Weegie Christmas

This is my courtyard. Sometimes it has Dan Tang in it.

This is Kyja's mum and Tenzin.

This is a Blutekake, which is a traditional norwegian cake. it's meant to have blueberries on top as well which creates the colours of the norwegian flag. but it doesn't.

CHILIES UP FOR ADOPTION

Must go to a good home.  If interested in giving some chile love, drop by 32 Princhester St, West End.

Kiwi Appreciation Day

We had a kiwi appreciation day in order to appreciate our awesome kiwi comrades.   

We ate some fried bread, and macaroni cheese, and ate poppa jacks and pavlova.  And it was good.

Chile action

This is my happy purple chile
















A flowering chile













And some other chiles hanging around

Artamendacraftanoon

This is what an artamendacrafternoon looks like.

















Kelly Otto and Matt did some stencilling


















This is some of Brha and my lino cuts we put on the wall after.

Dinner

Here are our beans on the table ready to eat. Yum. The cycle is complete. Hooray for nature.

Bean Harvest!!!

Our delicious beans























This is where they came from

This is our bean, tomato and chile patch. They are good companions.

zuchini flower!

Zuchini flower - YEAAAAH!

zuchini

Here is a worm in Christel's hair.
Our tiny pets get everywhere!!!




















Zuchini seedlings.





















































Laura, our drop in from New Zealand. The second person called Laura from New Zealand who has stayed with us and helped with the garden in the last month.

Housewarming!

This is Brha doing an ethiopian coffee ceremony at our housewarming.

Magpies

It's almost spring. The magpies are getting angry.

There is a magpie that sits on a lightpole just down the road from the office i go to most days. Last week it swooped me, but didn't hit me very hard. After that i spent some time observing it from the window at my desk, where i can get a good view of this crazed bird.

Yesterday i saw about 4 people getting swooped by the magpie. I don't want to turn this into some kind of sick spectator sport, but it is quite exciting to watch, because i can see the magpie before the innocent people walking under it can.

I told Christel about it, and she told me that there is a poem by Leunig about this kind of thing. Here is is;


Magpie magpie dive on me
swoop down from your holy tree
as i pass the flower bed
stick your beak into my head

magpie magpie make a hole
through my head into my soul.
as i pass beneath the sun
bring my troubled head undone

magpie, magpie it is spring
is my soul a happy thing?
as i pass around the tree,
make a hole so you can see.

Brocollini

Our very own Brocollini, freshly harvested.

Transplant Day

Here is a tiny spinach plant. How cute!














Today we transplanted some tomatos and chilles into the ground, after putting sugar cane mulch and worm poo on our soil.
















Worm poo - yum!

Can you see the worm?














This is Christel, mulching the garden.



















This is me, holding worm poo.

Melbourne

I went to melbourne on the weekend. So much food in Melbourne!

Haloumi Pie! $2.50. Yeeeeeeeeah!

Canoli! $2. Yeeeeeeeeah!

So Kyja is doing well. We got up late, cooked breadfast (including haloumi) then watched trashy tv, then cooked more food, then went to the video store and got more trashy stuff to watch, then cooked dinner, then watched tv. repeat for 4 days. lovely.

The Baby

The baby! You can see it if you look reeeealy close.

It's our cute little tomato. We are all very proud.

My Ego

This week my ego got some feeding, because i got paid for some travel writing, making me an official freelance travel journalist.

I made an internal agreement with myself, that when i get paid for writing i have to spend part of it on celebratory beer, like a really nice boutique beer that i can sit and savour and ponder my meagre achievements at pretending to be a writer.

How much did i get paid, you ask?

....

$25

Ha.

So this is enough for maybe a six pack of xxxx, if i don't want to spend ALL my hard earned earnings on alcohol. Ah... the dilemma's of the freelance travel journalist.....

Here is my article.

http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/08/08/why-getting-off-the-beaten-path-is-sometimes-a-bad-idea/

Seedlings!

Here is our brocollini. Can you see it? It's a bit like a 'where's wally?'















We recently planted some tomato and basil seedlings. They've been doing well in the ground so far. Though the tomatos don't have heaps of sun, so we might shift them to a sunnier place soon.

This is Mary, Brha's cousin who's been staying with us for a while. She's an enthusiastic gardener.

And finally, my very tiny bok choy. If you look really closely you can see the very beginning of seedlings.

How cute!!!!

Cassie: The girl who loves worms

This is my housemate Cassie. She loves worms. And who wouldn't? They eat all the household food waste, and turn it into delicious and nutricious castings, which are a lovely organic fertiliser for the garden. We have a worm farm, and it's fun to watch the inhabitants grow bigger, and juicier every day as they eat our rubbish.

Yum!

Here is Pippa, showing her love for the worm. If you look closely, you can the little fellow on her hand.

Today was hot, so we had some spontaneous planting. Here is Cassie again, applying the worm castings to the freshly planted Tomato seedlings. You can also see the broccoli.

The Garden

This is our garden.

There is lots of potential.

There are five seperate beds, with good quality soil already. As you can see, there are lots of weeds at the moment. While it's been cold, we've just been hovering around inside, occasionally looking out the window and making ambitious plans for what to do when it gets warmer.

Before i moved in Christel planted some broccoli, which is doing very nicely. I didn't even think of planting anything because i forgot that living things can grow and prosper in the cold, like spinach! What a crazy vegetable!

The Beginning

Now i am back in Brisbane. Here is my street.

I've decided to resurrect my blog, and document the growth of our garden.

The End

This is the end of this blog. I've now finished my semester in Hong Kong. But i must add one final things about meditation, which was the original motivation for this. So in my last weekend i went hiking by myself to Lantau Island. It's such a beautiful place, and i planned to do some meditation in a nice solitary campsite. But my solitary campsite i found on my map was inhabited by heaps of people. That was ok - it was still nice. And i did meditate - for about 15 minutes.

The problem with camping in Hong Kong is that my body clock has switched to big city time, and i can't get to sleep until about 2am. But the sun goes down at 7.00. and even though i'd like to be able to, i can't yet meditate for 7 hours. so i got really bored and rang kyja from my tent.

Kyja arrives in 2 days, and we'll travel to Beijing and Mongolia, and hopefully not get kidnapped by nomadic herders, so that i'm able to arrive back in Brisbane on the 23rd of June.

Anyway, my point is, this is the end of my blog. Sorry it was a bit boreing. Thankyou for reading anyway!

Seeyou Soon!

Sensory Goodness

I just found possibly my ultimate recipe for sensory wellbeing - eat really hot curry, then go for a long run, then listen to bob dylan. mmmmm

i'm trying to study for my psychology exam, and reading a textbook on chinese psychology. i'm still convinced my father is a reincarnation of confucious, or actually confucious. no other australians wear flip-flops inside.

Monopoly!

Yesterday i spent most of the day in a board games cafe. It's just a room up the top of a building, with lots of board games and food and tea. A friend of a friend asked me to go and play monopoly. it was fun, but turns out he's a Hong Kong monopoly champion. That's right - they play monopoly competitively! crazy. So that was my day - failing in the game of property development, whilst drinking camomile tea. (also, i was annoyed because i didn't get to buy Tsim Tsa Tsui real estate, which is the bit of Hong Kong i feel affectionate towards.)

Oh, then we played UNO, which is always awesome, but i'm way too slow. I feel like i was better at UNO when i was 5.

Buzzing Things

Here are a list of things that are currently buzzing in Hong Kong that i hear from my room constantly.

-Construction work outside
-traffic
-something in the sky
-the fan in the hall outside my room
-the fan in the bathroom

Good Poster

I like the description of an event i saw on a poster in the train station;

"Program includes, zhong ethnic dance sway and sway, the milking see saw game with smearing faces. Pretty young maidens etc."

The Buddha of Tourism

The other day me and my mum were talking about the issues of turning religious objects into commercial ventures. She likes to stay in an abbey converted into a commercial hotel.

The Big Buddha in Hong Kong was apparently made in 1997 specifically to be a tourist attraction (and to put good feng shui stuff on Hong Kong, apparently.) At first this seems a bit unusual, but then i started thinking about it and everywhere around the world the most popular tourist attactions are often religious. Like the churches in Paris, or St.Paul's in London, or the Vatican, or Ankor Wat, or the Temples in thailand, or national mosques. So what's so bad about making a religious tourist attraction? I'm trying to think of other religious icons that have been created with tourism in mind, but i can't. Tell me if you think of any!

Maybe the Hong Kong Buddha is just the free market entrepeneurial Buddha. But is it any less 'sacred' as a spiritual icon? When i've visited there's always alot of people worshipping and doing buddhist things around, so it seems to serve both purposes quite well without pretending not to.

Anyway, unless i'm forgetting some really obvious example, i think many Christians would get angry if the church made something with a non-religous purpose. Maybe they should, and see what happens.

Korean films continued...

So i need to explain what happened at the end of that film about dogs. ('m just assuming that nobody will ever see it.)

So the man hid the dog in a cupboard of the apartment basement, and when he went down later to try to find it, he sees the creepy old janitor has taken the dog and killed it, makes it into a delicious soup and eat it.

Then the man throws another dog off the apartment roof, kills it, and the janitor goes to help bury it, then digs it up again and eats it.

Then the man's wife comes home having just bought a new dog. The husband hates the dog, naturally, but his wife is very controlling so she makes him walk the dog alot. One day the dog gets lost. The man freaks out because his wife will leave him if he doesn't find the dog. Meanwhile a homeless bum who also lives in the basement has found the dog and is...surprise surprise....about to eat it!

So a girl who works in the maintanence department of the building and is secretly in love with the man saves the dog from the homeless bum, and returns it to the man.

And everyone is happy. Except for the dogs who have been eaten.

The End.

I love Korean film!!!!!!!

Not Studying

Today i'm meant to be studying. When i got up i planned my day to not constantly eat food, not spend money, and study alot.

I read a chapter of a textbook, then a friend rang me to go out and eat expensive sushi, which i did.

But it has now put me in the mood for studying.

Buildings

Tonight in my study procrastination i wrote a song about buildings. This is about the fourth in a series of songs i've written about buildings. They didn't intend to be about buildings, but that's all i can see outside my window. Even if i start trying to write about something else a building always comes into it somehow. I wondered if this was some kind of local phenomenon and so i read some poetry by a Hong Kong poet who writes in English, but it didn't mention anything about buildings specifically.

The building out my window is particularly interesting because it has light on the top that gradually change colour, and it's a bit hypnotic sometimes. It's good to stare at. Mainly I write about that building, because i feel i have the closest relationship with it.

There are soooooooo many buildings in Hong Kong.

Yay for Korean films!

Yay for Korean films - they're so good. The library at my university has heaps of Korean films displayed, so i feel like i'm taking an extra subject in 'Korean Cinema.'

I reckon the best so far is 'Driving with my wife's lover' about a man who knows his wife is having an affair with a cab driver, so gets in his cab and goes on a long distance drive. Meanwhile a truckload of watermelons tumble down the road, and they go for a swim, and have other adventures.

At the moment i'm watching a film called 'Barking dogs never bite' about a man in an apartment who is annoyed by a dog constantly barking, so he finds the dog and tries to kill it in various ways, but doesn't have the guts so he just locks it in a cupboard and leaves it. It's meant to be a comedy, but so far it's a little disturbing. Will let you know what happens........

No tao for the western mind

So during my time in Hong Kong i've tried to explore eastern philosophy a bit more, especially Taoism, 'cos i find the tiny bit of information i learnt about it at UQ really interesting. My psyc course here brought in some stuff about the Tao, as did another class i sat in. However, the disspointing thing is that apparently unless you speak chinese you just don't get it. People don't even bother trying to explain it anymore. This makes me a bit sad.

Oh well, at least the bible is all written in English.

Monday 2 for 1

Monday is 2 for 1 main meal night in Soho, on Hong Kong Island. It's a horrible place, full of ex-pats and classy Australian bars, but really really good food!

I ate spinach and mushroom enchiladas, and it was goooood.

Hooray for routines!

I love routines! They make the world feel like a structured and safe place. Here are some things i like to do which make me happy;

-read the bbc news in the morning
-get my room key out of my pocket when i'm waiting for the lift up to my floor
-go running
-take my id card out of my pocket as i walk along the walkway to my building
-line my slippers up parallel to my bed
-drink tea from my thermos thing in every class

Confusing Returns

Today i returned the umbrella that dumpling lady leant me. This was a very confusing event due to language barrier. I walked in with the umbrella in the afternoon but dumpling lady wasn't there -just her other family/colleagues who don't speak any english. So obviously they thought i wanted to eat and were trying to sit me down, and when i said no they brought me the menu, and i was doing that language barrier gesturing thing with the umbrella so they thought i wanted to put my umbrella down, and so eventually took it from me and put it in the corner, presumably so i could sit and eat. And then i walked out. So they now must think i'm very weird - why did i come in, refuse to eat and leave my umbrella, and furthermore....why was i carrying an umbrella on a hot hot sunny day??????????

Creepy Sleep

Last night i had a dream that i was trying to go to sleep and getting really frustrated because i couldn't, and people kept coming in and disturbing me and i was getting really angry...

and then i woke up, and i felt tired.

Typhoon

Today there is a typhoon. I'm hanging out for it to get to level 8 so that i don't have to go to my exam on monday. I also would like to get a hat so i can have a classic moment of my hat flying off, as the guy in the sign has.

I wanted to go climb a rock today, but the typhoon won, so i slept most of the day and then went to get some food from the dumpling lady. When i was there the rain increased, and when i was leaving dumpling lady asked if i wanted an umbrella. Then she got me an umbrella, which had some dumpling flour on it, but was still very useful.

Thankyou again, dumpling lady, for providing me not only with food, but also shelter.

Speaking of portions

Speaking of extra portions, i was actually able to meditate this morning. I think it's because Friday is my nothing day, so i get to wake up slowly and do my washing and let my brain stay asleep all day.

So i was reading Psalm 16, which has a verse;

the lord is my chosen portion
and my cup
you hold my lot

I remember this line about portion because a staff member i worked with in New Zealand liked it. She had some elaborate analogy to do with pudding, and portions, and God, which i can't exactly remember right now, but i'm sure it was enlightening at the time.

Even though i'd heard this verse, i think this is the first time i've read it, and i didn't know (at least in my bibles translation) that there was the word 'chosen' in there. I thought it was just that the lord is your sweet nourishing pudding whether you like it or not. But in this reading it seems that it is a choice.

But when i think about portions, and choice, i automatically think of the typical canteen food serving style here which is having about 8 different dishes and you can choose two or three of them depending on the deal. Arg! choice! anxiety!

And now it's time to do my laundry. This makes me a little bit excited.

Food favours

Yesterday the vegetarian cafe smiley woman gave me an extra potato wrapped in eggplant thing with my usual meal. I think this is because i understood when she asked me if i wanted soup in cantonese, and she was proud of me.
At least this is what i would like to think, maybe she just had too many potato things, or she felt sorry for me because my cantonese is so crap.

Buddhism 101

The topic of a class about china stuff i sit in was philosophy this week. (there's many things wrong with that last sentence, but i think i've lost my ability to do englihs, so i can't fix it actually.) Anyway, it briefly covered confucianism and buddhism, and what i got from it was that confucianism is all about mountains and water (though tao is also about water, aparently, no wait, in taoism woman are water, arg!) and buddhism is about having big muscles. (see! going to the gym is essential for spiritual development!)

To explain buddhim to us we watched a 15 minute exert from a dvd called 'Running on Karma' which has an ex-monk who buffs up to a huge size to kill his best friend's murderer, meanwhile the murderer kills his other best friend who let herself be killed because she realised she would die soon anyway because of her faulty soul, and the muscly ex-monk goes to the forest and takes his pants off and walks around and 8 years, has a fight with some spirits, and himself as a spirit who's older, later find the murderer and gives him a hug then takes him back to the monastery and gets new clothes and smokes a cigarette.

And that is our explaination of the concept of karma.

I'm yet to blog about the surreal nature of the hong kong education system, but let this be a prologue.

Oh, the other thing we got taught is 'If you eat a fish, you are eating your grandmother!'

Then after class we went for seafood dim sum.

But one of my grandmothers is alive, and one is dead, so i don't know which one i'm eating, not that i eat much fish for this reason. And why is there a problem of aging population in hong kong if this is the case?

Arg! so many questions, so little answers from Hong Kong Polytecnic University.

Spiderman!

Yesterday a french climber Alain Robert climbed up a 45 story hotel in Central.

What a champ! (and a little insane)

Here is the footage:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7349023.stm

Harbour Run

I think one of my favourite things to do in Hong Kong is go running along the harbour. (Actually it's up there with the custard bun dim sum.) From where i live there are two ways to run along the harbour - one is towards Tsim Tsa Tsui promenade, and the other is towards whompoa in Hung Hom. The first way is ok, but can be quite crowded and although the view is spectacular it goes paralel to the road, so there is alot of fumes.

The other way is lovely, because it's cut off from the road and really quiet. There are people fishing and lots of old people going for an evening walk. If you look to the left you see the backs of apartments, but if you look to the right then you get an awesome view of central, and get to see the 'bank of china' building doing its flashy light thing. and sometimes there's even a breeze, which seems rare in Hong Kong.

Mindful Laundry

My teacher for one of my classes gives us exercises to enhance mindfulness. i feel the times i have the most mindfulness is doing my laundry. i had a really relaxing experience this morning feeling at one with my washing. The item i like interacting with the most is my big blue towel, it always has a nice texture, whether it's just coming out of the wash wet, or when it's dry. i also have some shirts that are particularly good for tactile experience in the laundry process. I also feel happy because i remembered to wash my sheets today.

Nothing

Last night i thought about nothing for about 2 minutes.
Then i watched some Korean short films and fell asleep.

Music Meal

I decided not to bring any music to Hong Kong. This was a bit hard to handle at first, because i was listening to alot of really nice music before i left. I did this to cleanse my music palet. (i can't spell, as everyone knows, but that word is meant to mean the palet in the mouth, not the other ones, like the wooden things they use in warehouses to carry boxes around.) Also, i didn't want to repeat my mistake of being in England and only having one nirvana album and two bob dyland songs for a year.

So having cleansed my aforementioned and badly spelled music thing, music place, music mind, whatever, i have started filling it with new music.

Jessie sent me some Sufyan Stevens, then my french friend first filled my music place with some french dub and reggae, which is lovely. Then my canadian friend gave me 5 albums of 'Magnetic Fields' which has been a delightful experience.

I sometimes feel i should listen to more cantopop while i'm here, but then i don't want to break my music place thing.

I also find it interesting to feel what music i miss. At the moment i miss;

-Basia Bulat
-Kev Carmody
-Nick Drake
-Sufyan Stevens

My art is rubbish

So for one of my classes i had to do a small art project. I put some emails and short stories through a crappy online translator, to change them from english to dutch, then back to english, then into chinese. This creates a really broken nonsensical chinese piece. Then i made the bad writing paper into oragami, and put the oragami in take away containers and put it in a plastic bag because that was part of my concept. It was meant to be interactive.

We had to display our work on a podium at university in a designated area, so i placed it on monday morning, but when i went back on monday afternoon for another class i realised it was gone, and i checked the bin, and yes, someone had thrown out my art because it looked like rubbish! HA!

I think it's a pretty funny thing to have happened, and works with my overall concept.

Post-curry haze and flashing lights

I just finished eating at ChungKing Mansions, home of the best indian food in Hong Kong. This is another of the few places where you can get really good vegetarian food. I tried to explain the concept of the 'post-curry haze' where you get into a dopey drug induced like state after eating too much curry - thinking of you Jess!

Then i walked home the long way, because looking out over Hong Kong Island at night is really really nice. I never believed people that the Hong Kong skyline was so stunning, because i didn't think that towering commercial buildings could hold much aesthetic appeal. But strangely, they do. I suppose we're all just fundamentally attracted to flashing lights.

I like Tsim Tsa Tsui at night too, even though, again, it is just rows and rows of shiny flashing shops - and far too many 7-11's. One thing i have developed in Hong Kong is an attraction to walk into 7-11's, because they are just so shiny and attractive looking. Usually i buy mochi icecream, or some gum, or a beer, just because i found i walked into the shop. Ok, so seems i have been engulfed by the capitalist machine. But sometimes i go into 'Circle K' which is the same as 7-11 but on the other side of the road, because this helps me feel that i don't have a problem with walking into 7-11's.

Today i meditated in my head while standing in line at the printer. I wanted to do more when i came back, but there are too many french people in my room, so instead i will watch a dvd (2 days in paris. arg! french colonialism!) and go to sleep.

bonne nuit

Great Link

Here is a link to a really funny blog:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Who chases who?

Today, for maybe the second time since i started this blog supposedly about the quest to find time to meditate, i actually did! Hoorah! My roomate came home at 4am, then got up and left a few hours later, leaving me with a quiet room (apart form the constant buzz of...something. i don't know exactly what the buzz is, but something is always buzzing in Hong Kong. i think when people describe it as a 'buzzing' city, they don't mean that it's energetic and crowded, i think it refers to this constant buzzing sound wherever you are.)



In an individual's relationship with God, i wonder who chases who? Maybe my enquiry stems from my psych course here about interpersonal relationships, which goes into power dynamics a bit.



I remember a friend once pointing out some part of a psalm which talks about God chasing people down like a wild animal chasing down its prey. It sounds a bit violent, but i guess he was

making the point that even if people ignore God, they will still be pursued, harrassed, or something by God.



Then there's the more popular version promoted by contemporary churches, that if you want to be close to God you have to work on it. And the more bible studies, and church services, and hillsongs you listen to, the closer you'll get. This version seems tied up in an idea of 'good works' or 'appropriate works' being rewarded, which isn't inline with alot of the bible. I also always feel that with this approach you get the mentality of 'accumulating' God, and aim to have more God that other people. Maybe the drive to attain 'God capital' is linked up somehow with our economic systems, but that's a totally different topic.



So anyway, my point is that neither view of being the passive or active partner in the relatinship with God seems to make sense. Even though we use all the same language as with human relationships to talk about the interaction between people and God, maybe this is useless.



Sorry this rant is a bit incoherent, it's still early here (11:30.) I'll try to finish this train of thought another time.



Trains! I booked train tickets to beijing for Kyja and me! Yaaaay!



And Linda - here is a sweet new business idea; a sushi train that operates on a regular train. what do you think? so you can be sitting in your train carriage, and then a sushi train can go right past you, and you can have a snack as well as double the train goodness. what can go wrong? forget nursing - we'll do up a business plan as soon as i return.

Sleeping Meditation

Today i slept until 2pm, because i was out late drinking beer in an australian bar for a friend's birthday.

But my sleep was really good, and a bit like meditation.

Lift Meditation

because i live on the 18th floor, i spend lots of time in the lift everyday, going from my room, to class, back to my room, down to the gym, back to my room, down to dinner, up to my room, down to the gym, etc....

and usually, because i'm fidgetty, it makes me really irritated to wait for the lift, and be in the lift for ages, so i started trying to do lift meditation. this is just saying verses of psalms in my head while i wait, which i find makes me feel relaxed.

i was challenged by someting Henry said, about not trying to find a special place to meditate, but just to do it whenever in your everyday life.

i found meditating in the lift is kinda like having a short nap on the bus, but less jerky, and i don't miss my stop on the lift becuase the lift tells me where i am. so it is actually quite convenient, and makes me wonder if i'm assimilating to the hong kong style of time efficiency by fitting in something productive even in a space of 2-5 minutes.

and that is my exciting revelation for today.

Today i am cheating

I am going to cheat by posting this link to an article in the bbc news about meditation;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7319043.stm

Why hiking is less fun when you can't get lost and die

Going hiking in Hong Kong is a very pleasant experience. This weekend, for example, we caught the MTR just 30 minutes away, then caught a bus to the beginning of the well marked trail. Along the way of the 4 hour trail there are benches and rubbish bins, emergency telephones, and in the middle of this particular hike, a shop where you can stop for noodles and sweet tofu. At the end of the hike there is even a drink machine to get water.


This is different from hiking in Australia. I contrast my nice hike this weekend with a day hike in S.E. Queensland where we firstly woke up at 4 am and drove 2 and a half hours to get to Mt Barney, then started the hike, got lost and spent the night in the cold. It was a far less pleasant experience.
Like a lot of other things in Hong Kong, the natural environment, specifically the country parks, also seem convenient, orderly, and subject to human control.

Speaking in wanky philosophical terms, I think the approach to hiking in Hong Kong is an example of an instrumental view of nature. Put simply, the mountains in the new territories are good for weekend walks, therefore they have value to us. When put in the context of recreation, this idea can become closely linked with consumerism, or even the commodification of nature. In Hong Kong’s country parks you can consume a nature experience as easily as consuming iced tea and fish balls from the seven eleven.

The opposite view is to see nature as having intrinsic value: whether we can get something out of the mountains or not, they should be respected and protected. According to environmental philosophers such as Arne Naess, this approach not only works out better for the natural environment, but it is a fundamental part of human spirituality. This approach aims to challenge the traditional (mainly western) dichotomy of man and nature as being two separate things.

The main difference is who is in control. When you start a day hike in many national parks (I’m thinking Mt Warning, or Mt Barney because you always hear stories of accidents in these places) the hiker is in a position where they have to submit to the surrounding environment. In Hong Kong, while of course accidents still happen, it is clear that people have gone to great lengths to control the experience.

If most people’s interaction with nature through hiking is an extension of a consumer lifestyle it doesn’t necessarily lead to a reevaluation of a person’s place in the wider environment, or instill a greater respect for nature.

I wonder how much this affects people’s environmental ethics in their daily lives.

Drying Meditation

Today i said meditative chants in my head while doing my laundry.

It's actually really fun and relaxing. I think it's why buddhist monks do alot of cleaning to help them zen hout.

Incidentally, my load didn't dry properly, so had to put it back in for a hotter drying session, as i tried no heat so that my clothes don't shrink, as they constantly do, or am i just getting huge from the gym?

Rant

While in the gym the other day (i can't stop referring to being in the gym, because i hate the gym, but it's so good!) i was listening to a podcast about Paul Bailey, an Australian writer who just published a book 'Think of an Elephant.'

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/spirit.xml

I havn't read the book, but i don't think i want to because it sounds a bit crap. I would probably consider reading it if he didn't promise to give you 'a new way of seeing and being in the world.'

This is what his website says;

Humanity is on the threshold of a breakthrough in perception as profound as the shift we made 500 years ago, from a flat earth view of reality to Galileo's orbital universe.We are awakening to a greater energy and power active within perception itself, realizing that perception does more than give us pictures of the world 'out there'. Cutting-edge science is showing that this greater aspect of our attention is the same influential energy that bonds everything to everything else as one seamless whole.Once these energetic links are found and activated in our lives, we are liberated and empowered in ways we dared not dream possible.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't this an old idea? And didn't people think it would happen in the 70's, and it didn't (or maybe we should give it more than 30 years for the profound shift, i don't know.) And isn't there a recent trend for books and films (eg 'what the bleep do we know' 2005)
which could all be summarised as 'how quantum physics can transform your life...into something....not exactly what....but it will be awesome.....and you'll be a better lover....and you'll reach a different state of conciousness....and yay! i'll be awesome! Just read this book!'

I don't really have a point to this post, except to rant like an old man about people who try to fob off old ideas as new ideas and make lots of money out of it. Also Paul Bailey has a really annoying voice because apparently he used to be a business leadership development/motivational speaker person.

So in conclusion grr grrr grrrrrr to expensive new age wank. And now i'm going to go alter my state of conciousness by going to sleep.

Fidgeting

I fidget too much. I was reminded of this after kyja got a webcam, and we started skyping seeing each other, and she got frustrated because i move too much. I don't know why this is. Apparently i also constantly wriggle in my sleep. Maybe i am just the eternal grade one child who can't sit still.

And this has implications for meditation.

Tonight Jessica is out, so i read a psalm and meditated for about 10 minutes, which is not a long time, but i think meditation is like running, and you have to train, and work your way up and can't do too much too soon or else you'll pull your spiritual muscle (as opposed to my gym muscles, which are increasingly huge) or rip a tendon in your god place or something. But i also think this is an excuse i just made up.

Anyway, it is really difficult when you can't stop moving. I have thought about taping my hands to my legs while meditating, but this seems extreme. I could maybe take some valium, but i don't know where to get some, and all the students i know who've gotten chinese medicine for things like bronchitis have gotten pills that give you hand tremors, so i don't think that would help.

So tonight i am seeking advice on how to sit still, without physical restraints or drugs. Any suggestions?

Dau Fu!

Today after waking up i talked to Kyja for about three hours on skype.

Then i went to eat at the awesome Vegetarian cafe (with tofu made to look like meat) where i go almost once a day, and i have a deal with the happy cafe lady to only speak to me in Cantonese. But it doesn't really work because i just say 'Hello, how are you?' and then she laughs, and then she says some stuff in Cantonese which i don't understand, and i say 'Yes,' and sometimes 'Tofu' and then i say i want my food to eat here, and she laughs again, and then i go and eat my food.

Actually they are the closest good vegetarian place, as in proper vegetarian rather than noodles without any meat. It is so hard to be vegetarian in Hong Kong!!! Actually, that cafe reminds me a bit of 'The Vegetarian Eatery' in St.Lucia. The staff have a similar euphoric eyes glazed over kind of appearance, and a permanent smile. I'm not sure what religious influence they are, maybe buddhist, new age or some combination of both. There is alot of literature at their shop, including one booklet in english that proclaims 'The Key to Immediate Enlightenment.' But when i opened it it is a bit long and convoluted, and didn't provide the promised enlightenment. I was a bit dissapointed, but i had good tofu to compensate for my spiritual deficiencies.

And this whole boring story is to divert you from the fact that i didn't get time to meditate today, but still had contact with some lovely spiritual tofu making folk. I think that counts for something.

Muscle development

Today i did not meditate. Instead i went to the gym in order to become huge.

You want massageeee?

You want massagee? Special price for you!!!! (...is what everyone says in Shenzen, just over the border in China.)

Why is this relevent to spiritual development? Because i'm trying to make this blog interesting. Also because i just went to meditate in the relaxation room, but then some people came in to use the massage chairs.

But i did listen to two songs by Sufyan Stevens before they came in, which i think counts for something.

Where is the space in Hong Kong?

Hong Kong has 10790 sq km.

Kowloon, where I live, as do most people in Hong Kong, has 45.5 sq km.

There are 7 million people living in Hong Kong.

So there isn't much space.

I live in a building with 3000 other people. I share a room with one other person and a bathroom with 5 other people, and a hallway and common area and kitchen with 200 other people.

So there isn't much space.

I'll now take you on a photo tour of places that are sometimes quiet and free;



The lounge area. However, notice the drink machines, that hum constantly.

This is my hallway.

Welcome to the relaxation room - a place where I sometimes meditate...

Except if people are on the massage chairs...

Or people are playing playstation...

Karoke room. Hmmm....

So this is just a quick overview of how it can be a challenge to find a solitary place in my building.

Tomorow i'll start documenting how my meditation is, if i find a place. This is sounding like a really really boring blog now, i'll try to put in some drama, kung fu, bird flu etc in later posts, just to keep you reading.... stay tuned.