fares. The Public Transport Users Association are awaiting your investment.

The free W-11 tram cruising around the city circle has got to be the best thing since sliced bread. If you’re craving for a momentary return to my favourite spot in India… then look no further – literally – jump on board and close your eyes as you boogie your way down the aisle to the Punjabi beat. B21 – Darshan
Failing that, or you happen to be working every Friday night, a vision for your sore eyes: not such a busy street on Vimeo