A reflection on the past: Big-a-buddha-a-no-no

This is a re-telling of a supposed "trip" to go see the Big Buddha.

I was invited by a relative to go see the Big Buddha. I asked if I could invite my friend from Montreal - sure, no problem. The Big Buddha is the biggest of its kind in the world (due to the Taliban blowing up the even bigger one in Afghanistan). Hey, this could be interesting, let's go.

The event became instead the "Buddhist conversion attempt" - a 6-f$#&in' hour boat trip to throw fish into the water and come back - while being brain-washed to Buddhist propaganda and requests for money. Let's just say something got misinterpreted in the translation and I either

a) misunderstood or
b) someone in the family who was NOT invited misinterpreted the event to me, likely through the broken telephone that everyone's using to make their phone calls to me.

My friend from Montreal (Lia)'s description of the day:

Along with getting us into trouble though, Doug's talented sense of humour also saved us along the way. Under the guise of going to see "Big Buddy" (the largest Buddha in the world), we ended up on a six hour religious (cult?) boat ride. 1000s of fish, 300 or so people, 6 hours, 3 women's toilets, 1.5 gwailos (foreigners), 1 yellow haired girl, and one CD fixed on repeating the 8 bar chorus, each bar's melody slightly varying from the one before in its repetition of a single word "Buddha. Buddha. Buddha. Buddha. Buddha. Buddha."

Huh? Yah, we were there and are still trying to figure it all out. In the heat.spending six hours shovelling fish onto slides.which returned them to sea. where they would have been anyway.had they not been caught..to be put into a boat.for us to "give them freedom"???????

All we could do was laugh. And keep finding sources of things to laugh at (oh there were plenty). When the boat full of fish pulled up, we had double the supply. After we had tired of "their coming to sacrifice the yellow-haired girl" jokes, Doug would rant about the persistence of the Indian Deli touts. "Here some those Indian Deli guys." and then randomly yelling to the fish handlers on the other boat "She's right here."

When the supplies of entertainment from our immediate environment seemed to dwindle we'd recite the announcement on the metro before the doors close - in 4 languages.

Doug: "Sing man cow gun say moon" (with heavy Cantonese accent)

Cousin: "[tsin bu ya kaw gin sher men]" (with perfect Mandarin accent)

Lia: "Please stand BACK, from the doors" (with heavy British accent)

All: "Bee bee be e bebebebebeb. Pshwooooh" (with perfect beep and door closing accent)

Somehow we never tired of that one.

Needless to say we went for all-you-can-eat sushi that night

Luckily me, my friend, my flask, and jokes all around made the event entertaining still. And...let's just say I have family that ain't inviting me to anything else religious.


They gave us these cards of the Buddha. "Apparently" you're not "supposed" to put them in your backpocket, especially when you sit. Who knew.



Lia and I looking smug as the group of all 1.5 people of European descent on the boat. We liked to pretend it was our yacht.



Doug: "Lia! Run! They're coming to get the 'Golden-Hair' girl!".
Well, we found it funny. You had to be there. But then you wouldn't want to.



Me looking very impressed while waiting to throw my fish into the water, giving them "freedom" after "captivity".



Me throwing my basket-o'-raw fish into the ocean. Woo hoo, does the fun ever start?



Of course Lia's having a ball. That girl could not stop throwing fish into the water.

HK Elections

On Sunday there was an election in HK. With the biggest turnout in HK history, from the perpective of someone in HK, it was huge. From the perspective of someone from a country built on democratic principles, it was a lot of nothing.
(HK Election site)

So, was the HK elections big or not?
I don't think so, yet there are quite a few things to explain here; this is a special case. HK is specially adminstered, as a region. So it's called a "SAR: Special Administrative Region"

As such, they have special elections, with all the special party politics, and special party games and party bashes and so on, like binge drinking, strip poker, sex scandals, communist influences and intimidation tactics.

If you want to know how the elections are formed, well there are plenty of ways you can read about that (here's a link, for example), I'm not going to give a boring tirade/tutorial on it when there are websites with articles that are better written than I can provide. But what I will do is give my own perspecitve and opinion on how it went on.

Why do you think it was a bunch of nothing?
Because the seats are for only half the government that is elected to listen, not act. There are two bodies in the HK government; Executive and Legislative. The people of HK elect those in the Legislative - that was the big election on Sunday. These are the people who listen, propose, listen to proposals, and propose that they listen while the executive is busy away doing Beijing (China)'s bidding.

The Executive branch is filled up by Beijing. Their supreme leader, Tung Chee-hwa (I had the opportunity of seeing him in person at the government house some time ago - in person he looks EXACTLY like he does in the newspapers and television). He is selected by Beijing and answers to them.

I guess the HK people will take all they can when it comes to being political. The political climate of HK is quite interesting. 5 days before I entered HK I there were huge demonstrations over Beijing's noose-tightening over HK (with anti-subversion laws - look it up yourself). I guess the political itch has been getting more and more itchy ever since. The turnout at the election was the highest ever in HK: 55.63% of eligible voters.

Whoa! 55.63% voted?!
Yep. The land of chinese capitalism cum laude converges with political expression. I think this is an increase of about 9% over the last election in 2000, which was the first since HK was returned to China from the colonising-addicted Brits.

So, what happened? What are the results?
The house wins. The house always wins.

More background. I want the dirt.
It was interesting political turmoil. China is good at the dirty political game of... politics.
Perhaps what got my attention most was the jailing of a pro-democracy (anti-Beijing) candidate in China. The guy was arrested for engaging the services of a prostitute. Like that wasn't set up, and he took the bait. The guy is still in jail. According to the electoral rules he didn't need to be dropped from running, so he was still on the ballot. China says he will be detained for 6 months awaiting trials, or whatever they do in China. While HK was inquiring about his fate, heh, get this, China released pictures of the guy to back their case against him in the public forum - right before holding a press conference. The pictures were, heh, of him with no shirt on in a brothel. I should find the pictures. The Chinese know how to play hardball. And then a few days before the election, China brought in their medal-winning China athletes from the Summer olympics in Athens to Hong Kong, raising national pride, and maybe, perhaps, possibly, in a probable attempt to gain political influence toward Beijing-supporting parties. And HK admired the athletes, giving China our kudos for making HK proud. Wow, they're good.

Did someone say Party?! Toga! Toga! Toga!
There are a few main political parties.
The one supporting and proposing democratic reforms is the "Democratic Party". From what I can tell, they favor a more independent HK iwth its own political freedom and all the hunky-dorey stuff you see advertised in front of a flag blowing in the wind.

The other party is supported by Beijing. It has a move to support China's reforms and a return ot the mainland, and everything else that comes with huge mass-rally dances in a sea of red, with a break to watch a huge show of a new world record of domino tumbling. You've seen those showcased on the news when there's time to fill.



Well, the name of the pro-Beijing party - heh, get this, heh heh, is the "Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong". Ha ha. The communist-supporting party has "Democratic-" in it. Which isn't completely wrong - I mean they are submitting to the democratic process to further their communist goals of integration with the mainland. And it's damn smart. With a name like that, they have to be noble. I mean, they're premise is the betterment of Hong Kong. Sure that's a relative take on politics, I mean, just what is better? Well, they're better.

There are some other pro-democracy and pro-Beijing parties, but those are the main ones.

Tally:
Democratic Party: 9 seats (out of 60)
Democratic Party for the ... The Beijing Party: 12 seats
The other big pro-Beijing party: 10 seats.

Total Tally:
Pro-democracy side: 24 seats
Pro-Beijing side: 25 seats

Ouch.
With so many people voting combined with the current political climate of HK I would think it wouldn't have been such a strong win for Beijing...but it was. The reason is a bit technical though.

How did Beijing win?
30 of the seats are elected by big business involved in the economics of HK. These seats tend to be supportive of the occupying power, in this case, Beijing. And they were.

So, is there a big hoopla?
Not really. Things are about the same as 4 years ago. Except: many more voters came out, some real loud people got elected which will stir things up, and the bad English on the shirts will just get worse.

A note on the election process
Parties are just a number
There are numbers that identify the parties in the riding. These numbers are proudly and prominently displayed on the posters. It's funny. "Vote 1!". And the numbers do not correspond to the same party across all of HK.


A poster for 9-12, and political parties. Notice the numbers.

There was campaigning on Election day!
Maybe it's the North American in me, but I found this laughable. There was chanting in the streets, and candidates pushing people to vote for them. I was astounded.

So much advertising for 9-12
I wonder if they planned to have it on a Saturday, and realized all th posters advertising "Election: 9/11" with celebrities smiling and pointing would've been too much. I dunno.

There are posters on so many billboards, signs, and on every single lamp post. These aren't lampposts with a poster on it...these are posters installed using a lamppost. There are more posters than the parties. And these have been up since July. There are so many posters soliciting people to vote, and hardly any for the parties themselves.

Doug, why does this matter to you ?
I believe in democratic principles and the democratic process. I don't believe on imposing that, but I believe in supporting people in furthering their goals. I think the political freedoms of Canada and the West are aspired to here, and the will of the people should be expressed politically and reflected in political people empowered legitimately to act on the people's behalf. This applies to Communist and Socialist regimes, by the way, but is manifested differently (i.e. the Communist and Socialist government enacts, motivate and leads the people in ways that maintains their legitimacy, whereas a democractic government supposedly reflects the interests of people and interest groups). I encouraged as many as I could to vote, and I think I may be directly responsible for maybe 4 people voting. As for how they voted, I expressed no preference, but instead opted to read more about it instead and read the results.

Wow, 4 people among 7 million people. Way to go, Doug.
Stop it with the sarcasm. I'm only one man, and if I helped just one person, just one person to realize their full voter potential, well that makes it all worth it. Worth what? I dunno. HK elections

Enough about the election
Okay. Did you hear that China will not let HK to elect their Commander in Chief/Tsar/President/Governor General/Prime Minister/Special Adminsrative Secretary/person in 2008? Not like they eer did at any other time, but the peopel of China were kind of expecting it, and hoping for it for a while. I don't blame them for being disappointed. Britain were big teasers with the whole "don't worry, you'll get everything you want! Like all the cand you want and trips to the amusement park every day! Just ask your new mom and dad!" before hand-over. More on this to come in my constantly-reviewed primer on HK politics. Look for it and my "how-to-guide to having your own sovereign nation" as my blog gets political after this whole "new experience with HK" phase of mine is over.

A few things: English and iPod

I'm re-reading my blogs - I must assure you that my English is otherwise much better than this. The time I can bother to do blogs is limited - the less the better. So I don't re-read them. I won't. If it don't make sense, I'm still rather confident that the gist of the point is getting through.

But my English is detereorating here. Either because I am talking overly simple to people here, or learning Cantonese is pushing out the English in my head. I am a bit concerned - I used to write A-grade papers that were 15 to 20 pages long for my political science courses. Arg. I hope I'll be able to pick up my English skills again. I think I will. But if I become versed in Cantonese, maybe it's worth it.

iPod
I just bought a 20 gig iPod. It has as much space as my 2-year-old laptop.

I've been shopping for mp3 players for a while - my old one is among the first of its kind, 64 Megs, no screen, and it actually slips into my Handspring (Palm Pilot). Well now I can fit 5000 songs. What am I going to do with space for 5000 songs? That's like 420 music albums. We'll see.

But the iPod is amazing. An excellent product from Apple. I'm currently quite pre-occupied with the thing. I'm spending a lot of time going through my 700-odd mp3s and sorting and renaming them (so I can better navigate through them on my iPod).

I bought it here for $2300 HKD: about $460 CDN. I had to wait a week. There is so much demand for the product, and I had been dreaming about the iPod since I've settled on getting one. It's everything they say it is.