Aboriginal Art & Big Red Rocks

Dec 2-5, 2008:  Friends of friends from France invited me to stay with them in Alice Springs, an interesting town with a mixture of white descendants of settlers, aborigines from the Lost Generation or tribal ejection, and rich civilian contractors and military personnel from the American military base.  The base sits just outside of Alice Springs and is considered the safest place in the world, since any enemy would have to fly over something like 13000 km to reach it and then try to fly out again.  Of course, flying in from Melbourne and out to Sydney felt more like inconvenience rather than safe but reminded me how huge Australia really is. 

I was picked up for my tour early Wednesday morning for a 6 hour drive out to Ayers Rock:  6 hours, 5 tourists, 4 bottles of water, 1 guide, 2 in-training, and an ostrich in a pear tree.  Originally I thought I'd climb Ayers Rock, but when I started looking into tours, many of them suggested that tourists not climb because it is sacred land for the Anangu, the Aboriginal traditional owners.  However, the Anangu welcome tourists (well, to a certain point), but the problem with climbing Uluru is that about 35 people have died in doing so and the Anangu feel responsible for deaths and injuries on their land.  I didn't have to worry about it, though, since climbing is prohibited above temperatures of 35 ⁰C and we were already at 40⁰ or so. 

The Australian National Park of Uluru and Kata Tjuta, the Anangu names for Ayers Rock and the Olgas, was declared in 1958 by the Australian government, and in theory, the land rights were given back to the Anangu in 1976.  However, not until 1985 were the title deeds to Uluru and Kata Tjuta returned to the Anangu, who have now leased the land back to the government for 99 years.  Both entities work to preserve the sites and respect each other.  There are areas where tourists are not allowed to hike, and other areas, especially around Uluru, where tourists are asked not to take pictures.

The tour company had a hat listed among things to bring, and while I'm usually nice and obedient, I never wear a hat outdoors (now going to the opera and wearing Grandma Margaret's hats circa 1950 from Bullocks Wilshire – that's different).  Our guide Phil was very worried about me, and to illustrate his point told me that around these temperatures, the fat under the scalp of sheep will begin to boil and kill them.  But I told him that my scalp was about the only place on my body that didn't have any fat so he needn't worry.  I have to say, however, that just walking most of the way around the base of Uluru did make me feel a bit weird.  Maybe because my hair had already become lighter blonde (the real reason I don't wear hats outside).

Uluru is a monolith, having no cracks all the way through. We began the walk around its base at the Mutitjulu Waterhole.  Set against the rock wall of Uluru, the Anangu waited until the end of the day when animals would come to drink.  Only one way in and one way out made for easy kill.  There was a rock overhang near the waterhole where the Anangu most likely spent the day.  In crevices under the overhang were swallows' nests, indicating that the area was in shade all day long since their mud nests need to stay moist.  More evidence of the Anangu spending time here was on the wall:  iron red, charcoal black, ash white, and ochre.  The ochre is not found within the Uluru area, providing evidence that the Anangu had to trade other aboriginies for it.  The watering hole was a nice place to hang out, teach the kids, and hunt for food.

Often, it wasn't the parents who would teach their own children, but rather the eldest, like grandparents or older aunts and uncles.  The men had no role as fathers; after conception, the man's job was done since in their culture there is no loyalty to any single member of the tribe.  Women could have many children all from different men.  This is still traditional in the tribes, as I learned when I bought two small pieces of Aboriginal Art by two different female artists.  The storekeeper gave me each of their biographies from which I learned that they didn't have faithful or providing men.  Loyalty was to the tribe and having children was a woman's responsibility as much as finding plants for medicine and food.

The boys are taught by the men and the girls by the women in the duties they are responsible for in the society.  The teachings happen at different points in the children's lives, but they are taught only what is considered appropriate for that age.  The rituals and teachings are done apart from the group – thus the sacred spaces of the Anangu – and the teachings are not spoken of while with the rest of the tribe.

After walking around the base of Uluru, we camped out, not too far from a campground – enough to not hear the noise of the tour buses, but close enough to use the toilets and showers.  Up a knoll behind our site we watched the sun set behind the Olgas and stretching red over to Uluru.  In the distance was a lightning storm – a perfect complement to the beer and conversation about hiking.  Meanwhile Phil cooked up some "kangaroo a la Bolognese", however, Paula, an Italian woman about my age, corrected him that it was simply ragout. 

Minyma, the Anangu women, have duties to gather food, plant and harvest crops according to the seasons, read animal tracks, and gather and administer medicinal plants from the bush.   The Wati, Anangu men, are responsible for finding water for the tribe, hunting, and making tools for the women and weapons for hunting.  The Anangu laws, called Tjukwipa, are the basis of their life – their relationships to people and animals and the land.  The Anangu believe the world is flat and featureless, just as the bush, but ancestral beings created it and left their spirit in what they created.  This is why Uluru and Kata Tjuta and another "rock", Mount Conner, are so sacred to them: they are anomalies to the rest of their world. 

We woke at 5am, late, but since the clouds had moved in, the sunrise over Kata Tjuta wouldn't have been much to see.  So we got to sleep in.  The clouds brought a wonderful drastic drop in temperature, absolving me of having to spend too much money ($15?) on a hat in a tourist shop.  Even without the sunrise, getting up early is important to be able to hit the trail before it closes at about 11am, when temperatures get above 35⁰C.  We hiked the "Valley of the Winds" through  Kata Tjuta which means "many heads".  There are 36 big dome-shaped rocks sticking up out of nowhere, and by big I mean 500m high (200m higher than Uluru) over a space of less than 8 miles².  Kata Tjuta is sacred to the Anangu as it is the location where many of the men's rituals and teaching is done.

Previously, Phil had asked us to consider how Uluru and Kata Tjuta were formed and gave us a few clues.  While Uluru is made of mud-sandstone, Kata Tjuta is granite and quartz.  Striations in the sandstone of Uluru are vertical, while Kata Tjuta is more diagonal.  The granite is formed closer to the earth's core than the quartz.  Green granite attracts lightning.  It is plentiful here, and Phil said that farms that have green granite in the soil have a much higher value because the granite attracts the lightning and rain and produces the best crops.  His questions and clues occupied my head during the hikes. 

After hiking the Valley of the Winds from 7-11 am, we were ready for camel burgers and the ride out to Kings Canyon, the site of the next day's hike.  This evening's camp felt more like being out in the bush, with a 3-sided toilet completed by a view of the mountains.  We were rewarded with a beautiful sunset made interesting by the clouds that had rolled along with us all day.  I picked up some charcoal from the previous camp's fire and sketched.  The charcoal was lovely: very smooth and fun to draw with, especially with the incredible lines of the scenery of the day as inspiration.

Finally my body needed attention with some beer, Phil's fabulous BBQ chicken, and my swag – a sleeping bag with a mattress and pillow in it.  It was too hot to have any covers except the stars above until unceasing rain began at 2am and drove us sleepy, sore tourists under some shelter.

The difficulties the Anangu had with the whites was not so much territorial, since they were nomadic, but a disruption to their world view and methods of survival.  As the whites brought cattle into the area, the water holes of the tribe became useless once the cattle walked into the water to drink.  The Anangu never stirred up the waters and did not even bathe in the water in order to preserve its sacredness and cleanliness for the tribe.  As a sidenote, Phil gave us an example of how the tribal society was maintained.  Not only were individual rights subservient to the tribe, but the members, especially children, were kept in line out of fear.  To keep kids away from playing by the water in order to keep it clean, the women would tell them the Waterman would blind them if they got too close.  When a child did venture too close to the watering hole, some plant extract (I forgot the name) was diluted and put on the child's eyes while he was sleeping.  Upon awakening, the child's vision was blurry and the women said the Waterman had already gotten some of his water in their eyes.  While the potency wasn't enough to permanently alter the child's vision, his respect for keeping distance from the watering holes was permanent.  This plant extract was also ingested when the tribe needed to move and find a new watering hole.  The walk could last days, and this medicine completely bound their system:  they would not sweat or salivate or eliminate, so all the body's water was conserved.  Once arriving at a new watering hole, they ingested another medicine like a laxative to re-open the body.  Phil also showed us a medicinal cactus that can be used for deep cuts because is kills all bacteria then leaves residue which seals the wound.  It protects for 2-3 days, even while swimming.  Eucalyptus is also a universal medicine, from colds to cleansing. 

So to protect their water and ancestral spirits, the Anangu began spearing the cattle of the white settlers.  The police retaliated by shooting any aborigine they saw.  So began the Displacement of the aboriginies.  The settlers didn't particularly take land away from them, but ruined their sources of water and places of learning.  The whites didn't understand how the Anangu related to their land since it is quite different to how we relate to it.  It was equivalent to taking their places of worship – churches, temples, mosques – away from them.  To this day, aborigines in the cities may fight each other, as they have different beliefs coming from different tribes, but they immediately unite against the white police.  And those who are in the cities in the first place are usually those who were ejected from their tribes for irresponsible behavior – usually alcoholism – which doesn't exactly improve race relations in the cities.

Aside from Displacement, the relations between whites and aboriginies were made even worse by the good intentions of the whites.  In order for the Anangu to survive, individual rights are completely irrelevant.  They are a nomadic tribe, therefore any sick or crippled member threatened the survival of the whole tribe.  It was normal for the weak member to just walk away from the tribe – to walkabout – into the bush, which meant suicide.  As children were rejected from the tribe due to illness or crippling or being disciplined in order for the tribe to survive, they were rescued, usually by missionaries from the Lutheran Church, and brought to the coasts and into white society.  This is the Lost Generation, or Intervention, which, like Displacement, broke the Anangu society.

On our way to Kings Canyon, we stopped at a lookout point several miles away from Mount Conner, a flat plateau which looked to be about the height of Uluru and rising just as mysteriously from the flat bush.  On the other side of the lookout were salt flats – evidence of an ancient ocean.  The aboriginals, with their "primitive" knowledge, related the geographical history of thousands of years ago.  Their story explains this with more drama, however, than a geography textbook.  An ice man (not the Top Gun kind) of salty water ran north to chase invaders off his land but ran so far north that the heat began to melt him.  With exhaustion, he sat down on Mount Conner (which is named by the Anangu as "Ice Man").  Finally acknowledging that he wasn't going to make it back south to the cold, he kicked out the sides of the mountain in anger.  His death by melting created the ancient sea where the salt remained.  Mount Conner is actually more geologically impressive than Uluru, but the aboriginals have kept this land to themselves, and no tourists can get close.

Now for the textbook version, though no less dramatic.  Australia was covered by 2km-deep sea about 600M years ago (the dinosaurs were around 50-60M years ago).  Australia is the oldest landmass in the world and also has the youngest population/settlement – only 230 years, compared to 2000-5000 years for most of the rest of the world.  Mt Conner used to be 4 times the height of Everest but is now only about 1000 feet.  It is sinking as Australia moves apart and expands, and the continent also moves 2cm/year in a northwest direction.

Sandstone is white, and Uluru is actually grey, but gases rich in iron came out thru volcanic activity, met with the oxygen in the atmosphere and rusted.  This is why the whole continent is red, but it wasn't the original colour.  The inclusions in Uluru are caused by internal water exiting and eroding, while for Kata Tjuta the inclusions are caused by lightning strikes to pieces of green granite in the formations.  The granite was like mortar in volcanic interactions under intense heat.  The black vertical marks are caused by water eroding the iron rust and exposing the true granite colour.  The striations on Uluru are vertical:  the layers formed horizontally as layer upon layer of sediment was laid down at the bottom of the sea.  But then all of Uluru was turned on its side when the ocean swept over Australia to carve out the rest of the features of the continent.  Uluru is 350m high but is being eroded ~1m/year.  However, relative to the surrounding land Uluru is actually growing as sediment around it washes away.  Uluru goes down 6-7 km, and the story is that two boys were bored after hunting, so they started piling up mud by the side of the watering hole.  They continued until they were on top, and the vertical striations are their fingernail marks as they slid down.  I asked Phil if it was a happy ending, and he just smiled. 

Luckily, it rained off and on all day in King's Canyon.  Except for the extremely fit 65-year-old, we were all getting worn out by the successive days of strenuous hiking and high temperatures.  Even one of the guides-in-training opted to stay back with the truck at the trailhead.  One of the other girls was debating doing the same, but we didn't come for chit-chat in a parking lot.  Phil said that he's hiked King's Canyon over 300 times and it's never rained.  I felt blessed since I'm quite sure I wouldn't have made it, especially in my fashionable Geox that I bought in Italy:  silver-white sport shoes with no support which are now permanently tinted red.

I picked up some green granite during the hike of Kata Tjuta – I thought it would match my little collection of many coloured rocks, most from a river bed in Peru (but that's another love story).  When Phil found out, he said that everyone who's taken green granite has had bad luck, and many have mailed the granite back to him because they believed it was the cause.  I have a different God, but I decided that I shouldn't have taken a souvenir out of a national park.  I asked Phil to put it back next time he was at KT, but he wouldn't touch it, so I chucked it during the King's Canyon hike.

Then there's the aboriginal art.  On our drive out to Uluru, we stopped a few times for refreshments, and most of the stores and cafes had art for sale.  One was very well-stocked and of higher quality, and I held up the whole tour to look through the gallery for ½ hour or so.  I wanted to buy two medium-sized paintings but then decided not to.  However, the images stayed with me during the 3 days in the outback, so I bought them on the way back to Alice.  The perspective of the art is looking down, like on a map.  Horseshoe shapes signify a person, since that's the impression a person leaves in the sand after sitting down.  A woman is a horseshoe beside a basket and digging stick.  A man is a horseshoe shape between his fighting stick, arrow, and boomerang.  A waterhole is several concentric circles, and a digging hole (to find honey ants and other things to eat) is two concentric circles.  The paintings can be very elaborate, with symbols for animal tracks, rain, running water, travelling, ceremonial dress, and all kinds of plants and animals basic to Anangu life.

 

 

Running to Stand Still

(this should have been posted a LONG time ago, like Dec-08, but here it is anyway…)

My flight to Auckland was great.  National airlines, being subsidized, are rarely booked, so I had room to spread out and play with my coloured pens in my new sketchbook.  Friends of my parents, Heather & Tony, were very sweet to pick me up from the airport, keep my two big red suitcases for the 3 ½ weeks I’d be in Australia and New Zealand, and drive me around Auckland a bit to see the highlights.  I saw the Pacific for first time in 8 months!  I had a great hotel – the Quadrant:   nice and anonymous (well, I suppose that could be taken the wrong way, which I probably would’ve never even thought about except that I was just in Singapore where everything has a double meaning).  Anyway, it had a great view of the ocean, although I’m not sure now whether it was the Pacific or Tasman, but no one really cares and neither did I as I fell asleep.

By 10am the next day, I was cruising around Melbourne in my rental car on the wrong side of the street.  First stop was to buy a $100 camera to replace my $160 camera that was assaulted by Stella.  Next was the groovy part of Melbourne, near the university.  I had a great lunch, and after asking the 2 couples sitting next to me about tipping protocol, they told me I was brave to be traveling alone.  Never thought of myself as brave – escapist and non-committal and not attached to much in this world are better descriptions, but I figured they didn’t want to hear all about it.  The galleries and contemporary art museum are closed on Mondays, as in most cities, so unfortunately I didn’t get to see the Up-and-Coming Center of Art in the Southern Hemisphere.  There are also beautiful parks in Melbourne, and I could’ve used a walk after logging so many hours in a plane and car, but I was tired and more enticed by the drive through the dry plains in the direction of the surfing mecca of Australia.  Torquay is where Rip Curl started and now hosts the World Surfing Championship each Easter at Bells Beach.  After checking into the B&B and being sidetracked by a real estate office (US$250-400k for new modern-looking 3+2 houses near the beach, many with views!!!  And annual taxes only $1000/year!), I finally got my walk.    

Just east of Bells Beach is a marine preserve, so I walked there for a while since it was low tide.  I felt like I was at the end of the world – just the waves and cliffs above me (more anonymity) which at high tide would be joined.  Considering it’s just early summer, the water is so warm:  a beautiful green and turquoise fading to purple at the horizon to Antarctica.  Walking this narrow corridor between cliffs and strong currents, I finally got spooked enough to turn back, but I kept walking, past Bells Beach, with one more beach after another stretching out.  I saw a few surfers wrestling with the thick waves, choppy now with wind and high tide rolling in.  Otherwise, I saw only 2 people during my walk.  For a couple hours I walked with my heart dancing at the desertedness.  Finally, even the Committee (the 26 members that sit and argue in my head) was lulled speechless by the rhythm of my footsteps and the waves.   The sand under my feet felt so wonderful, and natural, unlike the streets in Singapore that were so clean that I was constantly slipping on them in the rain.

My home in Torquay was a cute little cottage – also anonymous, even though it was a B&B – just up from Bells Beach.  So high tide was at 1pm and a session at 10am would’ve been perfect – except that I slept until 2!!  15 HOURS!!!  My friends in Singapore (plus the flights) completely wore me out – although I didn’t feel so bad when Christian replied that he slept for 72 hours after seeing me off at the airport.  So one more late afternoon of walking, then finally getting a board rented and down to the beach.  I was pretty pathetic since I’m so out of shape, but the good thing is that I’ll just have to come back again, ready to surf and maybe buy a house, too.

Disappointed as I was with my surfing performance, I was excited leaving Torquay because of the long, beautiful coast road ahead of me.  The Great Coast Road is a bit like Pacific Coast Highway, Route 1, in California.  But of course the Great Coast Road has its own beauty and peculiarities.  Ancient rainforests, with ferns and beech trees, overlook the blue-green water from red cliffs which then open out to picturesque farm country and little towns having at least one coffee house serving flat whites. 

So yes, this is me, in the most beautiful place in the world –me and my Committee driving on down the wrong side of the road.  Just as on my Bells Beach walk, we were awestruck by the beauty changing around each corner, and the tranquility!  No one else was on the road, and I was driving slowly just because, well, I was savoring this.  I checked the rearview often, but as always, just empty.  It was a great feeling to be lost like this:  being alone, no one knowing where I am, no schedule (not even a B&B reservation yet).  The air was fresh and the oceans and skies so clean and clear.  The change of scenery and temperature was my entertainment while my playlist furnished the perfect score with some great Australian folksongs:  Devil Went Down to Georgia;  Girl, You’ll Be a Woman, Soon;  LA Song;  You Light Up My Life;  Espérer;  Bailamos;  Top Gun Anthem;  Rien Ne S’arrête;  Running to Stand Still.

Fresh fish and flat whites kept me fueled.  I took my time and stopped at deserted trailheads along the road to hike into the rainforest among the giant ferns and waterfalls.  However, the Australians have taken a bit of advantage of the incredulous evolutionary history of the area and have made some touristy places to learn more.  Now, these weren’t “touristy” by any nominal standard, but each time I was around more than 10 people, I left feeling irritated.  (Now I’m scaring myself, picturing a hermit in the hills eating locusts and honey.)

First I went to the Otaway Fly, a huge walkway of swinging steel cable bridges high above the rainforest canopy, as well as at lower levels where less light and more moisture support entirely different plant and animal species.  Ferns of all kinds rule the “understories” while the Mountain Ash is the dominant tree as well as the world’s tallest flowering plant.  Even birds stick to their favorite altitude, with the Golden Whistler high in the canopy, the White Brown Scrubwren down low, and the Grey Fantail inbetween.  Colour is provided by Rose Robins, Crimson Rosellas, and White Throated Tree Creepers.  The Fly was fun to walk, with a 47-meter-high tower (and great views) to a 33-meter-high cantilevered bridge (which the guidebook reassured us could hold 14 elephants and is supposed to sway…).  The Fly was built in order to provide education and experience in the rainforest while not impacting the delicate ecosystem.

At the southern-most point of the Great Ocean Road is the Cape Otaway Lighthouse, one of the oldest (and most needed for navigation of the coast back in the 1800s when the area was settled).  I’m not a history buff or fan of lighthouses (unless I could live in one), but I was sidetracked to the lighthouse by a beautiful narrow road under arches of eucalyptus trees.  The lighthouse had closed for the day, but I walked a bit on the trail of the Great Ocean Walk.  Just as I was ready to turn around, I walked by a low pine tree with a sleeping koala bear snuggled in the branches at my eye level.  I was so excited!  I grabbed my camera, and the koala looked at me sleepily but made no attempt to move.  As my pictures became more and more redundant, I retraced my footprints with so much excitement that I just had to share.  “I just saw my first koala!” I exclaimed to some poor guy walking the other way.  He gave me a weird look and polite smile and kept walking.  My talents obviously remain in being a hermit.

Back on the Great Ocean Road, the next big camera-clicker is the Twelve Apostles and other fabulous sculptures on the beaches and in the shallow waves and coves.  The coastal cliffs have a high limestone composition so the constant water forces carve out various fascinating outcroppings.  Again, “lots” of tourists at the 12 Apostles, which are columns of rock in the sea just off the coast.  It was cool and windy and the end of the day, though, and the crowd thinned out as I continued down the road to be impressed by many more formations: Razorback, London Bridge, the Martyrs, and Loch Ard Gorge, named after a shipwreck where the only survivors, a 16-year-old socialite and an 18-year-old crew member, found refuge for a few days until they were rescued.  Sounds like another Titanic screenplay…

About 9pm, just at dusk, I pulled into a B&B where I’d reserved a cute room in a refurbished train car.  I realized that it was more romantic on the internet than inside, but the honeymooners in the next compartment didn’t seem to share my disappointment.  After disembarking the train the next morning, I headed further west down the Great Ocean Road to Portland, the furthest I would drive on this trip, though the GOR continues to Adelaide.   First I stopped at a little lavender farm to try all kinds of smelly stuff, from lotion to a heat wrap, then pathetically chased the ducks through the lavender fields to get their portraits with my cheap camera.  I’d heard something about seeing seals, so I checked into the tourist center and got myself scheduled for a boat tour, then drove on out of town over the sand dunes that connected to a volcanic island, now called Cape Bridgewater.  As I rounded the last corner, the scraggly purplish-black cliffs came into view on the horizon above an incredible beach 4 km long with a quaint café and low-key surf club on the sand.  The water had me mesmerized, the blues and greens and whites as well as the lines and shape and symmetry.  I stopped into the café for a flat white, then walked along the beach and up the volcanic cliff of the Cape and finally back down to a tiny boat shack and dock.  Along with a family of 8, I strapped on a life vest and climbed into the big raft with an outboard motor – what they called a boat.  And for 45 minutes I couldn’t stop smiling.  We sailed over waves, some that reminded me of the final scenes of The Perfect Storm, and rounded the Cape to a huge colony of 600 fur seals.  After the fun of jumping waves, our guide cut the motor and we just rocked up and down with the incoming waves against the cliffs and very close to the seals’ sunbathing rocks.  Some couldn’t be bothered by us, but the extroverts dipped and dived and rolled over around our boat, with everyone trying to get a timely click of the camera shutter.  The waves eventually pushed us into a huge cave where other seals were hiding – I think I would’ve been claustrophobic if I hadn’t been so thrilled to be rocking on the water!  We cruised on back to the jetty, again with some fantastic wave-sailing, and as I walked back to the café and my car, I noticed a cottage just up the hillside with a “For Rent” sign out front.

Up the road a bit, to the other side of the “island”, I visited the Blowholes.  The purple and black volcanic terrain is formed of basalt and scoria, the latter being more easily eroded by the sea.  As the scoria dissolves, tunnels and channels and holes form in the basalt.  With the sea swell crashing against the rock, sprays of saltwater shoot into the air and come raining back down onto the rock with a pitter-patter.  I wanted to watch for hours, but I was getting hungry for lunch and a bit cold on the windy cliffs. 

Before heading back to town, though, I walked further along the cliffs to a “petrified forest”.  There actually is no wood there, but the theory is that a grove of Moonah trees were covered by a sand dune, and over time the tree trunks were encrusted by sediment.  As the organic interior dissolved, the acids carved the hardened sediment out from the inside and also leaked through the surface.  You know those sand castles we used to build on the beach with turrets capped in wet sand that was drizzled over them?  That’s what I was reminded of by these formations.

Although waking up at 9am and having a great hot B&B breakfast at 10 is a perfect vacation schedule, finding something decent to eat at 4 or 5pm is not.  Portland seemed shut down, just when I was craving some fresh catch, or at least some hot clam chowder.  I settled for fish & chips in an ice-cream/candy parlour with floor-to-ceiling shelves of lollipops and bonbons and a view of Portland’s harbor:  a toss-up as to which was more coulourful.

Although I thought I couldn’t be impressed anymore after seals and blowholes, boats and bonbons, I’d been recommended one more round-trip drive near Portland to Cape Nelson.  There was a red and white lighthouse which I duly photographed, and several hikes to take.  Feeling a bit ready to head back to my train lodging, I also thought I should at least take a short walk into the Enchanted Forest.  Bent-over Moonah trees created a tunnel and canopy while vines draped themselves over the branches.  With no other cars in the parking lot at the trail head and feeling cocooned by the greenery and evening light, I kept walking.  I could hear the ocean pounding the cliffs just below but couldn’t get within sight of it.  An overgrown track in the direction of the water caught my eye, and I found that it was a steep path down to a huge flat rock (creatively named Flat Rock).  I finally did get to sit for over an hour meditating on spouting blowholes and crashing waves on the rocks.  The tour book expressed it exactly:  “West of the Cape, where the sun sets over the sea, is a realm of liberating isolation:  entire beaches free of footprints and a national park where you can walk or paddle a boat for days without seeing a soul.”  I, however, saw my soul quite clearly.

Making my way back towards Melbourne on the faster highway via the highlands, I stopped for two hours in Port Fairy, which was a letdown after yesterday in Portland.  I didn’t get up early enough to go to church, which I actually was hoping to do since I haven’t gone for a month, but the Anglican Church was hosting the annual Strawberry Fête, so I checked it out.  The pastor was pretty hilarious as he quite successfully auctioned off junk as fundraisers.  But it was a church fundraiser/luncheon thing just like any other church thing anywhere else in the world.  I took an hour’s walk around a nearby island.  Snapping pictures of the lighthouse and the green and white beach lined by large black lava boulders, I found myself getting agitated.  This was a beautiful island, but not as thrilling of a coastline as Cape Nelson or Bells Beach, and there were so many people!  I mean, I must have passed 10 or 15 during the hour!!  I am quite the charming dramatist sometimes. 

Anyway, the Committee and I were arguing and I was tired of being a prima donna, so I headed inland to see volcano creations.  There are many lakes, although many that are now dry, in the round craters left by the volcanoes.  Some are huge and others look like a giant raindrop fell into dust.  I ate lunch at Cheese World and even got a two-dollar discount since the lady didn’t have change.  But I still just felt irritated.  I went to checkout a B&B on the shore of Lake Colac, but the lake was so dry that the water was at least ¼ mile out and the whole sight just depressed me.  Looking at the map for my options for the next two days as I made my way back to Melbourne, I saw that Lorne, on the GOR between Torquay and Apollo Bay, was only an hour away!  My spirits soared the closer I got to the ocean.  I was on another empty road, winding up to the crest of the hills, surrounded by eucalyptus trees again!  The air was wonderful, and I felt that I was already smelling the coast, though that was impossible at that distance.  Maybe I was just making up some psychological scent because the Committee had gone home for the night and I felt at peace.  The scent was beautiful and strong and tangible – then I saw jasmine blooming between the eucalyptus.  Of course!  It’s spring here, which I keep forgetting.  So the scent of eucalyptus and jasmine escorted me to the blue-green water.  I turned off at the first B&B sign in Lorne and found a beautiful peaceful room looking out to the ocean and a reservation for one at the BaBaLu Club for paella night.

Before I drove back to Melbourne for my flight to Ayers Rock, my brother and I had a video chat and caught up on family gossip from Thanksgiving.  Of course the real star (as I’m sure my brother is well aware) is my gorgeous niece Allie, eating her lunch of arroz con Cheerios.  I got to see their Christmas tree, and feeling nostalgic as I drove toward Melbourne on the Road of Eucalyptus and Jasmine, I realized that today is the 1^st of December.  19 days to LA...

 

Party like it's 1999!

Funny how I got a social life in Singapore.  Twelve years ago, Christian and I were out every weekend, going dancing in Hollywood until the wee hours with our mutual friends from Hughes, most notably Herr Fischer.  And while I have always had the inclination to be a hermit, and traveling doesn’t often change this trait, Christian had been working too much and hadn’t been out in a while either.  So my last week in Singapore was close to a continual party.

 

First, Christian invited Switchu and me to a dinner with some SES colleagues who were in town. (SES is the Luxembourg company that runs all of Europe’s direct-to-home TV systems and was Hughes’ client, so that’s how Christian and I met.)  It was an interesting meal of random Asian things of which I don’t remember the names, except for the chili crab.  They went easy on me, so no tongues on fire, but definitely not a dish any normal person would order to make a good impression on colleagues.  Needless to say, Christian pretty much needed a new shirt once the crab was all gone.  But we were on a roll, so we further impressed these esteemed men by taking them to the prostitution district where the best durian is sold – that’s durian, not durex.  Durian is supposed to be a fruit, but is rather a pale ochre form of silly putty or that neon green slime I remember the boys would try to goo us with in 4^th grade.  Anyway, it’s a blob under a prickly hard shell that has to be hammered open.  And the smell – well, let’s just say there are signs in the subway stations and ferry terminals prohibiting durian from being brought on board:  a big picture of the prickly thing with a red slash through it.  But Christian insisted that the best durian was to be found in the prostitution district since neither was desired in the upscale neighborhoods.  Says something about Christian’s neighborhood, with Happy De Spa and a durian stand across the street.  Just to emphasize, I didn’t frequent either of them.

 

On Tuesday I found a little art shop run by a Canadian woman and went to two classes on art glass – how to make plates and bowls and such.  It was a blast and a new interest for me.  I was amazed at how simple it is and of course decided that my family would need to buy me a $700 kiln for my birthday.  Well, mania does fade and my two fused glass masterpieces are called coasters by most people and are now proudly displayed on Ma’s coffee table.

 

The one benefit of the extreme humidity of Singapore, beside fewer wrinkles (on both clothes and faces) is the ability for gorgeous plants to grow in abundance.  Very early Tuesday morning, about 10:30am, I toured the National Botanic Gardens, walking through the National Orchid Garden, alongside Swan Lake, and into the Ginger Garden, as well as finding random sculptures, lily ponds, bonsai trees, and a secluded walk through the rainforest and ferns.  On the wide paths overlooking the gardens and lakes and vast lawn, groups of seniors were doing tai-chi while Caucasian women with ponytails and spandex were gossiping and power-walking.  The morning routines of the serene and beautiful.

 

One rainy afternoon, Christian met me out at Sentosa after he finished work.  As I waited for him under the cover of the Merlion in all its glory, I was entertained by a Japanese family taking pictures of their three kids.  Christian had told me that for some reason which eludes the most educated of us, the Japanese dramatize their photos with huge fake smiles, action poses (I saw one girl jumping up in the air for her photo in front of Ayer’s Rock in Australia), and the two-fingered “Victory” sign.  I thought Christian was exaggerating, as he likes to do, but almost fell off my butt into a puddle when I saw these Japanese kids doing this for the pictures the parents were taking.  And they were very serious about it.  So when C showed up drenched from his motorcycle sprint, we took some pictures of him in front of a happy colourful fountain – but we were both laughing so hard we could barely get any pictures.  We walked across the swinging bridge to the island which is the Southern-most Point of Continental Southeast Asia.  Now, this would confuse most people, but not the Singaporians.  This means that from the tip of this island connected by a swinging bridge, one could ride his motorcycle all the way up to China.  Well, “continental” has many meanings, but it had a good lookout onto the harbor as well as other small potential Southernmost Points of Continental Southeast Asia.  Aside from the peculiarities of Singapore and its people and those who work for Christian, we talked about our five lives.  Now this isn’t something I invented (don’t know that I ever invented anything, actually), but remembered as one of the exercises in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  (Just as a sidenote, I’d recommend this book to anyone pursuing some sort of creative endeavour and feels a bit stuck or burnt-out, whether it’s art, music, writing, interviewing, investing, managing, or M&As.  I tried to do it twice on my own and finally finished the 12-week “course” with a group of women in DC.  I was the only artist – there was a dancer, a jeweler, a poet, a yoga instructor, and a financial advisor who’d been on Oprah.  We met every other week for six weeks and shared the results of what we’d read and done per the book.  Years later, living in Cannes and preparing to quit engineering to do my art full-time, I found my copy of The Artist’s Way with many of my answers and notes written in the margins.  On one page, I stumbled across a desire to “paint in swirls of colour and take a year sabbatical to paint in Europe”.  I’d call that an answered prayer!)   

 

So my five lives are to be a truck driver (the 18-wheeler kind), a hip-hop dancer, professional surfer, creative director of a Fortune 500 company, and a university professor of literature.  Christian wanted to do extreme sports and be a CEO, and though I actually forgot what else – he kept changing his mind – we both agreed that we didn’t want to do any charity work.  Contribute money, yes, but trying to help people, which inevitably requires them to change, is exhausting.  He’d done this in Thailand after he’d been caught in the Christmas tsunami several years ago.  He had stayed over a year to help Thai fishermen rebuild their boats and villages and also teach some entrepreneurial concepts, but they didn’t take.  I’d spent many years volunteering at a battered women’s shelter in Santa Monica.  Abusive relationships follow the same cycle as addictions and abusing substances, and in watching many women return with their children to an abusive home thinking it would be different this time, my heart was just broken.  I guess helping people is a lot like being an artist or other creative type:  you do it whether you want to or not on any given day;  you paint or write or sing 9 bad paintings, writings, or ballads to get one good one;  you help 9 people who decide not to change to help one who does turn his or her life around.

 

But Christian and I laugh too much to get serious for long – he’s a good antidote to me.  That evening we met up with Wei Ching, a friend from the ex-pat dancing evenings, and her Tunisian roommate Chadha and other Tunisian friends.  So we <surprise!> ended up at a Moroccan restaurant where we had to pull the outside tables under the eaves when the rain tried to gobble up our tagine dinners.  Around the corner was an Egyptian coffee place, the big attraction being shisha.  Shisha is basically a communal smoking thing, but the smoke is filtered in water, and the tobacco is usually flavored something fruity.  So our Tunisian experts ordered an apple shisha and began passing around the inhaler.  It wasn’t my thing particularly, and Christian and I got into a smoke-ring contest.  But with it being a Wednesday night, it was silly to go home too soon just to get up for work in a few hours (me excluded – although I did have my second glass class the next day), so we stuffed into two taxis and headed for Bollywood!  Seriously!  See the pictures!  It was this night club with the feel of a “gentlemen’s club”.  Indian girls – some ordinary, a few really beautiful – were dressed like belly dancers and dancing to the latest Bollywood hits.  I actually loved the music – definitely something to dance to – but didn’t much like the competition.  The guys got up and danced, of course, and watching this whole scene, I found it to be a tiny place of silliness and complete insulation from all the worries of the world.

 

Now I think I mentioned before that the major pastime and tourist attraction of Singapore is shopping.  Orchard Road is the place to be and to be spending.  I’d spied a Borders bookstore on one of my taxi rides and was quite excited to go since I was facing several 10+ hour plane trips and was dead out of books.  So I got to buy books I actually wanted to read instead of feeling obligated to go through all the compulsive buys already filling my bookshelves at home.  In 1898 Tolstoy wrote “What is Art?”, and though I found it, my heart wasn’t there.  Amy Tan’s books caught my eye.  I’d read the Joy Luck Club something like 8 or 10 years ago and gave it to my Ma with passages underlined of things I wanted to tell her but couldn’t.  Nearby was Paul Theroux’s series of travel-writing books like Riding the Iron Rooster and Dark Star Safari, many of which I’ve been wanting for years to read, but I wasn’t in the mood for dark Africa or the Orient Express, so I hooked around the shelves to the adjacent section.  I looked for authors with a series of books and found Fitzgerald but couldn’t remember which ones I’d already read other than Gatsby.  Further down was a series of novels by a guy named Graham Greene – never heard of him, but his books were set in interesting parts of the world, so I settled on The Heart of the Matter.  Next I came across The Kite Runner.  I loved both the book and the movie, and while the movie left out the whole immigration issue, the colours of the kites and culture, and later lack thereof, were beautiful.  I’ve been wanting to read Khaled Hosseini’s subsequent book 1000 Splendid Suns but thought Ma already had a copy and I was too cheap to buy my own.  Nearby was Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans.  The title sounded vaguely familiar (amazingly enough, no books in Singapore have Oprah’s seal of approval – I wonder how they know what to read?), and I read on the back that he’d also authored Remains of the Day, which became one of those famous Anthony Hopkins/Emma Thompson romantic-era movies.  With the somewhat mystery novel set in both London and Shanghai, I added it to Heart of the Matter.  While my left brain was telling me two books would suffice, both to read and to carry, my right brain was in Candyland.  Further down the shelves was Barbara Kingsolver.  I’ve read most of her novels and loved them, as have my friends Paula and James in France, so I frequently export my read volumes to them.  However, as I was in the mood for literature from the far corners of the world, I finally grabbed Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude to console me during my upcoming 100 hours of Solitude.

 

One day Switchu and I were out and popped into an air-conditioned 7-11 for some water to drink.  On the way out, I spied the last copy of The Economist with Obama on the cover.  I was almost willing to pay the S$12 but then saw it was already 10 days old.  So with rare boldness (“balls” I guess you’d call it if I were a guy), I pointed this out to the clerk and asked if I could have it.  For free.  The Wizard of Oz she consulted in the back room vetoed it but allowed her to give me a free copy of Time magazine, which I thought was kind, but on second glance saw that it was the “Life & Style” edition.  Since when do I want to make reservations on the secluded island where Nicole Kidman found nirvana during respites of filming Australia?  But I read the dumb thing anyway.   Several movers & shakers of the creative type were interviewed about how they travel.  The cast included the marketing exec for Louis Vuitton, a 5-star hotel architect, some blond tennis star, and Diane von Furstenberg.  The questions included what they pack, what they eat, how they adjust to jet lag, and favorite airports to shop at.  The reason I mention all this, however, is that one thing made a huge impression on me.  Almost each one said one of their “never-leave-home-without” items is a sketchbook, accompanied by pens or pencils or whatnot.  If these gadzillionaires who live on a plane in first class most of their lives and buy haute couture in international airports can’t be without their sketchbooks, well, maybe I should have one, too.

 

So Thursday, on the way to glass class, I detoured to the Japanese mall at Clarke’s Quay and found a bookstore.  Interesting titles, but the best was a huge selection of sketchbooks and coloured pens for cheap.  So that made me happy, as I was on my way to being a gadzillionaire living on a plane in first class and buying haute couture in international airports.  Alongside dreaming of my future, a vente iced Americano supplemented my happiness.  (I’ll plead the 5^th regarding whether there was a green, round logo of a mermaid on the cup.)  Additionally, I was amazed to have found Old El Paso in the Japanese market, so I was on my way home to prepare fajitas for Christian.  We invited Wei Ching and Chadha and decided to have a fajita picnic in the Botanic Gardens under fragrant plumeria trees, though they all disagreed with me and said they were some sort of tree used to cast spells, but I’m sure they were plumeria.  Under the spell of the plumeria and Old El Paso, we righteously decided we needed to go out again – after all, it was Thursday night!  We found a bar at Clarke’s that had advertised some sort of free vodka drink to the ladies, but we ended up each paying S$14 – Christian for a beer and us girls for some frou-frou drink with an umbrella.  Not sure how “free” translated to S$14 in Singlish, but understandable considering the decibels vomiting from the horrible band belting out one-hit-wonders wearing too little silver lamé and fishnet (stockings, shirts, whatever…)  It was one of those bars with big sofas and semi-private nooks and velvet that might be considered trendy – except that there were only about 12 people in the place.  We grabbed a little table surrounded by a funky sofa and plush chairs and ended up laughing so hard that we were  lucky to be seated on sofas since we were all falling-down hysterical.  I’m trying to remember what was so funny, other than the gyrations of the band members, but I think Chadha started it.  She would give us an emotion or situation, and we would have to express it, wordlessly, but with the ever-present Japanese photo “victory” sign…  It’s hysterical just remembering it…

 

Friday, Christian and Wei Ching took me out for dinner at a happy ritzy place on the water of the harbor.  It was even more happy after two glasses of champagne.  We then hopped to a bar that overlooked the Shopping on Orchard Road.  There were cabaña-type lounge beds along one side of the bar, so us girls ditched the guys, claimed one of the cabañas, and ordered margaritas.  Christian joined us, then a Panamanian friend Carlos.  I’ve never laughed so hard or this much since the last time I saw Christian, about 7 years ago.  (Well, OK, maybe since last night, but you understand.)  I laughed so hard I had to lie down on the sofa, yet again.  After all my eye makeup was gone and my lipstick left on a few margarita glasses, a huge group of us ex-pats went back for more to Insomnia for another dance party until 4am.  After all, I had to get to bed early to prepare for my 10-hour flight to Auckland the next day.

 

Another Hard Day...

 

Recovering from Insomnia and after our 1pm breakfast on Sunday, Christian suggested a mellow day on a local island, Pulau Ubin.  After lunch (I actually didn’t have breakfast, now that I think about it), we rented bikes and took them down to the beach facing Malaysia.  A giant wooden fence had been erected in the water 30 meters off shore to keep Malaysians from illegally entering Singapore.  But we spread out towels and read our books for a couple hours under a cloudy and humid sky.  Since Pulau Ubin isn’t developed I could see the original jungle and forest and beaches (well, plus a touch of Malaysian litter that’s washed up).  Singapore has also “developed” other local islands, Christian told me.  They import rocks & sand from Malaysia, extend the coastline, and plant mangrove trees for their extensive root system to keep the new land from washing away.  Meanwhile, Malaysia’s coastline is receding…

 

Saturday evening was mellow, but hey, it’s still Saturday night in Singapore.  So Christian, his roommate Switchu, and I went to Sentosa Island for dinner.  Sentosa is Disneyland².  A light show was in progress – Christian told us to avoid it – something about a happy spirit that gets happier when people sing.  There’s a giant, uh, sculpture thing called the Merlion – a lion with a mermaid’s body.  I’d call it the Sing-Sphinx.  It’s just about as big as Egypt’s and gets lit up at night as a beacon – a beacon to happiness.  After Japanese sushi, we sat at the edge of the water in semi-darkness looking out at the lights of all the freighter ships and talked about our experiences with ghosts and spirits, angels and demons. 

 

Sunday we were off to the island of Batam in Indonesia.  A very hot day, and the sun fried my head on the boat ride, but I’ve never seen so many huge ships at once!  Singapore is the largest port in the world.  We arrived at Batam and thought it would be simple to find a beach resort to hang out at, but the tourist offices in the terminal were harder to find than chewing gum.  After paying the cab, we were told that we couldn’t use the resort unless we were guests of the hotel.  Couldn’t even pay $10 for the towels.  So Christian used the “How can you help me?” line, and we were in.  The place was deserted.  Looked gorgeous, though, with cabanas and a pristine pool and palm trees and jet skis to rent on the turquoise water.  Christian bought us coconuts with straws and lunch, then Switchu bought us cappuccinos and snacks.  I was just there for the conversation while we all read our books.  Another hard day. 

 

Disneyland

 

Hey Laurie, you just survived a 12 hour flight, now what are you going to do? 

 

I’m going to Disneyland!

 

I arrived 3 ½ hours into Tel Aviv airport before my flight, went through endless and stressful security checks (basically a repeat of 10 days ago), then onto my 4 ½ hour flight to Paris which was late.  Air France kindly held the plane to Singapore for the few of us on that flight, but we had to run through the terminal to the very last gate.  As soon as I got to my seat I felt claustrophobic, and after dinner my legs felt funny, like I needed to constantly move them, then I got nauseated. I felt something like vertigo.  One of the stewardesses had medical training and thought it might be poor circulation.  I think I was just exhausted from the Israel trip and the stress of getting out of Tel Aviv and onto the Singapore flight. Anyway, they took good care of me and finally brought me up to first class to lay in the seat that flattens to a nice bed.  I think I slept a good 7 or 8 hours, though the 1^st class attendant subtly told me to go back to my seat as soon as I was able.  No warm breakfast rolls for me.  Disembarking, I got the wheelchair treatment, and was embarrassed that they’d sent for it, but was still dizzy.  The wheelchair guy was quite entertaining, asking me if I wanted to shop at the giant duty-free store (Singapore’s only tourist attraction seems to be shopping), showing me a picture of his bonsai tree (clipping it takes lots of time but helps him not listen to his girlfriend), and telling me that I need to see the new airport terminal that has a cinema with no entrance fee, so you can watch full-screen movies while waiting for a flight!  

 

My friend Christian greeted me with his big smile and got his workout by carrying my suitcases.  Since I’d had a good night’s sleep on the plane, we went out for drinks (why not?) at an outdoor mall, Clarke Quay, on the Singapore River where the old town center used to be.  He said it had been “spruced up” a bit from former warehouses, and it definitely had been.  It looked like Disneyland, each building a different pastel colour with white trim – the icing on the cake being a Hooters.   But Singapore really is one big Disneyland.  The place is so clean.  Chewing gum is illegal, unless it is by prescription (so we figured either a nicotine gum or jaw fitness gum would be available).  There are fines for everything – even riding your bike in a street underpass would cost $1000.  Being naked, apparently even in your own home (maybe someone else can see you!) is illegal.  So is oral sex, but prostitution is OK.  The Chinese women who immigrate here often write on their papers that they will be prostitutes.  Christian said the oral sex law had been recently reviewed, and while they finally allowed it as foreplay, it is still illegal, even for married couples.  The thinking (if you can call it that) behind this is that Singapore is trying to increase the birth rate, so they encourage sex of the procreating kind.  But ads of women in bikinis are censored.  The men here seem to have either all or nothing.

 

Another peculiarity which explains all the prettiness of the place is that Singapore wants to be a utopia – they really want everyone to be happy.  (I got some photos of advertisements around town – they even use the word “happy” nauseatingly.)  There’s a Ministry of Community which is basically in charge of keeping people happy and thinking up new ways to make them even happier.  So residents, tourists, and business people are kept pretty well entertained.  From what I’ve read in the tour guide, I’ll be experiencing lots of kitsch in hopes of making me happy.  Stay tuned…

 

After vegging out at Christian’s for a couple days, I grabbed a taxi (they’re so cheap here – and air-conditioned) to go back to Clarke Quay.  Arriving just before noon, I was the only person there except for the guys installing the Christmas lights.  A next-door mall had a Starbucks (I resisted) and a few open stores.  I bought a t-shirt for my niece – a “happy” t-shirt, of course.  It had been raining all morning, but I conveniently forgot my umbrella, so I sat down for lunch in a coffee house on the water, listening to and watching the pouring rain. Had a chicken sandwich with a coffee sauce on it – very interesting – good, too.  Unfortunately Singapore hasn’t yet covered every sidewalk to make me happy when I forget my umbrella.  So keeping close to cover, I found a group of art galleries on the ground floor of an office building.  Only one really held much interest for me.  I asked about their artists, but they’re all Asian and only those who have lived in Singapore. 

 

I thought I’d waste a bit more time under the cover of Clarke Quay (where the scent of jasmine is everywhere from the jasmine trees – that made me happy).  As I mentioned, shopping is really the only tourist attraction, and Singapore just doesn’t get that people can also go shopping in Paris and London and the Camarillo Outlet Stores, so that’s not the best strategy.  But that’s someone else’s problem.  I’m about shopped-out because even with sending home a box of winter clothes already, my new suitcase from the Cairo bazaar plus the old one are already both at 20kg again!  So aside from a prostitute, the only other thing to really waste your money on in Singapore is at a spa.  Now, of course, this is a bit tricky here.  Across the street from Christian’s place is Happy De Spa (is that French?).  But a friend of his went and was charged an extra $5 for being female, and Christian was asked never to patronize the place again since he didn’t want any extra services.  So I hadn’t planned to go somewhere that Christian or his friends didn’t tell me was safe, but a very nice spa above one of the ritzy restaurants in Clarke Quay caught my eye.  I cautiously climbed the quiet stairs, lined with huge bouquets saying “Congratulations on Grand Opening”, and although they looked like funeral flowers, figured the place was OK.

 

Inside, Spring Spa was gorgeous, with a lobby and lounge and upscale healthy little café, all in red and purple colours (to match the flowers and make everyone happy, I guess).  I was warmly greeted and signed in, the second person of the day.  So I got ear candling (the second time in my life – really cool!  -- worth a try for anyone!) and a massage and foot reflexology.  The ear candling lady also did facials and manicure/pedicure.  I needed my nails done, but figured I’d be in the place long enough that today wasn’t the time.  I still wanted to do a bit of sightseeing – whatever that was.  The massage was great!  Not only Swedish massage but lots of work on my upper back – my worst spot – with some chiropractic stuff, too.  She complimented me on my boobs. 

 

After a hot shower, a tall blonde Chinese guy worked on my feet.  I couldn’t feel them for hours afterwards!  It was great!  They were still needling me to get a facial (I hate facials) and my nails done, but I was ready to leave (well, not really – jet lag still seems to hit me about mid-afternoon, so I could have just slept there a while).  Signing out, there were quite a few more names on the sheet – all of them men.

 

The rain wasn’t bad now, so I went hunting for the Asian Cultures Museum.  Although Christian told me where it was, I trusted the 5-year-old guide book his friend gave me.  So the AC Museum is now some other museum, and by the time I got around to asking and headed back to the new location at Clarke Quay (duh!), I was getting tired. I ordered a new pair of eyeglasses (because Dad told me to) in the “tech” mall.  A bit more walking around, noticing all the happy people, and then I headed for a happy cup of coffee from a third-floor mall lookout over the river. 

 

I spent another day at Christian’s working on my blog as well as trying to figure out what to see in Singapore (not 2-week’s worth, certainly).  I figured I could take a short flight over to Bali, but my friend Dan hit me over the head and told me I was being stupid again (St. P being the first time – well, maybe not the first) and needed to spend at least a month in Bali.  Christian said Vietnam (Hanoi, specifically) and Cambodia were quite different and would be great to go, but I need a visa for Vietnam and there were no convenient trips to Cambodia.  We thought we’d go to Sumatra (well, at least get a good cuppa joe), but Chrisitan had a meeting on Monday that wouldn’t work with the flights available.   I was tired of struggling with flights and an intermittent internet connection, with a server error in pure Sing-lish: 

The server may be a little bit broken temporarily.  Please try again in a few moments while it sorts itself out.  Error 12152

 

It was Friday night and time to go out.  In the guidebook, albeit 5 years old, under the heading for nightlife, it read “Singapore.  The whole city.  Really.”  We went to an expat get-together at an open-air bar on a high floor of an office building.  Very chic.  Giant pictures of Mao, Kim, and Bush filled the wall behind the bar.  Then dancing among the prostitutes at Insomnia until 4am.  Of course being the clueless person I am, I didn’t know most of the women were prostitutes (hey, most women from London to LA wear short shorts and lace bustiers to go dancing – not dressed but going out).  I guess the guys know quite quickly that the motivation is not love but money.  That’s a bad segway to another philosophical discussion, but one which I don’t have the energy nor knowledge to write about, especially at 4am.

 

Walk Like an Egyptian

 

OK, not the most creative title, but accurate.  First thing after our morning flight from Tel Aviv to Cairo was the Egyptian Museum – home of King Tut and other old things.  We had a great museum guide and learned some fascinating things like how to identify if a statue is of a pharaoh or not (in case you find one in your backyard).  The beard and forward left leg means he’s dead (hopefully they all have beards), and a clenched left hand or one holding a sepulchre is a sign of a ruler.  The left leg first is interesting.  When a pharaoh or other rich or important person (not necessarily the same thing) died, they were mummified.  This basically preserved their bodies so their spirits could come back to them, and their coffins were carved to render their faces and hands – again for identification, though I’m not sure why their spirits would need them.  But back to mummification.  The brains were basically ripped into mush via the nasal cavities and then all drained out through those passageways (gives new meaning to a nose bleed).  Then the left side of the body was opened at the bottom of the ribcage to remove the organs.  Four jars or pots were used to preserve these organs: one for the liver, one for kidneys, then stomach and intestines and finally the heart, if I remember all this correctly.  I’m sure the genitals went in one of those jars, too, though the guide didn’t mention it.  So along with the statue and mummy you’ll find in your backyard, don’t overlook those four jugs of organs.  Then the body is encased with salt for about 2 months.  Oh, but back to my original thread:  the left side is sacred because that is the side of understanding.  This is the spiritual side; the heart.  The right side is for knowledge, and knowledge, along with the organ responsible for learning and retaining knowledge, the brain, is not needed in the afterlife.  Knowledge is a hindrance.  Knowledge is only needed for the physical realm, to which the Egyptians didn’t give much emphasis.  This physical world was only useful in preparing for the next world.  I’m fascinated by the juxtaposition of our world with theirs and that they already had some idea of left- vs. right-brained functions.

 

King Tut’s room held his two coffins, both of gold and copper (which oxidized into blue), with all kinds of jewelry and details in red and yellow gold and every other precious thing.  His eyes (on the coffin) are made of ivory with crystals drilled in for the retina, then copper “eyeliner” applied around the eyes.  When a flashlight is shined on them, an incredibly real pair of eyes stares back at you – lifelike enough to have scared many pyramid explorers and thieves!  King Tut’s fingers were enclosed in gold, like long thimbles, and arms and legs adorned with more jewelry.  His mummified body was placed in one coffin, which was placed in another, then another,  which was nestled into a wooden ark-like box, which was then placed into 3 subsequently larger boxes, the final one about 6x8x10 feet in dimension.  What is really amazing about King Tut’s tomb is the incredible amount of gold and precious stones and metals, plus the craftsmanship, for a king who ascended the throne at 9 years old, died at 19 of unknown causes – murder has been ruled out, and did absolutely nothing for Egypt.  So if all this was done for insignificant King Tut, imagine what the tombs of some of the great kings and pharaohs and those who lived long lives and amassed much wealth would have looked like! 

 

As we landed in Cairo, the city of 20 million people stretched out for miles, like approaching LA, but the difference in Cairo is that the urban expanse was almost completely made up of drab-looking high rise apartments.  They don’t often finish most houses and apartment buildings because the taxes are lower if a building is still in the construction phase.  Other interesting dwellings could be found in the “City of the Living” – really the City of the Dead: the Muslim cemetery.  The bodies are buried in the ground with one or two rooms above in the mausoleum, I suppose we would call it.  Actually, there are two rooms under the ground, one for men’s bodies and the other for women – so they are even segregated at death.  But squatters have come in and lived in the “upstairs” rooms, with water and electricity and TV piped in.  The owners of the mausoleums don’t really take any action to kick out the squatters because they feel it’s a form of charity. 

 

Anyway, we got a bit of a taste of Egypt driving in Cairo.  We were definitely back in an Arab country, and many of our group on the bus were getting ulcers over the driving.  Pedestrians wandered into and across the road, there are no lines painted on the streets, and a generally laws of physics are not in effect, much like Casablanca.  I thought it was mild compared to Casa, with hardly any scooters or motorcycles and honking only used if you and your mother ****.   Aside from the Egyptian Museum (a bit rundown I thought, but they’re building a new one), we had good views of the Nile and sailboats out on it, as well as the Opera House.  In 1869, the Suez Canal opened and was celebrated by the first performance of Aida, Egypt’s most-loved operas, and one of my favorites, too.  I mean, it’s VERDI!  How can you not love Verdi?  But anyway, Aida was performed at the newly opened Opera House to celebrate the Suez Canal.

 

In the evening, they had a Nile River Cruise booked for us.  The food wasn’t great and it was on one of those huge boats that didn’t even feel like it was moving except that buildings outside were floating by.  Sufi & belly dancers entertained us.  I was fascinated by this Sufi dancer spinning around and around for about 15 minutes, apparently in a trace to keep him from losing his lunch.  He wore 2 skirts over his baggy pants, plus several scarves wrapped around his head.  He also had 6 discs, something like tambourines, that fit inside one another, though at the same time all looking the same size – anyway, hard to describe this whole thing that I’d never seen before, but it was amazing.  There are a few pictures, though difficult to get good ones, even with Julie’s camera.  Sufi dancers begin training when they’re barely 4 or 5 years old, and it is a form of meditation for them:  a trance.  It fascinated me with the bright colours and the flow of all the fabric – it looked like one of my paintings was spinning around in front of me.  People often ask me what inspires my art, and I think the only firm thing I can point to is fluid movement, whether of water or, even better, bright coloured fabrics laid out together or moving.  So I was both inspired and mesmerized by this guy.   Then the belly dancer performed, and I have to admit I was a bit embarrassed by it.  It wasn’t anything obscene and I know I’m sounding like a prude, but I just felt uncomfortable.  Most of the other guests on the cruise appeared to be Arab or Asian businessmen.  Aside from the general gawking, several began filming her via their mobiles.   Anyway, I was back in an Arab culture, and that never agrees with me.  After Morocco, I have almost no tolerance for their leering and aggressiveness. 

 

Bright and early the next morning, before waves of heat and tourists arrived, we drove out to the Giza Pyramids.  The entire Nile delta would flood for 4 months out of the year, and while the farmers adjusted the type of crops and growing cycles to take advantage of this, it wasn’t agreeable to dead pharaohs.  The pyramids are built on land which is up a huge cliff overlooking Cairo.  Now, the pharaohs didn’t just one day decide to build these things.  Their ambition was built on centuries of tradition, beginning with marking the graves of royalty and nobility with a stone in order to acknowledge the place they were buried.  But then the rulers and the rich wanted to take more of their wealth with them into the afterlife (He who dies with the most toys gets to keep them.), so the graves expanded with underground rooms to accommodate their favorite possessions.  (I wonder when we’ll see 10x40m plots to accommodate yachts and Ferraris and Ferragamos?)  However, contrary to popular belief, the rulers and rich are human, so they got greedy and wanted to take more and more stuff with them when they died, which were accommodated by placing them under a pile of stones.  But a pile of stones isn’t necessarily pretty or ordered, so they began to pile the stones as steps so the royal (but not the rich, since only royals were the reps of the gods) could step up to be with the gods.  Not only were they greedy, and self-exalting, but also competitive, so the pile of stones got bigger and bigger, until one of them reached 280 feet high.  And this is how the Giza Pyramids were born.

 

Now, it’s interesting that the Egyptians actually paid their labour to build these things.  During the 4 months of Nile flooding, even farmers gravitated to the construction industry.  The pyramids had to be built quickly, since the average ruling period for a pharaoh was 20 years.  So as soon as he was inaugurated, not only was the pyramid constructed, but also his tombs – remember, at least 7 for those that were found with King Tut.  The largest pyramid has 2.3 million blocks, again, no mortar was used.  Some blocks were from local quarries, but others traveled down the Nile from 600 miles away.  That’s like LA to Eureka!  And if someone cares to do the math, 2.3 million divided by 20 years is 4.5 minutes per block!  They had some amazing operations, for sure.  Maybe they had CMI (Continuous Measurable Improvement).

 

It is something of an insult, too, that no one in our common era has been able to construct a pyramid more than 10 feet high.  Now, that sounds silly, but considering that no mortar was used (it was just a pile of rocks, remember?) and that there is no pressure of the weight of the rocks on the hollow burial tombs, it gets more challenging.  The interior rooms have stones slanted that take all the pressure.  Plus, there is a spirit tunnel, usually hidden, for the spirit to come and go freely.  Of course, its home could always be located by the numerous tombs with the exact likeness of the pharaoh’s face and hands engraved on them.

 

Ra is the sun god.  He travels across the sky everyday (unless you live in London), and the Egyptians had numerous explanations for this phenomenon.  One was that a woman’s body was arched over the land.  Her head was east, where the light began.  In the west was her uterus, and the sun would drop out of her down into darkness.  The other explanation was the solar boat.  The sky is blue because it’s actually a river, and Ra sails across the sky in his solar boat.  Well, if Ra needs a boat, the pharaoh does even more so.  Next to the pyramids, a boat was buried.  Well actually, over 1000 pieces for a boat requiring assembly were buried, and the Egyptians figured the spirit would take care of the assembly.  Remember that next time you’re in IKEA.

 

Since we hadn’t taken enough pictures yet, including camels (dromedaries actually, since “camel” is really the name for a 2-humped camel, well, dromedary, which can only be found in the zoo – camels, I mean, not dromedaries), we headed over to the Sphinx.  The Sphinx isn’t a camel or a dromedary, thank goodness, but a lion with a human head. (I know you knew that already.)  Since a lion has never been seen to have a human face, this combination was intended to strike fear in all who looked at it, and thereby guard the pyramids.  With the west considered the place of death (the sun died each day in the west), the Giza pyramids were built on the west bank of the Nile, and the Sphinx faces east to guard against the living.

 

By the end of the day I felt in need of my own sphinx.  Our guide had started the morning off with 5, but was now bidding 16 camels for me (not sure what Dad would do with 16 camels, though I’m sure the HOA would have some concerns), and the security guard personally escorting me and chatting me up.  We had armed guards on both busses as well as a police escort – 4 guys in one car – the entire time we were in Egypt, including the 6 hour trek across the Sinai desert.  But none really met my definition of a personal sphinx.  I finally decided that the black “tents” and veil worn by women to only show their eyes – that outfit is going in my suitcase for my next visit to the Arab world.  Actually, I’m not blonde or pretty enough to warrant all this attention, but I’ve come to the conclusion it’s just the colour of my skin.  In Cairo along the expressway, there were a series of “B-white” advertisements which looked like some sort of skin lightener.  Wonder if they asked Michael Jackson to be their celebrity promoter?

 

 

Most of the Nile borders cater to recreation – from parks and boardwalks to sailing, which is the most popular pastime. However, in a few undeveloped areas we could see the typical reeds along the Nile – remembering how Moses was found.  His name probably derived from Mu-Meses which means “water infant”.

 

We visited the only synagogue in Cairo.  It had never been used because there weren’t 10 Jewish men in all of Old Cairo to keep the lights going. However, one of our group was formerly Jewish, and while most of us marveled at being in a synagogue for the first time, Mark told us it was not at all like a real synagogue.  Most blatantly, the Torah was left opened on a book stand, and opening the Torah is only done with much respect.  It would have never been left open by a Jew.

 

Later, the Coptic Museum (Coptic means Egyptian) showed us all kinds of ancient Egyptian art in stone, wood, paints, papyrus, leather, embroidery, and fabric.  On display is the oldest known book of the Psalms – dated to 1288! – plus a red-leather-bound book of the four gospels written on linen paper – definitely a work of art.  Afterwards, some of us went to the Cairo bazaar.  I really didn’t want to go, but was in need of a new, not to mention cheap, suitcase to replace the bag that didn’t make it through Israeli inspection very well.  So I stuck with our little group who ventured into the maze – a gauntlet of vendors trying to get our attention:  “I’m honest!  How much will you pay me?!”  But I claimed victory emerging with a large red $25 suitcase.

 

Before leaving Egypt, we drove about 6 hours through the Sinai desert to the Red Sea and the Israeli border.  We “crossed” the Suez Canal via a tunnel of 2km under the canal and the militarized zone around it.  After emerging, we looked back to see a very long ship in the canal, but could only see the top part – a ship in floating in the desert.

 

With such a long bus ride, our guide was very entertaining, explaining compulsory military service (which he avoided due to bananas – you mean “Go Bananas”? – “yes, that’s it!”) as well as the decreasing numbers of arranged marriages (most young people just date non-exclusively – like himself).  But someone asked him about Islam, and though he replied that questions about religion are very rude, gave us quite a detailed response.  A Muslim must do 5 things. First, believe that Allah is the only God and Mohammed is the last prophet after Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Isaiah, and Jesus.  Second, pray 5 times a day at sunrise, about noon, 4pm, sunset, and 8pm.  They have to wash first, but it isn’t necessary to pray at work or on duty, nor do pregnant and menstruating women have to pray.  Third, fast in Ramadan, lasting a month, from sunrise to sunset – meaning no food or even water, as well as cigarettes – although kids and those with medical exemptions don’t have to fast.  When the fast is broken each evening after sundown, huge feasts are held, open to neighbors and the poor.  This is expected in order to be compassionate for the poor – in order to understand how they feel.  Fourth, Muslims must make one pilgrimage in their lifetime to Mecca – but only if they can afford it, which is about $10-15k.  Our guide told us that the money Saudi Arabia makes from the pilgrims to Mecca is greater income than from oil!  Finally, 5% of savings must be given to charity (note that’s savings, not income).

 

He explained that Suni and Shiite are two different sects, of Islam.  While the Suni are very simple and tolerant, the Shiite believe in self-flogging, cutting, and injuring, and the Suni consider this paganism.  Shiites, per their history, are very stubborn and believe that the Angel Gabriel was supposed to give his message to Ali but mistakenly gave it to Mohammed.

 

When we asked about the Islamic after-life beliefs, our guide became agitated.  If you ask any Egyptian about getting the 70 virgins for sacrificing in battle, they will look as if you had two heads.  Most of the suicide bombers come from very impoverished circumstances, and this is exploited by their governments -- not in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, or in any of the more developed nations, but in Palestine and Afghanistan.  The politicians and those wanting control brainwash children from a young age, including the invented story of 70 virgins in heaven, and incentivize the family with promises of $30,000 (probably equivalent to something like $2M to Americans) for their son or daughter to be patriotic.

 

Luckily, since Julie had to switch buses everyday since she was a coordinator, I got to switch busses as well, and even with his lectures at each stop as to why I should be on his bus, I was able to escape the guide with 16 camels.  Of course, before crossing the Egyptian border to Israel, he told me to pay the exit tax – two kisses on the cheek.  These 3 days in Egypt wore me out just as Morocco did – aside from the aggression in the bazaar, the feeling that I was just another pretty but useless piece of junk for sale.  I was exhausted.

 

 

I’ve never walked across a border before, and it took two hours to go through the 2 exit checkpoints from Egypt and the 3 checks (passport, security, and customs) in Israel.  Luckily they didn’t interrogate me this time, probably because I was with the group.  But I came to appreciate crossing borders by plane – at least it’s air conditioned!

 

So the last night of our tour was in a resort hotel in Eliat, at the northern most point of the Red Sea.  The hotel was wonderful, but I’d hit a wall after the border crossing and didn’t even leave the room for the two hours before dinner.  Afterwards, Julie and I caught the high-school play that was Obama’s first official press conference, and then fell asleep.  Although it would be nice to say I swam in the Red Sea, I was starting to get a sore throat and opted to get breakfast at 10 followed by a massage.  We drove 4 hours back to Tel Aviv, via the Desert of Zin (or Sin) where Moses and the Israelites wandered for 40 years.  When I hear or read the story, I picture a flat, solid-footed desert – like the Mojave, I suppose.  But Zin is a labyrinth of gullies straddled by 20-foot cliffs – not compatible with accurate navigation or easy traveling. 

 

That evening I left the group after our farewell dinner in Tel Aviv, as they had a midnight flight back to LA.  To commemorate my last day in Israel, I spent the next morning of 9-Nov swimming in the Med, reading the newspaper, and walking along the boardwalk.  That evening, once my plane had taken off, I felt a huge relief to be leaving Israel.  As much as I enjoyed it and obviously learned from it, the constant proximity of war, seen in the battle-scarred land, barbed fences, and high airport security (I’d had all my luggage, both checked and carry-on, searched down to opening each jar of cream) had taken its toll on me.  Frankly, I was emotionally depleted.