Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The gweilos at the Temple

1.  From David Johns, retired professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong

I almost forgot to mention Ron and Veronica Clibborn-Dyer who lived in a temple in the New Territories. (Veronica sold her tea set to you if I remember correctly.) On one of their hikes in the NT they came across a temple with a notice posted on the gate requesting interested parties to apply to live and restore the temple. Ron who was fluent in Cantonese contacted the number and discovered a Chinese expat living in the UK who came back to assist in trying to get someone to live in the temple. There were ancestral bones in large earthenware jars stored for the return of loved ones to pay tribute each year so there weren’t too many takers to live nearby. Anyhow, Ron and Veronica expressed an interest and to this man’s surprise took on the job. 

The temple had been deserted for years and there was an enormous amount of work to be done to make it habitable. Over the years they did quite a lot of cleaning up but it was in no way a place where you or I would want to call home. They expanded their independent living by keeping goats, chicken and anything that would produce something useful for their consumption. When we visited we were in awe of their Spartan lifestyle but they seem to enjoy being away from the madding crowds of HK. 

What was most fascinating being their stories of intruders interested in their livestock. In particular, the appearance of some very large pythons who would regularly devour the odd chicken or on one occasion a goat! Literally opened up its throat and swallowed a goat. According to Veronica she caught the snake in the process of devouring the goat and retrieved the goat before it managed to get the horns past the point of no return. Not sure what the reptile thought of that but she assured us that the python was not aggressive but they always knew when a python had paid a visit as the hens went very quiet presumably mourning the loss of a friend or relative. Once discovered hiding in the chicken shed Ron and Veronica and their helper would bag the snake and record the markings under its chin and return it to the surrounding bush. We imagined that they gave names to the pythons all beginning with the letter “P" and accepted that the word got around among Peter, Penelope and Philippa that they could always rely on a good meal at the temple. 

2.  From Ian Wilson, retired professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong

I read the message by David Johns on the nunnery and Ron and Veronica. We were friends almost from when we arrived at CUHK in 1990. We left in the Summer of 2002 when Ron was in the last stages of his cancer. I was one of the volunteers clearing the grounds and making the roof almost leak tight (Veronica never unpacked her boxes). Ron was an expert in the local Gods and the history of the local villages, looked after the bone shed and restored the waterways round the nunnery. We spent many a happy evening sitting in a pool he made by damming the stream sipping beer or on their balcony with wonderful views of the villages below, Tolo Harbour, the border hills, and Egret Island. We were there when the annual ant flight took place and I asked why he had not closed the windows, he told me that was because they were coming out from the inside. As a retired policeman he could not kill the protected pythons that fed on his stock, he took them away as far as he could and released them. We always thought there were python signposts guiding them back. Ron was also a keen gardener and was very proud of his lovely flowering ginger plants, bougainvillea, roses, etc.

It is great that he is remembered, a wonderful man.

 

3.  From the South China Morning Post

https://www.scmp.com/article/319779/keepers-temple-flame

Very interesting article from 2000.

 

4.  From the Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong

 

Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 2018. Recent Activities Visit to the Wan Jing Jai Temple (蘊貞齋) & Garden of Veronica Clibborn-Dyer Written by Helen Tinsley

On this cool and cloudy Saturday, Hong Kong’s urban areas, including nearby Fanling MTR station, were full of hustle and bustle in preparation for the coming New Year Festival holiday period leading up to the Chinese New Year of the Dog. However, about 30 RAS members and guests chose to take this special chance to accept Veronica Clibborn-Dyer’s generous invitation and visit her beautiful temple based home and extensive gardens. These are situated in a quiet and peaceful New Territories setting, overlooking Starling Inlet (沙頭角海) and the start of the Wilson Trail, in the north east corner of Hong Kong not far from the border with mainland PRC. For most of us this was a first visit.

Veronica Clibborn-Dyer

After some interesting car and taxi rides followed by a short walk along a path to reach our secluded destination, Veronica welcomed us warmly, with steaming mulled wine and open wood fire braziers in the courtyard. She then introduced us to the temple buildings (Kwun Yam (觀音) and Shing Wong (城隍) their gods and altars, and surrounding terraced gardens --with their history, along with the fascinating story of how she and husband, former policeman Ron, came to live there after 1996, initially with a menagerie of animals and birds. For years in the past the place had been used as a refuge- with very basic facilities- for retired amahs, once their working lives were over. Some of the Chinese character signage reflects this role. Wan Jing Jai ( 蘊貞齋 ) here ‘Wan’ means to gather/store/collect/accumulate/save/amass, ‘Jing’ means chastity, and ‘Jai’ means temple/ hall/ vegetarianism/ Buddhism. So putting them together, it literally means Gathered Chastity Temple.

After Ron passed away a few years ago, Veronica chose to stay on as custodian and continues to enhance this beautiful setting with help from her local gardener—truly a place of wonderful peace and tranquility. With some vivid story-telling and videos Veronica guided us around the buildings, before we enjoyed an informal but magnificent and delicious buffet curry lunch, catered by Shaffi’s of Yuen Long.


5.  Postscript

Ron Clibborn-Dyer retired as a senior superintendent of police and passed away in 2009. 

And my link to all this? The Clibborn-Dyer’s donated a lovely Noritake tea set to the Chinese University Women’s Organization’s annual auction, and I bought it. When I retired from Hong Kong, the tea set first traveled to Sri Lanka and then to my son’s home in the USA.




[1] Gweilo - Cantonese term for westerners

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Six years in the Heart of Dixie Part II

In 1989, while finishing graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, I accepted a teaching job in Alabama, where license plates proudly proclaim it’s the “Heart of Dixie”. Dixie is the nickname for the eleven Southern states that formed the Confederate States of America, which fought and lost the Civil War with the Northern Union states. These Southern states have a terrible legacy in terms of slavery, the KKK, and the murderous treatment of black people. These areas are also notoriously backward in terms of literacy, standard of education, and healthcare. 

Not all my friends in Austin were pleased with my move to Alabama. One, a liberal woman from New York, said that she would “not stop to change a flat tire in Alabama”. I was aware of the legacy of the deep South, but most universities are open minded communities, and English departments oases of liberalism, so I didn’t anticipate much prejudice. The job market was tight, and, as a foreigner, I felt fortunate to find a job.

The University of South Alabama in Mobile is a comprehensive university, with medical and engineering faculties, in addition to arts, sciences, business, education, computer science, nursing and social sciences. In 1989, the enrollment was about 12,000 students.


The English Department was, in every sense, traditional, dominated by White males and gracious Southern ladies, all of them White except for one Black female professor.
James Dorrill, the chairperson, was a Jesuit priest and a Harvard man. To their credit, they hired me - the first from Asia (and the face, skin color, and accent not matching the name) - to teach English to Americans.

Mobile, Alabama

The city of Mobile was the epitome of a conservative, Southern city. During the Civil War, it was one of the last Confederate cities to surrender to the Union Army. Mobile port, used to ship cotton from large, slave-holding plantations during antebellum (pre- Civil War) times, became a leading dockyard during the two World Wars, two hundred ships having been built during World War II. When I arrived, the port had seen better times, although cruise ships would occasionally dock, and timber and coal had replaced “king cotton” as the main export.

Vestiges of Mobile’s halcyon days remained in the downtown area, dominated by the Greco-Roman style Catholic cathedral.  Gracious Southern homes, with their open verandas, large casement windows with wooden slats, tall Grecian pillars, and the weathered brick walls gave the area a 19th century appearance. Streets lined with old oak trees that met in the middle enhanced this ambience. Some houses, in the Queen Anne style, had elaborately decorated exteriors. The gardens were full of flowering shrubs, shaded by magnolia, weeping willow, and ancient oak trees hung with moss. What these homes evoked was a leisurely lifestyle – iced tea, mint juleps - and old money. Uniformly, all these houses were occupied by whites.




Not far off, but in a world apart, lived the poorest Blacks. Their wooden houses - mainly of the one-room shotgun style - were near collapse due to neglect, and I wondered how people managed to live there. A scattering of discarded furniture, rusty appliances like refrigerators, and even vehicles raised on cinder blocks, filled the weedy yards. People sat on their porches, staring at the road, or hung around aimlessly, apparently with nothing much to do. A supermarket or even a 711 was nowhere in sight.

Two roads lead away from the downtown area, westward. One was Old Shell Road, where the houses and vegetation resembled the downtown area. Spring Hill College, an old liberal arts university, was on this road. It even owned an 18-hole golf course. The newer parts of Mobile were along Airport Boulevard, which ran parallel to Old Shell Road and was the main thoroughfare. Here, Mobile resembled a typical American mid-sized city, with a few department stores and numerous strip malls, McDonalds, Burger Kings, and other fast food outlets. Typically, affluent subdivisions, housing spacious, stately homes, were set far back from the road. The less affluent houses - flat, single storied, ranch homes - lined the roads. Apartment complexes catering to tenants of various income levels were scattered throughout the city. The most prominent tree was pine, not of the coniferous Christmas-tree variety, but unattractive, with thin, long needles. These pines grew along the roads and alongside the houses. Fallen pine needles and cones smothered the grass.

Mobile’s population was about 200,000. Religion triumphed over everything: more than 200 churches, mainly Baptist, served the community. Catholic churches were also numerous. Typical of conservative societies, rich people and businesses paid low taxes, and the result was the erosion of funding for public education and health services. For lack of permanent classrooms, some classes met in converted mobile homes. This problem was often discussed on TV and in the newspaper, but no solution was in sight.

Air pollution was high. A number of paper factories operated nearby, and when the wind blew towards Mobile, a foul odor of sulphur dioxide enveloped the city. I would get up some mornings to this odor and a thin sheen of polluted mist, which might last till midday.

Teaching

I taught writing, what Americans termed rhetoric and composition, both at the freshman (first year) and senior (fourth year) levels. In addition to Americans, the freshmen classes had international students coming from a range of countries in South and Central America, Asia, and Europe, the latter mainly from former Soviet republics. As a result, in terms of accents, varieties of English spoken, and cultural features, my classes resembled a mini-United Nations. I found this delightful. In a class of 25, I could have students speaking 15 different languages.

At the more advanced class, the students came mainly from engineering and computer science. Many students were older adults, either returning to university after taking years off for full-time work, or starting university after raising a family. I had interesting conversations with some of them – about their jobs, their struggles to meet tuition payments, growing up in the South, pros and cons of American cars - and gleaned much about American life. One topic never touched upon was race relations.

My classes were taught in a computer lab, for which I had raised funds. For some students, this was their first use of a computer. Teaching composition is my forte, and I received positive evaluations from most of my students. American students could be blunt and confrontational at times, but, despite my “foreignness”, I never heard a racial slur in or out of class, or read a racist comment in the anonymous end-of-term evaluations that students provided.

Among my colleagues in the English Department, my favorite was Patricia Stephens, not the typical Southern belle by a long shot. Pat, who taught American literature, had a smoker’s rough voice, and a no-nonsense, direct manner. She had attended college in Memphis when Elvis Presley was performing at the clubs there. I introduced Pat to V.S. Naipaul, and she told me his travelogue “A turn in the South” was the best book about the South that she had read. Later, we team taught a graduate course titled “Rushdie and Naipaul”.

 


My wife and I also had a close friendship with Prof. Dorrill (we called him Father Dorrill), the Chair of the English department. Once in a while, we invited him home for a Sri Lankan meal, which he enjoyed. We kept in touch over the years, and, in 2016, I returned to Mobile to see him when Father became feeble after his health deteriorated.

 Race relations

Since arriving in the United States in 1984 for graduate studies, I had lived in Washington DC, Philadelphia (for one semester) and Austin, Texas. In Washington DC and Austin, I had met Black students and professionals, studying or working confidently alongside Whites and apparently being treated equally. In Philadelphia, where the University of Pennsylvania was in the downtown area, I often saw down and out Blacks, some homeless and others perhaps addicted to alcohol or drugs. Raggedly dressed, trundling a shopping cart that held all their belongings, they would sometimes wander around campus, and even walk disruptively into lecture halls. In Alabama, a state where Blacks people had been persecuted since the days of slavery, and where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle for civil rights that had been met with violence, I did not expect to observe smooth relations between the Blacks and Whites.

So, I was surprised to observe the two main races getting along without any visible friction. Black professionals appeared to be respected - we had Black professors and even my doctor was one – and a few could be seen managing department stores and other businesses. But, on Sunday mornings, when everyone attended church, the racial division became clear. Most Blacks  people attended their churches, while the whites went to theirs. Although a few Black folks attended church alongside the whites, I could not imagine a white person in a Black church.

From my readings and observations, I gradually began to realize how matters stood. As long as the Blacks knew their place, and stayed there, the society could be harmonious and functional. When these invisible boundaries were crossed, trouble could erupt.

In this milieu, how could my family define ourselves? We were clearly not white, and had no Black roots either. The term Asian was for Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Koreans. My wife Fawzia had a Muslim name, but hardly anyone realized that. Americans are notoriously ignorant of world geography. When asked, I told them that Sri Lanka was the little island below India. But, how many of them could even point to India on a world map?

Fawzia worked for a while as a librarian at Spring Hill College. Not once did Fawzia or I face any type of racial discrimination in Mobile. But, when our son was attending high school there, a clash broke out between students from the two races, which turned into a minor riot. When we went to pick our son up, the area was surrounded by police cars and armed policemen.

Two incidents provide evidence of the acute racial discrimination that had existed in Mobile before my time. In 1958, Jimmy Wilson, a Black handyman, had been condemned to death for stealing $1.95 (yes, less than two dollars) from a white woman. The jury may have been influenced by the woman's testimony that Wilson had spoken to her in a disrespectful tone. (Fortunately, due to an international outcry, including a plea from the Pope, Wilson's sentence was commuted). Second, the last recorded lynching in the USA had occurred in Mobile in 1981. A young man was killed elsewhere, but brought to Mobile and hung from a tree. During my 2016 visit, I was shown the tree.

After six years in Mobile, in preparation for a move to Hong Kong, I had advertised my house and car for sale. One day, a Black family came to see the car and later came into my house to discuss the deal. After they left, my neighbor, a middle-aged White woman, rushed in, saying “I hope you are not selling the house to them”. She didn’t mind Sri Lankans, but didn’t want any Blacks in the neighborhood.

Coping with the siege on our planet

 A few weeks ago, 470 pilot whales beached themselves in Tasmania. Although this phenomenon has been observed for years, no valid explanation has been offered, but the depletion of fish stocks, noise made by ships, rise in water temperature - all caused by humans - are suspect.  

Humans have been killing whales for centuries. According to The New Yorker magazine, traditional whale hunting was for subsistence, using whale body parts for food, shelter, and amulets. But, in the sixteenth century, Basque whalers changed whale hunting into a trade with the use of harpoons. Using larger ships, they killed more than 40,000 whales near the Atlantic coast of Canada between 1530 and 1610.

By the late 18th century, the Dutch, the Danes, the British, and the Americans had joined in. First taken for food, whales were later hunted for their oil. In the 19th century, about 230,000 sperm whales were killed. Male sperm whales grow to 70 feet in length, and, in the 20th century, the slaughter of these magnificent mammals exceeded 700,000. The total number of whales killed from various species was nearly three million. Miraculously, they escaped extinction. 

Now, let’s turn to the humble pangolin. They are elusive creatures. When one was found in Pannala, NWP (in Sri Lanka), recently, it made the news. Pangolins are hunted for meat, for their scales (for use in traditional Chinese medicine), and for their skins. At one time, about 150,000 pangolins were killed in China each month for their meat and scales till they became nearly extinct in the mid-1990s. From 1975 to 2000, about 613,000 pangolins skins, mainly from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, were traded legally in the international market.


As for pangolin scales, between 1994 and 2000, about nineteen tons of scales (amounting to 47,000 pangolins) were exported from Malaysia alone. When Asian pangolin numbers declined, African pangolins became the target. Just one seizure of scales in the Cameroons weighed more than five tons. In April 2019, Singapore seized two shipments of pangolin scales, of 14.2 tons and 14-tons, both from Nigeria, from an estimated 72,000 pangolins. In fact, the scales have no medicinal value, consisting of keratin, the same substance as in hair and nails.

I have gone from whales to pangolins, but, for the sake of brevity, will not describe the devastation humans have caused to fellow creatures. Suffice to state that the UN estimates 1,000,000 species are threatened with extinction. Please see https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/

Turning to vegetation, the Amazon forest, the world’s largest, is losing more than 150 acres every minute, and 78 million acres every year. Fires are also burning there as I write. Brazil is also home to the world’s largest wetlands, the Pantanal, which is on fire. So far, more than 25,000 sq. km. have been destroyed. Meanwhile on the West coast of the United States, unprecedented fires have devastated more than 4 million acres of forest, which included precious Redwood trees. Closer home, in Indonesia, an estimated 2.4 million acres of rainforest is cleared and lost every year.

Watching a forest burn or another majestic tree falling before a bulldozer on TV is becoming stressful for people like me. Rage, helplessness and utter despair come in waves, enough to make one physically ill. The mantra for many years has been “Think globally, act locally”, but thinking globally has its costs.  

Jane Goodall, the well-known primatologist and anthropologist, perhaps has the answer. She said "People say think globally, act locally. Well, if you think globally, it is overwhelming and you do not have enough energy left to act locally. Just act locally and see what a difference you can make!"




 


"Kai Tak Heart Attack"

 In the mid-1990s, when I began to play casual cricket in Hong Kong, some games were at Mission Road grounds, in Kowloon. Cricket was a low priority sport, so football was also played there, and the grass was somewhat patchy. Kowloon is a crowded part of Hong Kong, and we could see mid-rise buildings and a multi-storied public school nearby.

Chinese U cricketers with supporters at Mission Road, 1996

Cricket at Mission Road was dramatic, but not due to the prowess on the field. The ground was right beneath the flight path to Kai Tak airport, only about two nautical miles away. Kai Tak was one of the busiest airports in the world, and jets landed every five minutes or so. And some of them flew over Mission Road.

A thundering noise of a low flying aircraft would signal another approaching flight, and a great shadow would glide across the field as a giant 747 flew past. The noise drowned everything, and perhaps only the batsmen, the bowler, and the wicketkeeper (not even the umpires) kept their eyes on the ball. I, for one, in the outfields, couldn’t help but gaze upward, trying to identify the airline: Cathay Pacific, United, Northwest, JAL, ANA, Korean, Malaysian, Thai, Singapore, Qantas, British Airways, Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, Air Lanka - all flew past. This process - the ear-splitting roar, the massive, gliding shadow – was repeated over and over again during a game.

 

Even more dramatically, as I watched, the aircraft would bank sharply to the right just as it passed the grounds, and disappear from sight. I read that a checkerboard painted on a hill just past the grounds was the sign for a plane to make that sharp, 47 degrees right turn, while descending from 600 to 150 feet, so that it could line-up and level off for landing at Kai Tak’s only runway. All this had to be done within a few seconds, manually, because the maneuver wasn’t possible on auto-pilot. If you turned too late, the aircraft would plough into a hill. They said the ride would “give a Valkyrie the heebie-jeebies”. No wonder pilots nicknamed the descent “Kai Tak Heart attack”!

As I began to travel in and out of Kai Tak, I learned a little secret: the most dramatic views of the landing were from the economy class, in a seat above the right wing. When I did manage to get the right seat, the experience was beyond belief.


As the aircraft descended rapidly over busy Victoria Harbor, skimming over ships and ferries, then onto the crowded Kowloon side, over a vast cemetery, almost touching high-rise rooftops, a speck of greenery here and there, the engines reviving up and reviving down, and the sound of landing gear being lowered. The runway was not yet in sight, but I knew we had just passed Mission Road grounds because the plane made the sharp right turn, and lined-up for landing through a canyon of housing blocks. I could see the residents going about their lives - cooking, sitting down for meals, watching TV - quite nonchalantly, as if unware of the gigantic flying object passing by their windows. Would the wings snag the drying laundry – T shirts, pants, underwear - from the balconies? Would the plane spotters on the flat roofs be dragged along? As the plane came to a stop, spontaneous applause might break out in the cabin. A mixture of exhilaration and relief.


Beloved Kai Tak shut down on July 6, 1998. A little bit of Hong Kong’s magic died with it. And cricket at Mission Road was never the same again.

 

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Viva Kamala Devi Harris

 I was going through a supermarket checkout in Alabama when the cheerful cashier, a young Black woman, and I got into a conversation. Noticing that her name tag said CHANDRA, I asked her if she knew what it meant. She didn’t. When I told her it meant “moon”, her face lit up with joy. “I can’t wait to get home to tell my parents”, she said.

Years later, when I heard of Kamala Harris the Senator, I wondered at her first name, knowing she was Black. Did her parents name her Kamala because they liked how it sounded? Was this another case of “Chandra”? But I came to know that Senator Harris’ mother was an Indian from Madras, and that explained Kamala.

But I did wonder why Harris did not talk about her Indian origins. Obviously, the Black aspect more attractive to voters than the Indian heritage. But, now that she is the Democratic Parties’ nominee for the Vice Presidency, her Indian heritage has received wider publicity and is certainly an asset.

Indian Americans are a formidable ethnic group in the USA. More than four million in number, they have the highest median household income, US$119,858, in the country. (For Whites, it’s $65,902.) Indian CEOs lead formidable companies: Shantanu Narayen, Adobe; Sundar Pichai, Alphabet, the parent company of Google; Satya Narayana Nadella, Microsoft; Rajeev Suri, Nokia; Punit Renjen, Deloitte; Vasant Narasimhan, Novartis; Ajaypal Singh Banga, Mastercard; and Ivan Manuel Menezes, Diageo, just to name a few. The entire list is longer. According to the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, 221,000 doctors of Indian origin are in the USA.

These Indians are, literally and metaphorically, a gold mountain. Within two days of Harris being named the VP nominee, $23 million in donations flowed into the Democratic Party campaign, although how much came from the Indian American community is not known.

Shayamalan Gopalan, Harris’ mother, left Madras at the age of 19 to study in the USA, and, after obtaining her PhD, became a cancer researcher. Harris’ sister, Maya, a prominent lawyer (she became Dean of a law school at 29), was Harris’ campaign manager in 2020.


My life has been entwined with Americana since my father bought a subscription to the Reader’s Digest when I was only 11. In those days, the USA was a beacon for the free world. Personally, my graduate studies were in the USA, at no cost to me, and my career took off there. I want the USA to do well. The debacles in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the racial inequalities, the rabid partisanships, the disrespect for science, and government incompetence has made the USA a far cry from the country I first saw in 1984. Most hurtful has been its fall from leadership among nations. So, I am glad that the Biden-Harris partnership offers hope for a much needed change.

Sri Lanka also has a prominent link to Harris. Rohini Lakshmi Kosoglu, of Sri Lankan origin, was Senator Harris’ Chief of Staff during her campaign for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination.

Interesting times ahead, indeed!

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Furano - for lavender and melons


Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island, is a flat, sprawling city, surrounded by low hills. The downtown area, with classy department stores, high end dining, and tree lined boulevards, is lovely. But the outskirts are not attractive: mile after mile of car dealerships, used car lots, and pachinko (gambling) parlors.

Beyond the city, Hokkaido’s countryside is breathtaking. Forests, rolling hills, farms, salmon streams, fast flowing rivers, crystal clear lakes. The forests are rich in bear, deer, foxes, and smaller creatures. The beaches are clean, and although too cold for bathing most of the year, are deserted and ideal for beach combing. The surrounding seas supply plentiful fish and crustaceans, which the Japanese love to eat raw, steamed or grilled.

We were hunkered down in Sapporo for months, first by winter and then by Covid-19, and were impatient to travel. Infection numbers were down, our Covid fatigue needed a cure, and Furano was the obvious choice. I had been there three years ago and loved the place.

Hokkaido’s economy depends on farming, fisheries, and forestry, but Furano is best known for its lavender fields and melons. The flatness of the terrain is, in a mountainous island, quite astonishing. The hills can be seen all round in the far distance, but what lies in between is farm after farm, in near-perfect rectangles, swathes of gold (ripening wheat) and shades of green - rice, corn and onions. In between are the numerous greenhouses for the precious melon. Copses of trees dot the landscape. Irrigation channels spread the water from mountain streams throughout the agricultural fields.



Hokkaido agriculture was developed under American guidance, so the farm houses, the barns, and the silos have a distinctly American appearance.  But, these are not humongous farms like in the USA, but much smaller ones, the farmer and his family living on site, in houses that add much color to the landscape. In Japan, every aspect of farming – tilling, planting, weeding, spraying, harvesting – is mechanized, from two-wheeled tractors to tankers with extended arms that spray water onto the onion fields.



The Bed & Breakfast was in the midst of an onion field. During my walks, I saw fields basking in the glorious summer sunshine and the farmers going about their work diligently. The Japanese value aesthetics highly, and this extends to the farms, which are kept in near perfect order, to blend easily with the landscape and the neighboring farms. The irrigation ditches are cleared of sludge, and the crystal clear water flows smoothly. I read that water distribution is harmonious and well regulated.

Furano is most famous for its lavender fields, which, on our last visit, were packed with tourists. This time, with the airport closed for international flights, only Japanese visitors were around. To enjoy them the most, one must spend time with the lavender, strolling among the fields, inhaling the scent deeply, or sit at a nearby bench and simply gaze, while butterflies flutter and bees go about their work.  A cone of Japan’s heavenly soft-serve ice cream, lavender flavored, of course, in hand, adds to a sense of calm that is precious during these troubled times.



Lavender is big business. Mainly used in the manufacture of perfume, lavender has also been applied to a mind boggling number of products, ranging from sachets of potpourri, to oil, soap, candles, pillows, hand cream, and tea. Lavender flavored ice cream and wine are also big hits. 

One evening, we had dinner at an izakaya, a type of small neighborhood pub/eatery popular in Japan. Usually run by a husband and wife couple, or a chef and an assistant or two, they have a vast range of dishes on the meu, and a loyal clientele. One pushes the sliding door to a side, parts the half curtain to peer and step-in, to be greeted with "irasshaimase" meaning "welcome, please come in". Robata, the izakaya in Furano where we ate, is a tiny, quirky place, where the chef owner is assisted by a younger man. A weird collection of artifacts hangs from the ceiling, and all around are bottles of liquor, masks from Noh drama, endless menu items with price tags, and coolers. Only the square seating area is in any order, chopsticks balanced on tiny, colorful plates, all social distanced. Traditional Japanese music (high pitched wailing, usually), sounds in the background. Everything is covered in a sheen of dust, but who cares: we came to eat and drink.



Upon being seated, wet towels are passed around, and small bowls of edamame (boiled soybeans in the pod) served. We take our time over ordering, because the meus are many and varied, but eventually go with the chef’s recommendations – cold draft beer, sashimi, cold tofu, grilled fish, and yakitori (grilled chicken on skewers). Izakayas are boisterous places, but tonight the mood is somber, Covid being not far from everyone’s mind. The chef keeps on a bantering with the customers (the only gaijin (foreigner), me, being a point of interest), soft cries of “kanpai” (cheers) are heard, and we savor the warm ambience. The bill is not itemized, instead rounded to the nearest thousand. We step out to a cool evening, the bright lanterns leading the way magically down a narrow lane.


Another day, away from Furano, we come across an old soba place in a rustic area. Soba is buckwheat noodle, served in a warm broth in winter and cold in summer, usually with tempura - vegetables, fish or meat battered and deep fried. Cold soba and vegetable tempura are among my favorite Japanese dishes. While waiting our turn to get in, another customer told us that the restaurant, Onada Soba, was the setting for a popular TV drama series in the early 1980s named “North Country”. When we entered, I wondered if anything had changed since then. The walls had hundreds, if not thousands, of business cards and boarding card stubs left by fans from all over Japan and elsewhere, some going back nearly 40 years. A coat of dust covered everything. An elderly man did all the cooking, helped by his wife who waited and washed up. The menu had only four items, and we ordered cold soba with onion tempura, and the waitress told us that two servings of tempura, not three, would be enough. When the meal arrived, I saw why. The tempura was a generous portion, fried to a golden sheen. With a generous serving of green tea, I enjoyed perhaps the best soba meal.



Now for the melons. The Japanese are fond of water melon, cantaloupes, and honey dew. Furano cantaloupes are highly prized, and are given as gifts. I’ve seen melons priced at US$50, but we didn’t have to pay that much for the sweetest melons. We gave one to our neighbor back in Sapporo, and, with a sparkle in her eyes, she ran to place it on her late husband’s alter before consuming it later.
We returned from Furano relaxed and rejuvenated, longing to go back in a few weeks. But, Covid had resurged in Japan, so we’ll have to wait.



Sunday, July 19, 2020

Trinity College, Kandy, Jokes


Mistaken Identity

A prominent politician, who was the MP for Kandy in the good old days, had three sons at Trinity.  Two were twins.  As was his custom, the feared vice-principal and disciplinarian Mr. Sahayam was doing his rounds of the school when he spotted one of the twins standing outside the classroom.  Upon enquiry it was revealed that he was thrown out of the class for being a disturbance.  Mr. Sahayam sent the boy back into class asking the latter to see him at 3.05pm at his office when school closed for the day.  

3.05pm - Sahayam had forgotten about the matter.

3.15pm - Looking outside from his window at the end of school, Sahayam sees the culprit scooting away.  He immediately shouts and gets him into the office, and the usual 3 cuts follow.  

Just as he finished, a knock on the door and in walks the other twin, the real culprit! 

The first one did not know why he was caned till then (one never questioned Sahayam).  The second was not let off - he was given 6 cuts, 3 being the punishment for the disturbance and the other 3 because it would be profoundly unfair that he should receive just the same number of cuts as the innocent one! 

An unforgettable leaving certificate
One troublemaker was regularly sent by the class teacher to the vice principal’s office for punishment, and whenever he turned up, the 3 cuts were perfunctory. One day, the troublemaker turns up as usual at the office. Without a word, Sahayam rises from his seat, approaches with the cane, asks the subject to bend down, and metes out the usual punishment. Sahayam returns to his desk, only to see the boy still loitering in the office. “Why are you still here?” Sahayam asks, only to be told that the boy had already left school some time ago, and had only called to collect his leaving certificate!

The missing full-back
The Trinity rugby side had gone down to Colombo by train to play Zahira. Bob Harvey is doing the commentary on Radio Ceylon when Abdul Majeed of Zahira picks up the ball and speeds all the way down the flank to touch down for a magnificent try.
The returning Trinity team is disembarking at the Kandy railway station where the Trinity full-back is met by his father, who sternly inquires where the son had been when he was supposed to be playing rugby in Colombo. "What do you mean?" retorts the surprised full back, "I was doing exactly that". "Stop talking rubbish" says the irate father in choice Sinhalese, "even Bob Harvey was saying when Majeed scored that try, ‘Where is the Trinity full-back? He is nowhere to be seen!’”.

(from various sources)



Thursday, July 2, 2020

Six years in the Heart of Dixie


Six Years in the “Heart of Dixie” – Part I
In 1988, when I was a year from finishing my doctoral studies at the University of Texas at Austin, I had arrived at a crossroad. Fawzia and Roy had joined me only the previous year, and Fawzia was working towards a second bachelor’s degree while Roy was  in high school. If we stayed on in the USA, Fawzia could go on for a master’s and Roy could enter university. But, in the back of my mind, I also thought of returning to Sri Lanka.

All that changed in October, when a letter arrived from my father back home, warning me that it was a dangerous time to bring my son back. Roy was only 15 at the time, but tall for his age, and two conflicts were raging in Sri Lanka: one between the Sri Lankan forces and the LTTE up north, and another with Marxist rebels waging a brutal armed revolt in the south. My father feared that, in one way or another, Roy would become the victim of these conflicts.


Alabama license plate – “Heart of Dixie”

Now that the choice was made for me – staying on in America - the only way to continue was to find a job, and, in my field of applied linguistics, teaching. So, I scrambled, looking somewhat desperately for any openings.

I faced a challenge even before my job search began. I am not a native speaker of English; while that would not matter in science, engineering, computer science and every other field in finding a teaching position in America, would I be welcome in an English classroom where the students were native English speaking Americans? In English departments throughout the country (3000 universities and four-year colleges), hardly any nonnative speaker professors were visible. So, I would be venturing into the unknown.

New Orleans
One of the largest academic conferences in my field, the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association (MLA) was to be at New Orleans at the end of December, between Christmas and New Year. Many job interviews are conducted at such conferences, because both professors and graduate students attend them. So I applied for every job opening that had scheduled interviews at the conference, and waited anxiously for invitations, by phone or letter, in those days without email. In the end, I was invited to 11 interviews, the most among my contemporaries in the foreign language education and English departments.  (I did have unusually good credentials.) When academic departments have a vacancy, a small recruiting committee of professors is formed to vet applications, and being invited for an interview meant that I had cleared the first hurdle.

In late December, I traveled to New Orleans with three friends from the English department, all literature majors. They, too, had applied for jobs but only one had managed to land an interview. The others went, hoping for walk-ins. The job market was very tight those days, and more so for literature majors.

In New Orleans, the weather was cold and rainy, the streets slush with mud. The interviews were usually conducted by the chairperson of the respective academic department at the hotels where he/she stayed. Not being familiar with New Orleans and the hotels, and before the days of cell phones, I was literally running all over town, panicking at being late and denied interviews. Having to dress formally, in jacket and tie, added to my nervousness.
The interviews also gave me a window on future bosses. One department chairman, who had obviously scheduled too many applicants, timed each interview with a timer. Barely 10 minutes into my interview began, the timer went off and he abruptly ended the interview. Some seemed confused when I turned up, perhaps expecting to meet a white person, not having read my CV carefully to discern the Sri Lankan origins. I could even read the disappointment on some faces when my accent and skin color didn’t match my name. The interview I best remember was with an elderly gentleman, who introduced himself as James Dorrill. He was easy going with the questions and we had a friendly chat.

On-Campus Interviews
The next step in the hiring process is the on-campus interview, for which two or three of those interviewed in New Orleans would be short-listed. About two weeks after returning from New Orleans, I received invitations for three interviews, one in Mobile, Alabama, where James Dorrill taught, and the other two by universities in Missouri. These were all expense paid trips, with two or three nights’ hotel accommodation and roundtrip air travel. I would meet with the English department teachers (professors and instructors), make a formal academic presentation to them, and be interviewed by the recruiting committee. A tour of the city and available housing options (usually conducted by a real estate agent) might also be on the itinerary. A professor or two would accompany me to every meal.
When I arrived in Mobile, AL, I was met at the airport by Professor James Dorrill himself, this time in a Roman collar! He was a Catholic priest. From then on, my presentation, the interview, and informal meetings with teachers and students went quite well. Mobile is an old port city, in a very traditional Southern state. Most professors were older gentleman, and there were a few ladies as well. Most were gracious and curious about me. Prof. Dorrill, being was from Boston, was quite an anomaly.


Colorado Apartments, married student housing at the University of Texas at Austin

But the most memorable interview was at Springfield, Missouri, a beautiful town into which I flew on a tiny plane. As we came into land, I saw a colorful landscape with sweeping hills in the distance. (I am a sucker for distant hills.) The English department staff were comparatively young and very friendly. My visit lasted three nights, staying at a comfortable hotel, and I was wined and dined. One of the professors was especially impressed when she learned that my thesis supervisor was Prof. James Kinnevy, and called him the “father of modern rhetoric”, which in fact he was. My presentation and the formal interview went smoothly, and an enthusiastic real estate agent showed me the town and some houses on the market. I felt that the English department staff were keen on me coming there. I learned that the actor Brad Pitt was from Springfield, and that the Holiday Inn chain of hotels started there. The entire department came for the lunch before my departure, at a nice Chinese restaurant with an open kitchen, and we again got along quite well. I knew that Springfield was the place for me.
Upon my return to Austin, the wait for follow-up phone calls and letters was nerve racking. Would I get a job offer? What could I do if I did not? To bolster my morale, I talked frequently with my classmates who were also on job hunts. We were desperately trying to finish our thesis writing, while also teaching two or three freshman writing classes for the English department and taking courses ourselves.

A disappointment, and a job offer
The first rejection came from the other Missouri university. It was just a polite a form letter. I hadn’t liked that place much, so wasn’t very disappointed. One down, two to go. About a week later, I was overjoyed to receive a letter from Prof. Dorrill, in Alabama, offering me the job, setting out terms and conditions, including the salary, and giving me two weeks in which to decide. But my first choice was the position in Springfield, and when a letter from there finally arrived, I opened it nervously, only to have my hopes shattered: despite all the positive vibes I had received during my visit, they had turned me down. Thinking back 30 years later, I realize that my life, and that of Fawzia and Roy, may have taken an entirely different turn if that Springfield job had come through.

So, I accepted the Alabama offer. Not all my friends were pleased. One, a woman from New York, said that she would “not stop to change a flat tire in Alabama”. I was aware of the terrible legacy of the deep south, of which Alabama was a part, in terms of the Civil War, slavery, the KKK, and the murderous treatment of black people. These areas were also notoriously backward in terms of literacy, standard of education, and healthcare. But, most universities are open minded communities, and English departments oases of liberalism, so I felt secure. In any case, I did not have the luxury of choice.

Mobile, Alabama
The next step was to visit Mobile to find housing and attend to paperwork. So, a few months later, I drove the 600 miles from Austin to Mobile in my small Isuzu car, going east on Highway I-10, passing through Louisiana and Mississippi. I can’t recall if I stayed overnight during that long drive but I did pass through a landscape that was quite foreign to me. The polluted, oil refining area of east Texas and Louisiana, the swampy, pine forested backwoods, the small and larger towns along the highway that flashed past because I had no time to stop. I would get to know these areas better in a few years’ time.

Without the pressure of a job interview, I saw Mobile and the University of South Alabama more clearly. Compared to the University of Texas at Austin, South Alabama was a small university, with no history, having been founded only in 1963. A state institution, it did not have the red brick, ivy covered buildings that are the landmarks of revered old universities. Most buildings were utilitarian, lacking any aesthetic value. The founding President of the university was still in charge after more than 25 years.

Downtown Mobile street

Linda Callendrillo was the English department’s writing specialist and the director of freshman composition. She was on the recruitment committee and had pushed for my hiring. I got along well with her and her husband, John Guzlowski, who taught American literature. (His parents had been Auschwitz survivors.) They showed me around town, suggesting suitable apartments that I could rent.

Downtown Mobile was where the wealthy old families lived in their beautiful homes along oak lined streets. It also had the magnificent Catholic cathedral, and a few quaint restaurants. The tallest building, the Holiday Inn, was owned by the President of the university. But, I also saw rundown homes, the shotgun type, where poor black people lived.

As the city spread west beyond the I-65 highway, the shopping areas and less affluent houses could be seen, along with apartment complexes. I found a suitable apartment on Hillcrest Blvd., not far from the university, put down a deposit, and said goodbye too Linda and John, looking forward to working with her when I returned in September. But she had a surprise for me.

Finishing-up in Austin
Fawzia was finishing her second undergraduate degree and Roy his sophomore (second) year in at Austin High School. I had transferred to UT at Austin in 1986, and they had joined me the following year. Their first year was a difficult one; Fawzia faced a major health issue soon after her arrival, and the culture shocks and adjustments were hard on her and Roy. We struggled, living in a small, subsidized apartment provided by the university to married students, and barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck. It was very hot in summer, because the air conditioning couldn’t cope with the blistering Texas heat.

Completing a PhD in three years is a challenge, and I had taken on other activities (running the Sri Lankan student’ association and keeping the peace between Sinhala and Tamil students), starting an academic journal), so the three years in Austin were the most hectic of my life. Even that summer, I was taking courses to fulfill the required credit hours. But, we were ready to go in August.


U-Haul towing a car (stock photo)

Our many friends came to say goodbye, and helped load the hired U-Haul with our furniture (all bought second hand), pots and pans, clothing, and other brick-a-bat. So, on a steamy morning in August, we left Austin, towing the car, with Fawzia and Roy sitting with me in front. We stopped at a motel in Louisiana for the night, and reached Mobile the next afternoon.