Did I save Ricky the Cat?

 

There is more than 50 something different kinds of snakes living in the wild here in Hong Kong and because it is so densely populated, many of these snakes cross path with humans and the pets of humans, every single day.

One of the most common snakes is the Bamboo Pit Viper. It is also one of the most venomous.

And I think we've got one in our village, hiding during the day and hunting in the night. 

So that should be fine, in the night we all sleep and it can have its peace.

Yes, all we humans sleep, but what about our village cat Ricky, he doesn't sleep and worst of all, he is kind of fearless -or is he just simply stupid.

Here is the story of that night I think I might have saved his life.

It was a Friday evening and we had been out being a wee bit social with some colleagues. As we came home and entered our village close to midnight, Ricky the village cat was there on one of the path's running through our part of the village.

Normally he would meow as loudly and as judgemental as he possible can. Something that sounds like: " Aha, there you are. Where have you been so long? My tummy is screaming for food as I haven't had any since I hysterically meowed at you this morning and frenetically meowed at the lady next door at lunch and then again as I saw her at teatime?"

But that night he didn't. 

He was not on the path we normally take to our house. He was at one a bit lover down than ours. At a certain point when we enter the village the path decides into two and one goes our way and the other down some stairs and along a stone wall to a row of houses lower down. He was just there, down the stairs and he was focuses on something on the stone wall. Not only focuses. He was like hypnotised. Like Bagheera, the black panther, from the jungle book when he meets Kaa.

He was just starring at something at the wall with huge pitch black eyes.

"I think there is a snake there and he is fixated on it. I'm afraid it is going to bite him".

And then we both saw it on the wall, hidden between the vegetation we could make outs its green body and head. The head of it was already raised and its mouth open and it was just waiting for him to come too close. He kept a distance to it. 

I moved down the stairs and got closer and could now see the snake clearly. And it wasn't happy. 

That night I was wearing long trousers and desert boots, so first I tried to see if I could scare that stupid cat away by stamping hard in the ground, but no such luck.

He was in the zone and got closer. In that moment the snake shot out at him the first time, as a kind of warning. He retreated a bit and I saw my chance to gentle kick him backwards with my boot, move after and grab him with both hands and hold him as tight as I could to my chest and jump up the stairs out of the reach of that snake. 

That moved confused and surprised a bit and and he kept still in my tight grip. The snake was swinging back and forth on the wall, then released it self from the wall and plummeted to the ground to move as fast as possible the couple of meters on the path and down into the safety of a drain, and then it was gone.

Realising that, the cat started to wrickle himself free and got out his razor sharp claws and made me feel that he wouldn't take this anymore, he wanted to get out of my arms and down and after that snake and I had to let him go. 

But the snake was gone and he was alive. 

Have been thinking of that snake ever since, and if there is some days where I do not see our village cat, I just hope that he hasn't found it again and tried his luck. 

But most of all I hope the snake has moved away and found somewhere else to live than so close to humans, because I am sure if they find it, they will not think that has the right to be there and will kill it. That I just want to avoid. 

So please mr or Mrs bamboo pit viper (or what ever you are), for your own sake, please move away from areas dominated by the human race.

And the Ricky the cat. Please leave snakes alone.

Lost in instant gratification

"Redrum, redrum, redrum.

No joy makes Jake a dull boy.

That was some of the most memorable words from Stephen Kings famous novel "The Shinning".

A young writer and his family drives all the way up to a mountain hotel to act like caretakers for a winter when the hotel is closed down.

He thinks and hopes to use the isolation for a breakthrough in his writing and his wife and young son just wants time to relax and bond.

Great expectations.

And - as we know- everything went completely bonkers.

In Sofia Coppola's film "Lost in Translation" it is a young girl who is isolated in a hotel room in Tokyo, and from there her life takes another direction than the one she and her self-important high society photographer husband could expect by their interim meeting with the Japanese metropole.

We have a long weekend -Friday, Saturday and Sunday- and are going to stay at a hotel. We are not going anywhere far and not anything fancy or exotic, really, and yet it could be. 

That's not the point, the point is that I'm mostly going to be in this hotel all on my own during the day, because my tai tai has admitted herself to a PYP course of some sort, and this has led to a three night stay at some hotel in Aberdeen. 

Not the Scottish Aberdeen 10000 miles away. No, this Aberdeen is the one just here around the next many many corners, on the south side of Hong Kong island. There I am going to fart off the rent for all three days and nights, and maybe do some writing and doodling and other things to do when nothing else is demanded. Watch football on the tellie, films, read books and wonder around.

So, that's basically it. Let us see if I'm going to do what I want the most or just do what I want now? As in "procrastination", and let us see if I am going bonkers like the good ol' Jack did it in the Shinning?

There is only one group called the Beatles!

There are five things anyone should know about.

Tractors.

Pirates.

Football.

Art.

And finally...Music.

Music comes to all of us very, very early in life.

Let's start with music.

Music selection while reading this, The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" & "Teenage Rampage".

As toddlers, I think we are sedated by the sound of some music.

When we grow older, it begins to be songs we can sing along with and music we can boogie down to. Must be that music is something basic inside of us. Something that connects us with happiness and celebration.

Later on in life, music proceeds to dominate the way we feel, live and to times the way we identify our selves. It has an impact on our taste and our aesthetics. This changes as we grow up.

What can I in actual fact remember from my own life with music.

I must think hard to remember my first recollections with music, aside from that being some Danish children's song that I could sing along with my siblings and mother. Which one it was? Big ?

Sure I could start a list with all those songs I can remember from childhood, and probably it would be fun reading for English mother tongue people, because they are all in Danish.

"Bro, bro brille"

"Der bor en bager, i Nørregade"

"Lille Peter Edderkop"

"Tre små kinesere på Højbro plads"

"Knock, knock knocking on heavens door"

OK, which one isn't from my childhood.

There wasn't really any television in my childhoods home. Not only in our house I mean. No, in the whole country there wasn't any tellie before late afternoon or early evening. Radio, yes. But not much for children. As far as I remember.

Then came this word "Beatles". Which is probably the first word I ever could say in English.

How and when it came to me? I must have heard it in some connection when our parents were talking with other adults and somehow I put it into connection with people or musicians with long hair.

At least one thing I remember was that I, without knowing any, called someone like that "a Beatles". Don't ask me where I saw him/ them or how I made it up to be a lot of them. However, then my big brother brought me down on the solid ground of circumstances.

"There is only one group called the Beatles", he said. 

"Klugscheisser", like you would say in German. Something like a "know-it-all". I will let go of the literal translation, if anyone need to know, google it.

Was this in fact the very first time the young me, did use some cognition? 

Anyway, my know-it-all brother took that moment of triumph away with a single sentence. Done for me doing cognition. Only one Beatles! Pfffui.

I believe to have listened to Beatles on the radio, but nothing that I really can remember.

What was my first ever experience with music that I can recall?

In our house we had no gramophone, no tape recorder no nothing to play music on other than a radio. So I couldn't choose what to hear. Probably wouldn't have anyway, coz I think for the most part of the day I was outside playing and digging and catching colds and swallow mosquitos or I was in the stables with the cows and pigs.

Music in childhood? No, not a lot. Well, not until my older brother and sister started school and got some "foreign" influence from the kids who lived across the fields and over the hills in the bigger congregation of houses, called a village. There they got in touch with boys and girls who's parents was things like postman, bakers, farm owners and other more specific stuff.

With that they became exposed to influences from an outside world, which until then had been completely unknown.

Still I guess I was too small to really comprehend what was going on, and because we didn't - still didn't- have anything else than a radio in the house and a television that only got fired up in the evening when us three bean sprouts were put to rest, I still was completely unaware of what in fact this "Beatle" meant.

As I started school myself, we still lived in the smallest of small hamlets. In school, when we had what was the Danish country schools version of a music lesson, we were singing from the psalm book. Nothing with fancy instruments, and the first real music instrument I'd ever seen, I guess, was an old pedal organ in one of my aunties house, and then later the piano in the little village schools hall.

Music I could hear was still the likes of my parents. I think I had started to recognise some of the Danish pop groups or "Dansk toppen" as it was called, the weekly program with the Danish top of the pops. My mother and sister liked to listen to that, and so did I then.

End of part one.

In part two:

"My brother got this fabulous tape recorder, so now we could start to record music and play it when ever we wanted...."

Nine - Eleven

What did I do on nine - eleven 2001.

I was living in eastern Germany and was working as a project manager for media culture at a media centre in the city of Dresden.

Like most other people in the world I can clearly remember what I did that day, and I a, sure that if it wasn't for those events in the US, I wouldn't have had a clue.

It was a Tuesday and I was on evening duty in the studio as we were having editorial meetings for one of our monthly culture magazines on the local television station. That means I was late out of bed and out of the house.

My girlfriend at that time had already gone to work and I been alone in ou apartment and had  plans to go to town to do some chores. I think I was going to buy some new shoes.

Back then, I did not possess a mobile telephone. Nearly no one did, so getting instant messages was not anything common. So I was out early afternoon doing my shopping and then going to the studio to for 3 pm to meet with my colleagues and a certain gentleman, who was the lecturer for a narration course, we also had running that evening.

I remember my entry into the sitting room in the studio as clear as had it been yesterday. It was the common meeting area in the studio with a big table and a little kitchen. Normally there was always a lot of laughter and talking around that table -especially on Tuesday's when the gentleman with the wonder voice and immaculate pronunciation came for the narration courses- the discussions between him and the studio leader were especially loud. 

But not that day. I sensed it right away as I'd opened the big squeaking metal door and entered the hall. There were an unnatural silence, nearly like when you enter a church during a mess.

As I came down the hallway to the main room I could hear some mumbling and as I reached the main room the voices died down and I was met with four pairs of eyes looking at me in silence. 

It was my two colleagues and the gentleman with the voice. Nothing so surprising in that. 

I looked at them and and said hello. Then the wonder voice sounded through the silence:

"Have you heard the news?" 

"Ehh, no, ehh what news?"

"They have attacked the the twin towers and New York is burning and a plane has hit the Pentagon and somewhere else, it is all burning, people are jumping out, it is a massive attack and another plane has been shot down somewhere and has crashed .."

"Pardon, what"

It all just sounded too hilarious, too unreal and because that gentleman with the voice was known as a bit of a story teller, I just reacted like he was full of tales, as usual

"Common, be real" I said.

Then my colleagues started.

"But it is real, someone has attacked New York and crashed two passenger planes into the World Trade Centre. Go to the computer and look at the news online".

Still, I was sceptical but started to feel uneasy about it all and the man with the voice went on relentlessly.

"It is the beginning of the 3 world war, it's going to escalate..."

I was already in the office in front of the huge computer screen. Opened the browser and entered an online newspaper.

After a while the news and the images started to load and come up, and I began to realise that everything they'd said, was true, and to my horror I knew that this was the day that would change the world as we'd known it forever. 

 

Not red rain, but rain raid.

This morning a huge thunderstorm was moving over the eastern part of the new territories I Hong Kong. Even it was wet, I couldn't bend my curiosity and had to lurk outside to check out the conditions in the rain.

7 words

A list of 7 words, 7 things that is important to me.

 

Yes, I know there's in fact 9 words and yet not really. It's either another term or facet of the word or the same word in another language.

How to make every thing quick and easy.

This is an amateur guide to an amateur guide.

Recommended music while reading this:

Deep Purple. Live in Japan. 

My inspiration to this post must come from the tons of YouTube video guides I've seen the recent years and which I always gets so sick and tired looking at, even before the "fabulous youtuber" has come to the point and begun to guide.

Today I'll talk about how to make an amateur guide. First of all you need to be an amateur so the guide you are going to make cannot be about anything you are good at or anything you are paid to do. If you are good at it or paid to do it, you are a professional and then it cannot be an amateur guide.

However, as you see the beginning has to be long drawn and have nothing to do with the intended guide. It should just be some utter flab doodle, which whole intent is to fill line in and sentence out with words and hereby waste as much time as possible before getting to the point. That way, it might occur to the reader that I am more important and extremely knowledgable and the subject is of a very difficult matter.

Something like this.

"And you have to remember to remind yourself when you write in your Evernote todo list, that you must drink water,  a lot of water. Did you know that our body consists of 90 something % of water? Because of that it is important for you to keep drinking all day, other wise you could suffer from dehydration."

Getting a good start here, however, the amateur guide has to be amateurish, so do not start with anything that is interesting. That will just get the attention of your reader and they could expect real content coming up next. 

So to avoid that, tell about your last holiday.

And show pictures of food and smiling children I front of mountains and landmarks.

If your guide is a video, now would be the point where you could start to include a screen recording to illustrate how to begin making a guide.

Don't ever stop that screen recording. Even if you don't know where to press or what to show. And even if you do not know what to say.

In an amateurish guide to an amateur guide, it is important to see and hear how you are fumbling around to find the next tool or some other colour setting for the screen, while you mumble something like: "Basically, all you need to do is to click here and drag this one out there and then squeeze a bit here, then we should see..." 

And here you must stop talking -but still leave the recording run- for the audience to see your arrow or mouse or what ever is navigating the screen on its way to every single of all drag down menus or apps, while opening applications and random Windows without the slightest connection to the subject.

Remember to maintain calmness and try to add some vocabulary that is not completely head on, but yet not the opposite. Confuse the audience with your words. Let them think that this is just too complicated and that the terminology used goes way over their heads.

That way you can be sure to have their attention. Because no one want to admit that anything goes way over their head and did not get any of what's just been said. That makes people feel dumb, no one wants to feel like that. But because no one wants to admit that things got just too complicated and hereby admit being stupid, people tend to ignore they didn't fathom any of it. Instead they just nod and keep quiet, that way they think they show they are with you all the way.

Make sure your guide do not have a real purpose. 

Well initially not,a little something that could make sense is OK. Oh yeah and by the way. The title has to be attractive, like something we all want. 

That's it.

Smoke on the water.

Tsim Sha Tsui in Abendlicht

 

Quitting

"If you have been so low down as nearly anyone can and that because of alcohol, then you have to ask yourself if you can live with that being who you have become!"

I think it was me who said it like that.

He asked why I don't drink any alcohol anymore?

So I just told it how it happened that I took that decisions to is a bit over one year now. In that your I've had one wee snaps in Macao and 3 limoncello so and one small glass of red wine. Yes, that's it.

What has changed?

First of all a higher sense of wellbeing and certainly more positive and also enthusiastic. I read someone else's reflection about two years without alcohol where he used the phrase: "not hating himself anymore". 

Maybe I can put my name under that as well. 

Like in hating oneself when you wake up late in the afternoon and your head feels like at the climax of a Brazilian carnival, and you conscience are gasping after clarification as to what happened last night and how did I get home and in bed?

A recipe for low self esteem.

Yes, I feel more confident about myself without the drink. I do accomplish more as I have more time to create. Do not feel so restless and longing to go and hang out at a bar somewhere to talk mans talk over a sneaky pint or 8 -clearly ending up talking shite- and do not feel that alcohol will me relax. 

It did make me relax. So much that the last night I had too much alcohol, I got so relaxed that I fell asleep somewhere in central district in Hong Kong. Asleep, is the nice way to put it. The correct term would be that I passed out. 

Not to mention what it does to your pocket, as in savings. Not that I really have counted it like that. I just know it as the coins last longer and the visit to the hole in the wall has become less frequent.

On holiday it is obvious. No lunch pint or two. No afternoon pint or three and nothing in the evening and into the night or early morning.

Now the early morning is a fresh head and positive energy. Some mornings even involves exercise now or creative time like writing or developing ideas for my work.

This could be a hard one to reveal or even fully accept, however, I feel that I have become more happy with my job and also better at it because it gets the whole concentration of what I am and can offer. 

Now that I'm not just counting down to Friday socials and cold beers.

And Saturday socials and cold expensive beers while watching football on small screens next to other bragging beer drinkers. Like the one I had become.

Now I feel sorry to think that I didn't really give a damn how my colleagues saw me. At socials I was mostly one of the last to leave, but for sure I wasn't the most sober. In fact I was never one of the most sober. Regrettably, I was rather the opposite.

Once at a Christmas party i'd been to a bar before the party and had some margaritas. Then I had wine at the party, a lot and can very faintly remember we all left for a music venue. 

Then a black hole. Some walking around in Wan Chai. A closed door to the MTR home. Some arguments with a taxi driver as I'd lost all my money. Somehow I got home very late -or early- and past out on the toilet. My poor wife had to get me to bed from there.

When I got to myself later in the day, I had to face a banging hangover and a life without my phone, which I had lost somehow somewhere.

Unfortunately this episode wasn't enough to get me to realise that I had to revise my own relation to alcohol, to give it a serious thought and probably better quit.

Still I thought I was in control and that a thing like that happens. 

And it does, if you let it.

Not only to me in the real world. And I if Harry Hole can manage, why shouldn't I?

One of my favourite fiction writers has this story about a policeman, Harry Hole. He also is a drinker. In the series of books he often excesses into the blurred delusional world of alcohol, when he gets frustrated with a case he is working on. I remember me being a bit annoyed with him when he time and time again, disappeared into the black whole of binge drinking. Then he quits, and begins his fight against the temptation. And I have always been so engaged as he fought temptations that I nearly clapped in my hands when he resisted. Why didn't I do that to myself when I went out.

Another inspiration was a young musician in Scotland in the summer of 2015. He was on stage at a music festival in a little town at the seaside and in between two music pieces he and his musical partner had a little dialog about drink and this guy just calmly and extremely confident stated that he hadn't had a drink for two years.

No drink for two years! Imagine that being stated in a wee town in Scotland. I found it very strong. But didn't think I would do that. (I probably didn't believe that I could). The entire room kinda went silent for some seconds, like anyone had that same thought. Like " probably I should do that too, but how?" That was one of those magic moments that happens sometimes in life where one statement just throws the a whole crowd of the rail.

Now I'm kind of half the way to that. And what's the verdict then?

After one year without drink, I am starting to believe I can realise some of the ideas I've had inside me for a long, long time. Ideas that has been pushed into a waiting position and categorised as : "I'll do that when I get the time". 

Probably it should have been : "I'll do that when I'm no longer at the pub".

What it was that finally made me do it?

A complete black out and more than 8 hours of memory loss. Was what finally put me over the edge of realisation. 8 hours in the darkest dungeons and nights in Hong Kong's Wan Chai and Central districts and I have not the slightest idea what I'd done and how I got to that place where I woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning. A hard awakening. As I woke up I was immediately aware of what devastating circumstances I'd brought my self into as someone had stolen my backpack that I had been stupid enough to bring on a night out.

And with that backpack, all my documents. ALL MY DOCUMENTS. Passport, Hong Kong ID card, bank card, keycard to my workplace, my phone, my iPod classic, an iPad and my reading glasses. Plus my sweaty and smelly sports clothes. Ha ha.

Everything- gone.

That was what I'd become. A black out middle aged out of his head drunk gweilo.

No way.