Greetings & News
Howdy folks. I’ve been working for a bit more than an hour at this point and have only managed to post two photos, sadly the two I least needed/wanted to post — but the way I try to work is I put the up first the ones I want to show up last on the current posting — since they go chronologically, if I’ve got 30 photos (which I do) to post, I put the least important ones up first, and save the best for last…so that they are the most recent post when I’m done.
But, by way of “slice of Paul’s life,” here’s what’s happening. I have to post these from the one office computer that has internet access. This means I store the photos on my own computer, and then put them on a stick and bring them to this computer. Four times now, I have moved back and forth between the computers with my stick: either copying and pasting, or opening and saving as, each of the photos I want: I’ve got some pics of a group dinner at our house with most of the expat team; I’ve got pics of me at a lovely park here in town; I’ve got some lovely street-scene pics of here in Nanning. Each time, they seem to save fine on the stick and I can even open them…but when I get them over to this computer, poof, they’ve become corrupted.
Since I got here at 9:00AM and it’s Sunday, I was alone and it was quiet at first. But now other folks have shown up, and frankly at least one of them is rather lingering by the computer…and between that and the frustration, I’m going to give up for now, and go home to have some breakfast and read. I spent much of yesterday doing various bits of work to catch up for the fact I was out sick 1-1/2 days this week; and life is made more interesting — and exciting/rewarding — by the fact that we’re sending a big truck full of supplies (sanitation, shelter, medicine) for flood relief in an area of southeastern Guangxi where there have been massive floods, with apparently millions of people displaced from their destroyed homes.
It seems quite possible we’ll do not only this three-day relief and exploratory mission, but there’s a chance we might launch a longer term (three month?) general relief effort, with a new team of expats that would come in, and some new national staff as well. So this could make my life even more interesting and busy in the coming months. For now, I was supposed to be on a flight to Beijing today, for advance planning of our move there; but since most of the office is clearing out for the relief trip, I’m staying behind to coordinate things, and to complete the transfer of some accounting work from my desk (coordination) into the hands of the AIDS project itself. Aftger they all get back, on Tuesday night, I’ll head off to Beijing — Wednesday morning. A few days of checking out the options there, then I’ll head off for my week of planned vacation, after which I’ll finally spend some more time with our Baoji project — the one of which I posted some pictures earlier in the blog. Sadly, I’ve not been up there since then, and I’m supposed to go every five or six weeks.
Things are definitely busy! Anyway: there are some great photos I hope to post before I leave for vacation, but if I fail, then I shall try again in August. At which point I should also have some pictures of Gansu and Ningxia, Buddhist cave art, Daoist sacred mountains, and Tibetan monasteries. I’ve heard this week from two friends who tell me they’ve been regularly keeping up with me through the blog, and this warms my heart — that’s precisely why I maintain this. (Thanks, Connie and Mike!) A challenge to life with MSF is that one is so far away, and — as I’ve now reported — communication can be challenging. But I’m committed to this blog for as long as there are friends and family (and, hey — I welcome new friends, especially ones who are cute and single… :-)) out there reading, I’ll keep posting. Sorry so few pics this time.
More later, and much love. I hope my friends are about to have a lovely Sunday back in the US. And special thoughts are going out to my friends in London, none of whom are likely to read this since I know you all have busy lives. But I’m thinking of you — Peter, Tracy/Jon/Jacob, Pete L. and Tim…
Love,
PB
Big Bug
I close with two small snapshots of daily life at home for me. The
first greeted me outside my door one morning upon waking up. Yes, as
you saw in the walking tour, we do live in an embarrassingly large and
luxurious house, but it’s still the tropics and still a developing
country in all the good and challenging ways. We’ve got lizards in the
house often — which we welcome since we sleep under mosquito nets; we
get more flies and bugs than I can describe. And one of the wonders of
Nanning and southern China in general are the HUGE and gorgeous
butterflies that flutter everywhere. This one’s a moth, with a body
the size of the palm of my hand. I did not see it with wings open, but
it was beautiful. Less beautiful are the gigantic spiders (legspan
bigger than my hand, body size of thumbtip) that appear on the walls
occasionally. Then I’m glad of the mosquito net. I have NO idea if any
of these spiders are venomous. Oh well.
Self Care :-)
And yes, this is a teeny bit of showing off, although those who know
yoga will see how far short I fall in this pose. Last December, when I
knew I’d be leaving LA and losing my access to strong, regular yoga
classes with excellent teachers, I decided I had to commit to enough
classes in a short time to bring me to a level where my personal
practice could stay strong even on the road. My holy grail — what I
wanted to achieve in one month, before leaving — were two poses I’d
never had the confidence to master: handstand and forearm balance
(sorry, I’m bad at Sanskrit names). This picture shows me trying to
reach toward scorpion pose — a step beyond forearm balance, and my
ultimate holy grail. In true scorpion I’d be in the center of the
room, with my feet all the way down resting on my head.
Anyway, I throw this in here because 1) my very dear old friend Steve,
in Boston, asked if I’m able to take care of myself here, and this is
part of the answer; and 2) in case my classmate Michelle (or teacher
Cindy) from LA see this, I’m reminded of a nice talk over coffee that
Michelle and I had last year, where we talked about how we were both
trying to get to where we could do scorpion against the wall (like
this), and how she got turned around in her mind once on the pose, and
fell. I’m sometimes afraid that’ll happen, but this is part of my
regular practice now. Wow. Amazaing what we can do if we decide to.
Paul at the Skyline – Again
Thanks, Keith, for this one as well. 🙂
Hong Kong Park Aviary
One thing that didn’t exist when I last visited Hong Kong — in 1984
— was Hong Kong Park, in the center of the central part of the
downtown. The land, which is very central and would have been
developed otherwise, belonged to the British garrison in Hong Kong —
so when they gave it up, it became a park and a very welcome green
space right in the middle of town.
In the park is this wonderful aviary, full of interesting and
beautiful tropical birds from all over southeast Asia. The walkways in
the aviary are all above ground — it’s set up so that folks walking
in the aviary are all in the trees, at the heights where the birds
themselves typically hang out. I found the contrast of being in this
rich tropical rainforest environment, full of singing and colorful
birds — all with the backdrop of the skyline of one of the world’s
great cities — very interesting.
Hong Kong Park
This lovely lake, full of fish and water lilies, is also in Hong Kong
Park. There’s a marriage registry in the park as well, and it seems a
popular place for wedding photos to be taken – there was a party
having photos taken when I was there, and the outfits, both men and
women, were wonderful.
Shek O Peninsula, Hong Kong
Though my image before my trip was that I would spend all my time
eating Indian and Thai food and drinking good coffee and doing other
things that are difficult or impossible in Nanning, in point of fact I
discovered that what I most wanted was to get out into parks and
trails where I could be completely alone and hear nothing but the
sound of birds. And who knew that 40% of Victoria Island (hope I’ve
got that right — believe that’s the formal name of the actual island
people think of as the main part of Hong Kong) is reserved as parks
and open space? (Also hope I’ve got that stat more or less right…)
But it’s true — once you get up and over the hills from the downtown
district, which faces pretty much north toward Kowloon and Lantau
island, you get into a very steep and mountainous part of the island
that’s home to four large parks. Through them winds the
52(?)-kilometer Hong Kong Trail, which ends just about where this shot
is — at the Shek O Peninsula.
The last chunk of the trail is called the “Dragon’s Back” section,
because of the number of times it goes up and down as it follows the
ridge lines in this very steep part of the island. I spent the first
of two completely wonderful days of hiking on this trail, and hiking
around the peninsula you see here. It was very hot and humid, and I
got a good solid amount of sun, but it was such a complete delight and
treasure to be able to get out to an area where all I heard were birds
and insects, and there were times when for more than ten minutes I
didn’t see a single person, or in fact even hear any sounds of humans
— this is quite rare in my life now, and I was very happy to have the
chance. And let me also say that there are so many beautiful
butterflies everwhere I went in Hong Kong!
Towards Stanely, Hong Kong
The Dragon’s Back section of the trail follows the ridge line in a
very steep section on the southeast side of the island, which allows
the vistas to change fairly often as you look out in different
directions. This is a view looking south, toward the Stanley Peninsula
and the southern end of the island. Neal, does it make you homesick?
🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 