My Valentine

Valentine’s Day, Thursday, 14 February 2002.

Yes, 2002. That was a very significant day in our little household.

    As an historian, I suppose I should have started at least as early as 1382, when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote:

       For this was on seynt Volantynys day -

       Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.

    ["For this was sent on Saint Valentine's Day, 

    when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."]

    Well, I hope that’s what it means, but it also looks like it could be about cheese-making, which isn’t half so romantic.

    But 2002 will do. ‘Chesing a make’ was different in 1382, I suspect, even if making out had the same basic formula. Gosh, I hope it’s 2002, but I could be a year out, and if it were 2001 then I’ve missed a ten year anniversary and have sadly blown it in the romance stakes. My beloved lies sleeping – not unreasonably, at 6 am on Monday, 14 February 2011 - so I can’t check that date with her. I’ve been awake for a while – since about 4 am or so. It happens.

Booloominbah, UNE.

    Anyway, on that day nine [or so!]* years ago, Tracey and I were having lunch in the private dining room at Booloominbah. ‘Bool’ is the elegant mansion which now houses the Vice Chancellor’s offices and the Booloominbah Collection. The latter is a restaurant that I rather hope helps to finance the university’s academic pursuits, but I can’t be too certain of that. Let’s stick with romance anyway....

    All those years ago, I proposed marriage to Tracey Rose James at this luncheon on that day, and she accepted my proposal. It was not entirely a surprise to her, as we had together chosen the ring some time before, and it is a beautiful engagement ring if I may say so. Not that I discovered it; I am not that clever or discerning – but it has a cluster of seven fine diamonds, seven being Tracey’s lucky number. Let’s just say it was discovered, acquired, and on that day was for the first time slipped on the third finger of my beloved’s left hand.

Engagement/wedding rings!

    Little did we know that that same engagement ring would become the official wedding ring – the real one with which I her wed. It wasn’t because there was not a traditional wedding ring or the Best Man had forgotten it - there was – and a beautiful ring it is too. But when it came to the part of the wedding ceremony to place the wedding ring on the bride’s finger, it had been there so long that it wouldn’t come off to be slipped back on (not without some serious surgery anyway, either to the finger or the wedding ring, and we decided against either procedure.) So, this engagement ring is very symbolic of our whole life together.

    Marriage is not something to be taken lightly, as many know very well and those who don’t probably will at some stage. Eight years and 154 days after our Booloominbah date, on 4 July 2010, we got married. It’s very wise to have anniversaries of the joyful type on dates that are easily remembered, and I thank my American friends for making the marriage date stick in memory.

    We weren’t actually going for the record for the world’s longest engagement, but as you see we didn’t rush into the marriage bit of it. We had our reasons and you can guess at them if you like, but I will neither confirm nor deny your speculations on this matter if you have any, which you probably don’t.  It’s just good to be sure about such things before taking the plunge.

    May there be red roses on your table on Monday, 14 February 2011, either literally or metaphorically. In this day and age I realise not everyone needs to ‘chese a make’ or is passionately interested in doing so right now.

    But this year there are real red roses on ours. Thank you, beloved. There's only one reason they are there for us to share.

  

Of late summer, clouds and clocks

This is the sort of late summer day that makes Armidale a place that is a joy to live in. Actually, it feels more like an early autumn day, and given that it’s half-past February (as the hibernating bear said when he looked at his watch), that’s a good way to put it.

   The air is crisp and crystal clear as it’s not yet cold enough for anyone to light their wood burning heaters. The sky is as blue as a sky should be when you take chocolate-box photos of pretty places. The trees that start to colour for autumn earlier than the rest are turning off their bioclocks, especially the Golden Ashes and the Pistaceas.

   Maybe I can get outside in the late afternoon light and take a photo, just to show you the delicate gold of the ashes and the brilliant salmon colour of a few branches of the Pistacea against the olive green of the Claret Ashes. The turn of the well-named Claret Ashes comes later in the season, along with the Liquidambers and the Virginia Creepers that make the little chapel at Gostwyck so beautiful. The late summer grasses are turning from green to straw colour as they run up to seed, and the white wild daisies wave their heads in tune with the rhythm of the grasses as a slight breeze blows.

   Mr Wordsworth had it right when he was wandering lonely as a cloud....

Gostwyck Chapel, early autumn

   I am glad to have had the privilege of seeing another summer changing to autumn. I don’t want to destroy the chocbox view I've been describing by injecting into it the personal internal battles I was having this time last year, down in Melbourne – but it IS a year, and that’s a triumph for my family and friends, for medicine, for those who tended a stranger and a friend as their patient at hospitals and surgeries there and here.

   Not once have I heard a cross word from any of them, only encouragement and compassion without over-sentimentality. They’ve stood back when I needed them to, been there if required. Throughout all this Tracey has epitomised all that generosity of spirit. Christian too, who has had to take on the roles I vacated so suddenly fifteen months ago. Neither of them has complained in my presence. They’ve borne things alone quite often, human shields, as my daughters and sisters and other family have done.

   But you know, it’s more than a year since that December day in 2009. In fact, it’s now getting on to fifteen months. I am still here, battle weary but not quite beaten down. I can still think. I can still type with one hand. I can still write down my stories. I am not in pain for most of the time. I can still enjoy the company of friends when the time is right, or communicate with them in other ways. I  can walk unaided and have a little more strength in my right arm. I celebrate all these.

   I know from experience that things can and do change in a flash. I know when I play with the building blocks that they can come tumbling down no matter what hard work I and others have put into setting them up. I know how hard it can be to start all over again. I know things can and probably will take turns for the worse, perhaps suddenly. But right now I am alive and can make the best of things. I won’t even try to say thanks. Those who know me well enough know that I appreciate everything you’ve done.

   As I said, it’s a beautiful day outside. Look at it, and enjoy it, even if you have problems and the view’s not so great from where you are. Things could be better for us all, but if you’re reading this now, I’ll bet you they could be a whole lot worse.

   Time for me to rest now.

Threepence, sixpence and Islam

The year was 1971. I was employed as a tutor in History of Asian Civilisations at the University of Queensland, and Dr Devahuti was my boss - for the South Asian section at least. My boss for the Chinese and Japanese sections was none other than the lecturer who had decided to award me a High Distinction for his other subject five years before, an HD I definitely didn’t deserve – but which had helped me enormously in getting the Tutorship.

   In those days (but no more, sad to say!) a tutorship was grooming for a lectureship somewhere in the country, or abroad, while you got your advanced degree. Or degrees, in my case. I could have gone on straight to a Ph D from my First Class Honours, but I felt myself unready to launch into such a time- and energy-consuming project while engaged in so many other new things.

   I was, after all, learning to be a Tutor, trying to absorb all the Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian cultural history that I was supposed to know already and be soon teaching to undergraduates (but that I really knew very little about) and I was also learning Hindi by evening classes. I had just married. Helen, my Honours classmate and then newly-appointed co-Tutor and her fiancé came up to Gladstone one weekend for the wedding, and the following Saturday, Janette and I went to their wedding in Brisbane.

   It was not an auspicious year to begin a Ph D and I’m glad I was smart enough to realise it. Helen began hers, but I chose to do a Masters degree instead, and then would go on to a Ph D if all went well with the MA. In truth it never occurred to me that all wouldn’t go well with it, and fortunately, it did turn out fine – but it was a tough enough row to hoe along with everything else happening at the time.

   Ironically, had I not done the MA before my Ph D, I almost certainly would not have got the lectureship here in Armidale, as my Honours degree on its own wouldn’t have been competitive enough against the qualifications of the other applicants for the job I got here.

   Such are the twists of fate that push our lives along the paths they do.

   I started out telling you all this because my mind was on another track entirely.  When I mentioned 1971, I was actually recalling it was the year that I gave my first lecture ever to undergraduates. As tutors, we were encouraged to give one or two lectures a year as practice for the academic career we were making for ourselves.

   Devahuti suggested I should do, as my first lecture, the philosophy of Islam. I was as nervous about this as I was when I did my first ever teaching prac lesson seven years before, to a class of Grade 2s at Enoggera State School.

   Oh, I have to tell you about that now that I have you here - but very briefly, I promise! My first lesson was a 15 minute one to teach how many threepences there were in a sixpence. I kid you not, and even if you never used a threepence (pronounced ‘thrippence’ for you babies under 50 or so) or a sixpence, I’ll bet even when you were seven you wouldn’t have had much trouble working out the mathematics of the relationship between the two coins.

   I had charts of pennies in threepences and sixpences, giant coins and all sorts of wondrous devices to teach my little ones the art of divining the magical connection between these little silver bits of our currency - and real silver it was in those days too, suitable for Christmas puddings. 

   But it was all rather wasted, as there wasn’t a kid in the class who didn’t know, long before I began my earnest quest to instruct them on this vital matter of childhood economics, that you could buy as many peppermints with two thrippences as with a sixpence.... BUT.... I had fifteen minutes worth of diagrams and charts and coins and by god they got them anyway.

   Sorry, I needed to tell you this episode in my life way more than you needed to know about it. I knew I’d get it in somewhere in these stories of my life. I just hope in my comparison between nervousness when teaching about silver coins to Grade 2s and explaining Islam to undergraduates I haven’t trivialised one or the other too much.

   My lecture on Islam turned out to be a resounding triumph - certainly much more satisfying than the lesson to the Grade 2s, as there was one vital difference. The undergraduates knew less about Islam than I did, but the Grade 2s and I were at par on the matter of thrippences and sixpences. The undergraduates burst into applause at the end of the two-hour lecture. 

   And no, don't try to tell me that they were so glad it was over after 110 minutes of aural hammering that they couldn't help themselves - I just won't have it, thank you! They really liked it. Had they stood up a minute before leaving, it would have been a standing ovation. However, I don't think it got that far - but for a first ever lecture, it wasn't so bad. Mind you, in the three months before I gave it, they'd had some pretty awful ones from some of my colleagues. But, as Hagrid often let slip, I shouldn't have said that. Comparisons are odious.

   Now contrary to what you'll be thinking, I’m not telling you this to try to reassure both of us what a super-duper teacher I was. Quite the reverse, in fact. The reason why it was so successful, I fairly soon came to realise after more serious study, was that I knew even less about Islam than I imagined. I had simplified it so ruthlessly in my lecture notes that even the most average student got the hang of the fundamental ideas. All the subtleties of this fascinating religion disappeared without trace in the simplistic serving of its philosophy that I dished up.

   Only later, when I taught the philosophy of Islam year after year, did I want to include all the ifs and buts. It might have been more accurate, but I’m not sure it would have made such an impact. I guess there’s a lesson in that somewhere.

   So I’ve finally got to where I intended to be after the first paragraph. What I was going to gripe about, but I’ll leave it now to the next story, is that successive Australian governments of all political persuasions paid me and several of my colleagues for decades to research and teach about Islam and Muslim cultures, but none of them have taken any advice we’ve given them on these matters. They just go on making the same old mistakes and wondering why their foreign policies towards Muslim governments are such miserable failures.

   Maybe next story.... by then we’ll see what’s happened in Egypt in the next few hours – probably before you read this – and I’ll take it from there. And you can blissfully ignore it if you like. Fair enough?

The Good News or the Bad News?

I promised you that I would have a story for you under this header, so here it is. When I say a ‘story’ by the way, I don’t mean it’s made up. If at times I exaggerate a tinsy bit - and, I confess, that might happen now and again, then I’ll make that pretty clear to you, or you’ll know.

   Just thought I’d clear that up.

   This was about four years ago, in my other incarnation. That is, well before 3 December 2009, when the world blindfolded me, spun me around twenty times and told me to try walking a straight line.

   I was at the surgery of an top-notch skin specialist who is so well known in this town I won’t name him, though many locals will know who he is for sure. We were inspecting deep wounds to both my legs, inflicted by this excellent doctor and which I’d voluntarily allowed him to perform.

   ‘Ah, very good,’ he said, looking at his neat stitching with justifiable pride. ‘Now, do you want the good news or the bad news?’

   Tracey says that these days I find decision-making a painfully slow process, or at least, it’s slow as hell for her. She asks me what I want on the other piece of toast, and I find myself in a sea of indecision. Should it be Vegemite, or Maureen’s Marmalade Jam (you know, real marmalade jam, with the orange peel sliced fine as a hair’s breadth that wins prizes at the Show, not the mystery marmalade you get from Coles)? Or honey? Or neither? Heck, this is hard!!

   Well, I have to admit, the doc’s question, even four years ago, was equally made for indecision on my part. But then, he WAS the doc after all who, when I rang him about a biopsy result, was trying to remember who I was from when he’d seen me two weeks before, and he asked me, ‘Were you the short fat bloke?’ Sadly, I had to agree, with some reluctance, that I probably was. So I had a slight chance of paying him out for his accurate but sad description by my pathetic hesitation.

   You may have gathered from this that, though an excellent skin specialist, his bedside manner left a little to be desired, given his description of me in the identification line-up on the phone. But with someone as direct as he, a question about which sort of news he was going to deliver first was a weighty matter. If I said ‘the good news’ and it was really bad, then could I take the bad news? But if I said ‘the bad news,’ and that turned out to be that I would drop dead the next morning, then there wouldn’t be much point in hearing the good news. The edge would have been taken right off my curiosity by the prospect of my next Weetbix being my last meal.

   So I let him stew a little while I made up my mind. He did have a peculiar grin on his face, but then again he had already proved he had some sadistic tendencies.

   I had visited him initially because of a strange mark on my leg – a scaly sort of thing.  My GP had noticed it, said it looked suss, and bundled me off unceremoniously to the skin guy. He took one look at it, said it was probably a basal cell cancer but could be something else. He’d take a biopsy sample and examine me from head to toe. Strip down to underpants, pronto.

   Now this could well explain why he identified me on the phone so definitely as the short fat bloke, even though I was wearing my Superman undies on that day and he could just as easily have remembered those. ‘You were the guy, slightly stocky build, in the Superman underpants, weren’t you?’ would have been a triumph of diplomacy for him and salvaged a little pride for me.

   But he had seen it all, every hectare of my skin, going over what was obviously mounds of obese flesh in his quest for more suspicious scaly bits, and had even managed to turn up a second, smaller one on my other leg. Oh goody! Another bit of flesh to punch out a sample from.... and each in a place that was actually pure muscle, not flab.

   The biopsy turned up a basal cell cancer – both of them were. Now, basal cell cancers aren’t that great an issue. There are far worse skin cancers than these, which he described, very accurately, as a sort of ‘skin weed’. They don’t do much but they must be removed, or they’ll spread, and in the end you’ll have a lot more trouble with them. The moral is, get them dealt with, as soon as possible.

   So, we talked options once the biopsy result was known. He could take his scalpel and cut them out right away, or we could try a cream that had a 70% chance of success. The latter would take six weeks or so to work, if it were going to work at all. It was quite expensive and you got a tiny little sachet of it for a pretty hefty price. You pierced the sachet with a pin, squeezed out a minuscule bit, and carefully dabbed it on the affected skin with a toothpick.

   Now I knew this cream and I felt lucky. I’m the sort of bloke that if it works for 70% of people, I’m one of them. If the most common blood type is O or something, that will probably be mine. (I know mine is a very common type but to be truthful even after all these blood tests over the past year or more I still don’t know for sure now what it is, and I can’t remember from the time I used to give blood. Weird, that.) So you can see my drift, right?

   He also drew with a marker pen on my leg what sort of piece he would take out if we went for the surgery. Holy smoke! For something the size of a 5 cent piece, did he really need to start at my ankle and go to my navel? (OK, I’m exaggerating a teeny bit.) But why not just cut around the immediate area? It may not heal properly, he said. You could get ulcers if we don’t make a longish incision and stitch it together. Fair enough. That made sense to me. I’d had enough bits of my skin stitched back together in my time to get that.

   So, we opted for a course of the cream. At first it seemed to go well, with the expected reaction by the cancer spot that it should have if the cream was going to work. Then it just sat there, and by the end of six weeks, the spots looked as cheery and content there on my legs as they had at the start. We decided to extend the treatment, but at the end of it, there they still were, not the least faded. It was as if they'd relished the cream, in fact. 'FEED ME!' It was like something out of the Little Shop of Horrors....

   No choice then. The surgical option was the go. The date was set and the operation performed. Under local anaesthetic of course, I’m not that much of a wimp. Bits of the tissue were sent to the lab just to be sure there was no mistake about what we were dealing with.

   So, here I was, right at that point, the doc inspecting the neat surgery he’d performed and then popping me that question – the good news or the bad? with that crooked, vaguely sheepish grin on his face.

   Of course, I opted for the good news, after making him wait long enough for the grin to fade a little. I hoped he was thinking about whether or not his indemnity insurance was fully paid up. Well, if I'd actually thought about it, I would have given the impression I was thinking that. 

   ‘The good news is that it confirmed it was a basal cell cancer and you are completely clear of it.’

   And the bad news?

   ‘We didn’t have to perform this surgery after all.’

   What?

   ‘The biopsy on the tissue we took out showed that the cream had actually worked – probably in the first few days when you saw some action. The skin obviously needed much longer than usual to fade back to normal. That’s never happened in my experience before.’

   He was right. We had made the right decision under the circumstances. There was no clue at the time that the skin cancer was nuked; and in any case, the deed was done. No use crying over spilt blood. 

   But sometimes I wonder if these deep incisions cutting through muscle and tissue have subsequently had some effect on blood circulation, and partly explain why my ankles and feet are now extra likely to swell up.

   Probably not. I’ve made some terrible self-diagnoses in my time. I wasn’t cut out to be a medical doctor, just a play one, as one of my medic friends reminds me as often as he can.

   Hang on, from start to finish, how long did it take you to get your medical degree, Doc?

   ‘Five years. And your degrees, including Ph D? How long?’

   Start to finish? Ummm, fifteen years, actually. Much more thorough than you lot.

   ‘Ahhhh. Very slow learner. I thought as much....’

   He’s right. I am a very slow learner, and that’s a fact.

Lists and lapses

OK, I admit it. I am having a terrible problem - focusing on one task at a time. I mean, a really, really bad one. I'm a bloody disgrace. No other phrase for it....

   I don’t know if this happens to you, but a friend was saying how he sometimes starts out to bring in the garbage bins, notices a branch hanging down too far, so gets the pruning secateurs, then starts to fix a loose screw holding the letterbox in place, and before he knows it, has about six things on the go at once. Two hours later, he ambles back inside, and the garbage bins are still out there on the footpath.

   Oh come on, don’t try to tell me he and I are the only people in the world who do things like that. You don’t fool me.

   Right now for me it’s not about those outside jobs (though I dearly wish it were!), but ones where I’m doing no more than sitting in front of the computer. 

   For example, I have just started writing this. That was after I wanted to have a look at what ‘lists’ I had scanned in from Sei Shonagon before we went away to the Coast. My short-term memory is such that I have forgotten what I have included in the blog (a friend refers to it as the ‘blob’. I like that. It is a blob really). So I go to the desktop of the computer and see some screenshots should be put in a folder, and do that. Then I forget why I went to the desktop in the first place, and go back to the Word doc I had open to see what it was.

   Better do a Save of the Word doc so far, just in case some weird thing happens and Word locks up. It does that now and again, but only when it’s really critical of course. NO!!! I chose SAVE when I meant to save it as another document! I have changed some things on the original I’ve now lost, but wait – I have my backup on the other internal drive so it’s OK. But then, I didn’t back up last week before we went away. Better check. My program that syncs backups is brilliant – as long as I use it. I better do another sync after I recover that file as it was. And do a proper Save As with this doc. 

   Twenty minutes later, back on track - wherever that track was leading to....

   The Pillow Book. This makes me want to do an OCR scan of a few other pages from the Pillow Book. I start reading that. Oy! Back to the task in hand – well one of them at least. So now the book’s sitting on the scanner. Now I have to open Photoshop and Omnipage, and while they’re opening I check the news on an excellent news gathering program I have. 

   Wow! So much is happening... ‘NATO oil tankers attacked in Pakistan’ – what’s that about? ‘AOL to buy the Huffington Post’? Pity... that used to be a good read, though it was already selling its soul before AOL got to it. ‘Aussie sundial puts Stonehenge in shade’ - gotta read that..... All this time I have two replies open to important letters I must respond to but needed to go to Google to check something. By this time I have forgotten what that was. FaceBook is open on another page and someone has written something new on the newsfeed.... And those replies I wanted to do on the Blob, are there any more? STOP IT!!!!

   And I want another cup of green tea. Tracey said last night there’s some jasmine tea that’s been in the cupboard for a while. She’s left it out for me. She leaves everything out for me so I can take medications and eat early in the morning, me being the early riser. Every item, easy to use, placed perfectly for one-handed, left-handed operations. The jasmine tea is there, but when I open it, it’s actually in a sealed cellophane packet. 

   Such things are impossible to open one-handed. I need the kitchen scissors to open it. They aren’t there. Probably in the dishwasher. I don’t want to clank around in there and wake the household. I’ll just use the last of the ‘Curly Cloud’ green tea instead.

   Idiot! You could just have gone to the study and got scissors there but you didn’t think of that, did you? There’s at least five pairs there. I’m having some of the jasmine tea now. But the Curly Cloud has had its diuretic effect so a trip to the bathroom is in order. Quietly now. Don’t shamble round too much. Hell’s bells. More emails have come in. It’s 9.30 am already! I want to rest. And what have I actually accomplished?

   Does anyone see there is a bit of a flaw in my procedure for accomplishing tasks here? I am actually doing a couple of other things as well I haven’t mentioned (seriously!) but this is getting beyond embarrassing and boring for us both, isn’t it? You get the idea – I won’t carry on any more about it. Much.

   Focus, dumbo. One thing at a time. Finish it and move on. It’s a miracle I have written this much without going somewhere else.

   (Well, I did, but just once. OK, twice....)  Mmmm – don’t you love the smell of jasmine tea? It reminds me of being in Guilin, Urumqi, Shanghai. Even Honkers. (Hong Kong, of course....)

   FOCUS!! There’s an extra bit of the Pillow Book that scanned in on the page with this funny little list, but I decided to leave it here for you. Enjoy it, though they’re a woosy lot, aren’t they? You so earned it if you got this far with my diatribe....

_____________________________________

  

   ... men, apparently travelling incognito, arrived while I was there. They were elegantly dressed in cherry‑blossom and willow robes, and they looked very distinguished with the ends of their laced trousers neatly tucked up and fastened. They were accompanied by a very proper‑looking attendant, who held an attractively decorated bag of provisions. Their page‑boys, who carried flowering branches of cherry blossom, wore hunting costumes of plum red and bright green, with varicoloured under‑robes and skirts printed with scattered patches of colour. Also in their party was a slender retainer, who looked extremely attractive as he beat the gong at the entrance to the temple....

  

   Whenever I go to stay in a temple, or indeed in any new place, it seems pointless to be accompanied only by servants. One needs a few companions of one's own class with whom one can chat congenially. There may be some suitable women even among one's maids; the trouble is that one knows all too well what they are going to say. Gentlemen appear to have the same idea; for I notice that whenever they go on a pilgrimage they take along a few agreeable companions.

  

   Things That Give a Hot Feeling

  

   The hunting costume of the head of a Guards escort.

   A patchwork surplice.

   The Captain in attendance at the Imperial Games.

   An extremely fat person with a lot of hair.

   A zither bag.

   A Holy Teacher performing a rite of incantation at noon in the Sixth or Seventh Month. Or at the same time of the year a copper‑smith working in his foundry.

_____________________________________

Grace and dignity

Below is the acceptance speech by the winner of the scholarship described in the posting I wrote some time ago that you can read here. I find myself moved by its grace and dignity.

_______________________________________________

Translated Speech of Kohinur Akter in the Award Giving Ceremony of 'Denis Wright Foundation Scholarship'

Assalamualaikum and Good Morning!

Honourable audience, I am Kohinur Akter. First of all I would like to thank all of you present in this award giving ceremony.

I am very happy and encouraged to receive this scholarship. I will be able to continue my education by using this scholarship. I am grateful to Dr. Denis Wright as he has extended his cooperation and help in the advancement of my life. I would like to convey my love and gratitude to Dr. Wright and pray that he gets well soon.

For this scholarship I will never forget the contribution of Ms. Tahsinah Ahmed. I am expressing my heartfelt gratitude to her. I am also expressing my gratitude to Dr. Susan and Dr. Colin.

I am also grateful to UCEP. Because UCEP has brought me from darkness to light. UCEP has enabled me to dream and have a hope for a better life.

I am thankful to Dr. Ubaidur Rob, the Honb'le Chairperson of UCEP Board of Governors, Executive Director Brig. Gen. Aftab Uddin Ahmad (Retd.), Directors and all other officials and teachers of UCEP Bangladesh.  

I want to assure all of you that I will move ahead, overcome poverty and contribute to the development of the country with the inspiration, support and cooperation you have provided me through this scholarship. I hope this cooperation will be continued and like before, you will guide me in my way to success and help me reach my goal.     

I again express my gratitude and thank you all.    

Kohinur Akter

________________________________________________

Runi Chakma

BODHI has moved on from here to create more scholarships, this time for tribal minorities in Bangladesh whose lives and livelihood have been greatly affected by development in Bangladesh.

This is an ongoing project established as a memorial and you can see some beautiful pictures of the award giving ceremonies by going to the following page and downloading the pdf document mentioned in the bottom right hand corner.

http://www.bodhi.net.au/html/dwrightsships.html

The pdf document on its own has the download URL as

Moanoghar report & photos

Riya Chakma

I remain convinced that the way for the future for those who will be the leaders in countries such as Bangladesh is to educate women and girls, because out of that educaton will come the way towards national progress. 


Educated women will not only create a good life for themselves and others they can assist - they will if they marry surely educate both their sons and their daughters.

A king, commoners, and a tortoise [Final part]

Tracey and Christian are back in the pool right now, in the dark. The water temperature remains perfect. The air temperature is fine. I would go back in again too but for all the trouble of getting in and out, and the showering, drying off and dressing afterwards.

   I’m sure you forget how hard all that is when you've done it automatically ever since the time yo momma did it for you until you were 5 or so. But tomorrow - I’ll be there. You betcha. Even with this cyclone looming up east of the Queensland coast, it should be fine here for the next day or two.

   Oh, my foot's swelling has gone down. So it really more a circulation thing, by the look, and ambient temperature isn't so much the issue. Took me only eight months to figure that out....

   I used to think that one of the limited advantages of dying comparatively young was that you would escape practically all the trials and tribulations of aging. You know the ones.

   That may be true if your life is suddenly snuffed out by some event - some accident perhaps. But now I realise that for me at least, there seems to be little chance of escape. I am going to have to go through many of these indignities and trials, only at a much greater rate than the elderly. Please may I be spared the worst of them, if only for the sake of the people I love.

   Two years ago I was vain enough to believe people when they reckoned I looked ten years younger than my age - in my early fifties, they said. Now, the sad truth is that most of my physical reactions are like those of a man in his early eighties. You think I’m exaggerating? If only.

 
8.45 am Thursday, 3 February.

The time is flying by. I am really enjoying this beach holiday. I will be sorry when it comes to an end. It’s mainly that this house is so perfect for our needs. A 5 Star luxury apartment on the Gold Coast wouldn't serve so well.

   Looking forward to the pool again when the shade comes over a bit. Right now would be ok as the pool is shaded by the date palms - but Tracey and Christian are both asleep still and I won’t disturb them. I woke early but I suspect the ‘effortless’ effort of yesterday made me exhausted enough to want simply to go back to sleep.

   And what strange dreams. A toddler on the edge of a high waterfall with crocodiles waiting, not in the water below, but in the folds of the cliff face that the water was pouring over.... and this was being filmed by someone! I was able to pluck her off the edge [not sure how I would've managed that!] She looked puzzled as if wondering why I was spoiling her fun.

   The pool was again beautiful yesterday, but like any experience, never quite the same when repeated. The present memory of a past experience always affects the present experience. Happily, getting in and out we did much better. The feeling of freedom, and the profound heaviness when leaving the pool - those didn't change.

   And so it is Thursday. And what have I done? Another day older, a new one just begun... the drama with the cyclone will unfold more today with reality and not speculation. The ABC has done a superb job with its broadcasts. I heard some reporting on commercial TV when I flicked over and was annoyed by the appalling exaggerations - 10 even reported as fact that 285 kph gusts were hitting Cairns at 11 pm last night! And the expressions they were using were all over the top. I‘d call it hyperbole but you aren’t meant to take hyperbole seriously. Apparently they think we should.

   No wonder Bob Katter was complaining about the media terrorising people in the affected area. Now I understand why. He must have heard that sort of exaggeration dished up as reporting. Don't these idiots understand that a Class 5 cyclone doesn't need any extra dramatising? Dammit, it's already sensational! You don't need any 'angles', nor to make anything up. You’re way too used to dressing up a story about some starlet’s failed romance than real news. Just report what's happening when you have a genuine story and stop behaving like dropkicks.

   I sound like a candidate for Grumpy Old Men, don’t I? So be it. I qualify. I’ve got lots more where that came from, but maybe not just right now.

   Still, at this time, we don't have any real assessment of the cyclone damage, though one thing's for sure - you are going to be paying lots more for your sugar and sugar-based products, and for bananas!

   Perhaps the best thing that could happen for the health of the nation is that sugar prices go spiralling off the high end of the scale, and people start to buy real food again and not junk. 'Pure, white and deadly'. Sugar is a drug and has us totally enslaved.


Friday 4 February, 8 am.

Hanging out

Our beach holiday is rapidly coming to a close. It has been a wonderful time. I would have to rank at the top the incredible feeling in the pool that my body was like that of a child's again. Had I suddenly developed wings and been able to fly effortlessly I don't think that would have topped it. I stood. I walked. I swam from one end of the pool to the other.

   Joy is to feel 'normal' after a long stretch of feeling otherwise, even if it’s for a fleeting time. A bit like Avatar, I guess, when what's-his-name in the wheelchair becomes one of those ... very tall green people, all bits in excellent working order.

   I have an avatar and he's maybe ten years old. And can swim like a fish.

   Remember that, O ye who have nothing worse to complain about than that it's Monday again and you can’t wait till Friday. You are wishing your and my life away. The blessed memory of feeling normal will help me to put up with the increasingly difficult struggle just to get up from a chair, walk through the house.... get in and out of the car, climb stairs. And, I hope, the memory will help to deal with the unknown, yet to be experienced challenges looming ahead. It's a roller-coaster as I've said many times, and parts of the ride are fine. The others? They stink. But it could be worse.

   I started out this whole story with the header, ‘Do you want the good news first or the bad news?’ That story I started out on has nothing to do with anything I wrote above - not a skerrick! It's about something else entirely. It'll be my next project, perhaps.

   Ernest Hemingway, you may have had your stream of consciousness and your Old Man and the Sea. I had a king parrot visit me, and a weightless swim.

Sunday, 6 February 2011 7:30 AM.

I also know another thing. A new chapter has begun. But now I draw a line under this one.

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A king, commoners, and a tortoise [Part 2]

Yes, this is real, folks!

8.30 pm Tuesday 1 Feb 2011

Wow! What a wonderful experience, and you don't realise exactly how much you're missing until you have it back, even for a little while.

   I’m talking about the sensation that I have normal use of my arms and legs. The only way I could do that was to go into the pool. We needed all three of us to get me into the swimming pool, going down one step at a time - a rather tortuous process.

   I don't know what sort of getting-wet person you are. I tend to prefer the sudden shock method rather than the centimetre-by-centimetre one. But today I had no choice. It was to go in a step at a time. They’re long steps by the way, and that was the problem.

   But that first shock of pool-chill was nothing compared to the elation of feeling whole again, for the first time in about a year. It wasn't like I could just swim freely - my right leg and arm were pushing weakly through the water - but they felt like they were doing the same work as the left limbs.

   There’s probably no real point in trying to explain it to you, that feeling of faux-symmetry and effortlessness, because most people have never experienced anything BUT symmetry. Doing a sort of sidestroke/dog paddle, and with fairly equal power from both legs, I could actually swim half the length of the pool. About five metres, i.e. Whoo hoo!

   You may wonder why I haven't used hydrotherapy before. While I was on chemo, my resistance to infection was low. I didn’t want to share with others our collective infections. I think I have built up some reasonable immunity by now. I have some problems with strong chlorine and naturally hospitals have to use enough to ensure that the pool is as free of germs as possible. But this pool has the perfect amount of cleaning agents, not to mention a very limited clientele.

   I have had so little sun in the past year that although half the pool was shaded by the time I got in it, there was enough reflected sunlight to give me slight sunburn on the face.

   I blame my mother for this delicate facial skin. She was exactly the same. Fifteen minutes in direct sunlight for her face and it would burn, even though the rest of her skin would be fine - and she lived most of her life in the tropics.

   Not a problem. Some natural vitamin D instead of from a capsule can do nothing but good. With the weather being as perfect as it is, I’ll surely be in the pool again tomorrow. Good exercise too. Much more satisfying than what I’ve been doing in past weeks. Hopefully Kaylene the physiotherapist will approve!

   Getting out of the pool was a bit of a challenge though. Each step up added kilos to my weight and by the time I got to the last step before the edge, I was as heavy as lead - and the last step was a very high one. But with help from Tracey and Christian, we dragged me out, pretty unceremoniously. Back to the gravity of Jupiter. ** sigh **

   I have definitely got to lose excess weight somehow. I feel like that guy on TV recently who weighed a grotesque 1000 lbs. He couldn't even sit up unaided. That was scary. But you know, I think some evil spirit has slipped a soccer ball into my stomach cavity and is sneaking in when I am asleep and pumping a cup full of water into it every night.

   Oh no. There’s a full-length mirror in the bathroom where I’m showering! The whole horrible truth is revealed there. That wretched football for a start. And now I can see all the bruises from the Clexane injections as well, right across the lower half of my stomach.

   By the way, the bruises are NOT from faulty injecting method on Tracey’s part. Over the past year she has given me hundreds of them. The bruises up till fairly recently have been minor or non-existent.

   But in the past few months, my stomach seems to have rebelled. At times the injection hurts like hell, and the technique and the position don’t seem to be a factor. It just happens. Poor Tracey – she feels so bad when she sees me wince, but there’s not a thing she can do any differently.

   Oh well, in the grand scheme of things, it’s a mere bagatelle. But it looks pretty disgusting in the mirror.

   Stephen Fry is describing in his autobiography (I’m reading it now, how’d you guess?) how during his addiction to sweets, he accidentally looked in a full length mirror thinking he was seeing some obese person in the distance and then becoming aware of the ghastly truth that he was observing himself. I had a somewhat similar yet different experience in a shop that I described in another story, but weight wasn’t the real issue at that time. Looking at that bathroom mirror image when I was showering, I know exactly how Stephen Fry felt. Appalled. Beached whale. Vain to the last.

   It happens all the time when you film people. They see the footage and are aghast. 'I can’t really look like that,' they say. 'I don’t in my mirror.'

   'The camera puts on 10 kilos,' I reply.

   But it doesn’t. I’m lying. It’s simply that self-perception is always more deludedly optimistic than brutal reality until you are suddenly confronted with it. It’s devastating. I know.

   Maybe full-length mirrors put on 10 kgs. They should be banned. Smashed. Even if it brings me seven years of bad luck.

   For some reason that amuses me mightily, in a macabre sort of way.

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A king, commoners, and a tortoise

Tuesday, 1 February 2010. 7.00 am

We’re overlooking the sea at Sapphire Beach, just north of Coffs Harbour. Friends have loaned us this spacious house for a few days. It has everything in it we could wish for in our circumstances, with three levels of living space, and a pool just outside set into the balcony on this floor. It was very generous of them to do this for us, especially at this time.

   The sun is now well above the horizon. I look out across a neat green lawn and dense tropical beach trees - palms, coral trees and others I should be able to name, but their names escape me. The sea is calm. I can't hear it from inside but if I sat on the balcony I would. Yesterday in the afternoon there were white caps as the sea breeze came in. All coastal people know the change in colour of the sea through the day. It's best in the morning. Just about everything on the beach itself is best then.

King Parrot

   Ah! A beautiful king parrot has landed on the balcony rail. Its colours are glorious - salmon-red and brilliant green. It looks perfect, flawless, like it's had a manicure and just put on its best outfit. A wonderful sight.

   For me, life has become just that bit more difficult. I find it hard to believe how quickly physical deterioration has set in. My left side brain function seems to be shutting down. Imagine a hose, with a sprinkler attached. It's been on full force. But every minute of every day, someone is turning the tap off a bit more. The hose and sprinkler haven't changed - the water is just not getting through. The sprinkler looks a bit sad.

   That’s what it feels like. To get on and off a chair is a huge effort, let alone pull the chair in or out from the table. I have been doing exercises with my arms, body and legs to try to combat this feeling of terrible weakness. They do good in other ways, but aren't much help for the big tasks. Not the right side ones, anyway.

☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼

Let’s lift the atmosphere a bit, with an excerpt from Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book.

Unsuitable Things

A woman with ugly hair wearing a robe of white damask.

Hollyhock worn in frizzled hair.

Ugly handwriting on red paper.

Snow on the houses of common people. This is especially regrettable when the moonlight shines down on it.

A woman who, though well past her youth, is pregnant and walks along panting.

It is unpleasant to see a woman of a certain age with a young husband; and it is most unsuitable when she becomes jealous of him because he has gone to visit someone else.

An elderly man who has overslept and who wakes up with a start.

An old woman who eats a plum and, finding it sour, puckers her toothless mouth.

A woman of the lower classes dressed in a scarlet trouser‑skirt. The sight is all too common these days.

A handsome man with an ugly wife.

Back to 21st Century from the 11th.... but I love the fact that snow on their houses is just too beautiful for the commoners. They don't deserve it, so she thinks. For her, beauty = truth. I guess that depends on one's definition of either!

☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼

The owners of this house have a child with some physical disabilities. It’s certainly an ill wind that blows nobody good, and so it is in this case, because it means a lot of thought has been put into designing this house to make it easier in every way to look after a such a person and make it easier for that person, of course. Thus it makes it easier for this somewhat disabled person as well - me, I mean. This level of the house has easy access. The pool is on this level. There's even a chair on a hoist so that the person can be lowered into the pool and raised from it. But right now it's not working. That’s OK. We’ll get round that, as the belt said to the trousers....

View from my chair - hear the whipbirds?

I can hear whipbirds in the heavily wooded area between this house and the beach. On our way down here we stopped at the top of the big hill at Dorrigo and were on the edge of the subtropical rainforest there. There were many whip birds in the bush nearby. I had either forgotten or didn't realise that they lived right down here in the scrub on the beachfront itself. It's an exotic sound. The bellbirds sound great too, in the Dorrigo subtropical rainforest.

   When I hear such birds I wouldn't be surprised to hear a howler monkey as well. Sorry, wrong jungle. Wrong part of the world. Still, it’s a nice thought. Hey, have you ever listened in the background of some overseas B-grade movies at their jungle sounds for Africa or South America? They stick a kookaburra in there. I guess the exotic effect is what they’re going for, but the kookie would be a bit surprised to find himself in that sort of jungle....

   Funny that. I always think of a kookaburra as male, but half at least have got to be female. It’s that raucous laugh. No lady would behave like that in public, you’d think.

   I haven't tackled the pool yet. Tracey and Christian swam in it soon after we got here. It's fairly small and deep and clean, but I will probably have trouble getting in and out of it. Well, out of it more than in, I am sure. Each day my body feels as if the law of gravity has altered and it is increasing at a rapid rate. Things are heavier to pick up, and I am more clumsy. Occasionally my right hand fingers don't release from something unless I look at them and tell them to do so. And I get so damned weary so quickly! But being in the pool will be nice. It should be like how a tortoise feels when it makes it back into the sea from the land, and the water takes its weight. That must be a glorious feeling for the tortoise. Turtle?

   I always thought that the difference between a tortoise and a turtle was that the tortoise has four legs and the turtle has front flippers. Hence the tortoise is likely to be much more a land creature than the turtle. But someone said that was wrong. I’ll check it out. Wikipedia provides a consensus view. Very democratic. What is decided to be right is determined more by the majority than the expert. That’s rather like life, really....  [Later: OK, I know the difference now... Look it up if you feel the urge!]

   I’m not detailing the problems I’m experiencing just to complain or feel sorry for myself - I’m just trying to say what's happening here, in complete honesty. I’m still fortunate in many ways and I know that well. I have little physical pain - just inconvenience more than anything, and frustration that things often don't work as I intend they should. And especially the extra work it places on Tracey – that drives me bonkers because some of those things are so petty, so easy and simple, until I try to do them for myself.

   I have got to change to a different chair and table to type this. This chair cuts my circulation to the right foot seriously through the back of the right leg, and the right foot’s now swelling. It hasn't been doing that.

8.30 pm

Wow! Next to relate a wonderful experience, and you don't realise exactly how much you're missing until you have it back, even for a little while. 

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