tropicana

i'm back from blackwater! my 2 months of country work have finally wrapped themselves up - self-bound and gagged. blackwater was different to all the other country places i had been. surrounded by five massive coal mines, coal mine employees (or their families) accounted for almost 80% of patients seen. that meant a much younger and juicier demographic, and a switch from chronic illnesses to minor trauma and injury. i was MASSIVELY less busy than i had been in the previous month (but was still contractually obliged to be within 10 minutes of the hospital at all times), so whereas my last rotations were a bit like being tied to a stake in the ground and forced to run around and around and around, blackwater was only like being tied to a stake in the ground and given the occasional shove (ie lots of time to ponder my incarceration). more than anything, the nurses in blackwater were just wonderful - fresh and open and uber-cynical and hilarious (and might be reading this so i can't exactly give a damning inditement as threatened)...and that really made a difference :)

brisbane is predictably wonderful. hot and beautiful. i felt like i was on a different planet in the queen street mall crush, and got to visit the just-opened gallery of modern art - highly recommended. largest collection of modern art in australia in a funky new building on the banks of the glorious brisbane river. yarra what? makes melbourne look like it's built on the banks of an old wet fart. (don't listen to these anguished put-downs of a jilted ex-lover...i'm still in love with you melbs)

my hip is acting up - better in some ways, worse in others. i'm not sure if i'm moving forwards or backwards (ok, back to the hip...) phuong - hallowed future travel partner and brother in arms - was typically no-nonsense when he told me (in one of his sympathetic moods) that it was basically 'all in my mind' and that i had to 'shutup and get over it'. so...i've been seeking alternate therapies. i visited an acupuncturist last thursday. the session was good, though he referred to beautiful women and repetitive ejaculation too much for my liking. i didn't want to tell him that i was homosensational in case he saw that as a condition needing attention, and surreptitiously treated me for it: sticking a pin in some hard-to-reach spot and frying my brain so that i would wake up the following day craving something unsavoury. to be perfectly honest i felt a bit bored during the session and wanted to leave. i kept thinking of a cartoon i once saw in which a character screams "i want to relax better and faster! i want to be at the cutting edge of relaxation!"

the following morning i literally leapt out of bed and ran down to the local fishmongers to buy some fresh catch. just kidding.

given that my life is for rent, to balance things out i've now put up my house for sale. well...not the studio itself, but the contents thereof. i've stuck a sign up on the community message board, and have a website with photos. you can check out the site by clicking here, or following the link to crazy bargains on the right :) tell your friends who live in brisbane! and please tell me if there's anything i can do to the site to make the things more sale-able. would you pay that much? (etc)

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i start cardiology at the prince charles hospital on monday. i'm working on christmas and new years day for the extra cash - the bank account has less than a month to finish feeding before the numbers start sky-diving towards zero again during the 2007 adventures. apparently no-one else wanted to work those days so i got the shifts easily (which is one of the advantages of being an unsentimental money-hungry mole with no friends).

speaking of adventure - preparations are almost complete for africa and i leave in just over 4 weeks! very exciting. i'm starting on a new exercise programme to get myself fit again, but the realisation of how much reserve i've lost hit home today when i went on a bikeride with my pseudo brother-in-law: whilst he pedalled gracefully around the river and hills of brisbane, i sat hunched over my handlebars in a contorted display of human agony, and can only describe the latter half of the ride as a protracted near-death experience. lots of work to do before the 5895 metres of kilimanjaro's uhuru peak becomes a sure thing.

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check back in 4 weeks for brisbane part two!

soldier on

the 5 week tour of the north burnett region in queensland is over!

how did it end? how did it end? a string of back-to-back 16 hour shifts with middle of the night call-outs and no spare time to even scratch my arse - that's how it ended. that and a lot of hugging and kissing with staff and patients (would you believe)

how did you feel? how did you feel? i felt fucking tired - exhilarated yes, but really fucking tired, and unsafe towards the end of days when i realised my brain had slowed down to the point where i was no longer able to recall simple medical terms. the constant low-grade anxiety of being on-call 24-7 is something i could have had a break from for at least one night to be honest. when i finally got back to melbourne at the weekend, i jumped on the scales at my parents' house and found that i had lost over 10 years.

was it worth it? was it worth it? damn straight it was worth it - i'm loving all the experience that i've gained, though i've come to realise i am far too underskilled to be working in those sorts of positions and it's highlighted to me which skills i need to gain in order to feel right.

what happened then? what happened then? well i missed my fucking flight out of the middle of no-where back to brisbane (didn't i?) and hence missed my connecting flight back to melbourne. when i turned up at the airport (which was actually just an airstrip in the middle of a field) with my just-been-released-from-prison smile on my face, and saw the plane scooting off down the runway without my fat arse inside it, i considering having a nervous breakdown. after a few short moments however, the realisation that i was about to have a grand adventure kicked in, and i felt greedy for it.

i ended up squeezing into a freight van with a delightful fat creature that drove at 140kph along a pot-holed country road with a fake 8 dollar flashing alarm light on his roof for kicks and ranting about how many seconds he could save by overtaking the next guy. when he got thirsty and stopped for coke, i ran into a pub and bought up some whiskey in order to be able to open my eyes without clenching my teeth and actually enjoying the conversation. later in the night, after being dumped on the side of the road in rockhampton, i was picked up by claudio - the lover that i had met on the internet two months previous and flew up to rocky to meet on a whim - and he took me in and fed and sheltered and pampered me until it was time to head off to brisbane the next day on an early flight. there was something about the whole affair that was marvelously coincidental and satisfying on a number of levels.

what happened to the bbq? what the hell happened? thank you to everyone who turned up! it was lovely :) should have known not to trust melbourne weather, and i'm sorry for the confusion relating to change of location. it made me feel warm and fuzzy to see all your smiling faces :)

what are these photos? what are all these photos? another great reason to be in melbourne was my cousin's wedding on sunday, which was the first time the extended family (all 9 people) had been in the same room in well over 10 years. naturally, a good time (and feed) was had by all ;)

what happens now? what happens now? well i'm back to brisbane for one night only, and then jetting off to blackwater, west of rockhampton, for the next two weeks. to be honest i'm not 100% looking forward to it, as i haven't been able to catch up on sleep these last few days, and i'm still wary of not knowing enough to be out there doing this sort of stuff. having said that, i'm keen for more learning opportunities, so if i have to be out there, bring it on.

pic 1 - vov, me, mum and dad
pic 2 - mum and i
pic 3 - dad, nick (vov's partner), me and (uncle) paul
pic 4 - m + d
pic 5 - me and vov
pic 6 - mutton dressed as lamb

'The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue' Napoleon Bonaparte

english, my love.

Biggenden, Gayndah, Mundubbera, Eidsvold, Monto. Read them – like a list of dead and dying Queensland country towns clinging to life at the edge of an enlarging man-made desert, in marginal farmland whose rape should have been abandoned whilst it was still a twinkle in a colonist’s eye, and whose under-resourced medical minefield has been exploding with education and confidence building opportunities with each asymmetric footfall.

It’s the worst drought in a century, but during my rounds we’ve had the biggest downpour in over a year. I would join in the celebrations were it not for the increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, inability for rescue aircraft to land, and the fact that I’m the only doctor in town. But that’s exactly what I’ve come out here for, so when they snap their arms, shove sticks into their eyes, stroke out, arrest or just die for no other reason than the lack of other diversions, it’s been your friendly local doctor and correspondent on the other end of the defib paddles, the internet searches, or the harassed telephone calls to evacuation services.

At the end of each week there is a 60 minute period that I have come to call ‘the golden hour’. It’s the one-hour drive between towns. In that one hour – unlike the other 167 hours in that week – I am completely uncontactable, completely responsibility-free and completely weightless. I could stand on a set of electric scales and they wouldn’t even activate. I could throw myself from the roof of the hospital and float down so gently that I would be sleeping like a baby that has overdosed on phenergan by the time I touched the ground. Then I arrive in town ‘X’ and it’s time to get back into it again, and my brain reassumes its usual Orwellian double-think of hoping for the quiet best on the surface, but further down craving the absolute worst – the bus crash, the intra-cranial bleed, the massive MI. For though I don’t want these things to happen to anyone – no no – I realise that misfortune is one of the staples of any human life, and I want the privilege of learning from it. I want practical skills and knowledge born of experience. I want to look at myself as I stand alone and think without reservation: ‘you are a competent doctor’.

Where I am now is cattle-country. When asking patients whether they have any meat-free days a week I have on more than one occasion been met with the response ‘yes of course – on such-and-such a day I only eat chicken’, and my requests for a vegetarian diet from the hospital kitchen are not so much met with suspicion as they are with fear. It’s like being back in China, though in China I at least sometimes felt like I was speaking the same language as the locals ;) People are as friendly and open as the stories and stereotypes suggest, and though I love working and being here, I love working and being here on a temporary basis. Don't think i could do the long haul. anywhere.

And so I’ll be popping back to Melbourne in a couple of weeks, and I can’t wait. I hope to see all of yous (sic) at the BBQ in Albert Park on Saturday 25th November. My phone has no reception until I fly out on the night before, so please email me if you have any queries and have been battling unsuccessfully with my answering machine over the last 3 weeks. Otherwise, gather your vegetable paddies and sausages and breads and drinks and games and friends, and I’ll see you then!

pic one - the big mandarin in Mundubbera

pics two to five - scenes of north burnett

'a good man is hard to find; a hard man is good to find'. Mae West

brisbane - part one

My 10 week stint in the royal brisbane hospital's emergency department has come to an end, crowned by a night out with the other doctors on my team and the mysterious appearance of engine grease smeared all over my best pair of pants (the dry cleaner is posting them out to me in the countryside). work-wise, it was a good 10 weeks, and though i learnt a great deal, perhaps the end has come not a minute too soon - this last week i have been feeling decidedly unexcited to be at work, quite apart from the usual love-hate relationship i have with medicine. It's time for a change, and tomorrow morning i fly out to country QLD to start a 5 weeks stint providing relief for local docs, and then another 2 weeks in a different location before a final 4-week sprint of cardiology in brisbane towards a finishing line masquerading as an international airport check-in queue.

brisbane grows on me daily - the city itself is beautiful, and i'm hooked on evening walks through the gorgeous parks along the river. the place where i live couldn't be better, and as the weather gets warmer, the brisbanites are recovering from the seasonal affective disorder that afflicted them through their version of a winter, and are becoming noticeably more social, sexual, and engaged. (i think it's because it's always warm here so for the one or two months a year when you have to put a jumper on in the evening, the locals just can't make sense of what's going on and go into shut down).

it's a sleepy sort of town for a people who love a relaxed sort of lifestyle. so i've signed my end-of-lease papers and am selling my effects - paring my life down to what i can fit into a backpack. if i owned a place here the story might be different, but it doesn't make sense for me to use brisbane as a base next year, though i still plan to work in QLD.

non-work-wise, it's been excellent. have visited some national parks in the area, danced away at some pokey clubs, met some wonderful people, ran through some parks naked during storms with them, and even flew to rockhampton for a dirty weekend with someone i met on the internet (an unusually successful caper - highly recommended).

my suitcase is lying open, half-packed on my bed. i look around my house and my life and i'm reminded of a line in a book i just finished reading. one character asks "can you stay for dinner?", and the other responds "of course - i have no plans for the rest of my life".

and that puts a smile on my face :)

it will begin in africa

a decision has been made, a destination has been confirmed and finalised: hello-ondrej is excited to announce that 2007 will be kicked off with an east african adventure!
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less than a year after visiting for the first time, the lure of the dark continent has proved much too strong, and a return has become a psychological necessity rather than a luxury.

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pictures and stories from exotic islands, equatorial glaciers and national parks teeming with large game are promised.
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in the meantime, don't hesitate to check back here for updates on all the queensland adventures!

millions long

yes - i'm back in australia! and whilst the business of traipsing about the globe has met a most unwelcome hiatus, the adventure continues...

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i'm living in brisbane now, a large country town on the central east australian coast. melbourne was left for want of change, but brisbane was decided upon because of the suspicious looking character in the photo on the left. not me - the other one. big s. of course brisbane's weather lubricated the decision-making process - i've developed an unshakeable addiction to HOT.

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i've found a little studio apartment in new farm that i'm loving myself sick over. airy and spacious and delicious and nutritious. replete with psychotically paranoid neighbour to keep me on my toes. in my first week he really let me have it after my fridge delivery-man allegedly damaged some tiles on common property with his trolley. i was given the silence treatment for a while, but he's been really nice since i video-taped him hosing down a gutter during the worst drought in queensland in over 100 years, in which the government has instituted a total ban on outdoor hosing. the video-taping was unintentional, but i can bring it out of my armoury as a weapon of mass embarrassment if he lets rip with another diatribe ;)

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new farm is an inner city suburb in a bend of the wide and beautiful brisbane river, and is walking distance from the city and the main nightlife area. it's only about a half hour walk to the hospital too, so my cup is definitely running over. the picture above shows three rainbow stickers and a 'honk if you're a homo' sticker adorning the suburb's name sign. looks promising! but the gayest thing about new farm is the sign itself - like many things in life, appearances are deceptive, and reality falls short of expectation.

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i had a lightning 10 days in melbourne, during which i was mainly sorting out my queensland medical registration (which came through the week before work started), and my bloody iliopsoas tendinopathy (two MRIs, an intra-articular local anaesthetic injection and a lot of physio later, it has almost resolved).

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mum and i went on a road trip through country NSW to get here. adam was magnificent, and only ran out of petrol once.

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we then spent the first week trying to find a place for me to live in. the process was so harrowing and anxiety-provoking that my immune system crashed and i got sick, with heinous bacterial conjunctivitis to boot. these real-estate agents were not just sub-human: they were sub-mammalian.

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i was planning to dynamite their main offices as an act of retribution, but i just couldn't work out how to get my hands on the dynamite itself, so the plans have been shelved.

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a few vicious spending sprees at IKEA and k-mart later, my new place had become my palace :)

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my first day back at work after 7 months off rated up there among the 10 worst days of my life. as i crawled home that night, i was forced to consider faking my own death and fleeing the country with false documentation to avoid

another shift. for one reason or another i couldn't get my papers organised in time, and it was just as well: things got better. a lot better - so much so that the rush and satisfaction of patient contact now reigns supreme.

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but don't be concerned - i haven't settled down and become a homebody! my feet started itching the moment they touched australian soil - an itch that soon became unbearable. associated symptoms include wistfully browsing through atlases and loitering with intent in the travel sections of local bookstores. i have been anxious for treatment and have attended a number of therapy sessions at the travel agent.

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and so i am pleased to announce that plans are afoot for more adventures in early 2007! the destination is not yet guaranteed, but what is certain is this: ondrej will be joining none other than the dazzling company of phuong - australia's favourite son - idolised and yearned for by legions of men and women (including everyone's mother) - for the journey. all forecasts predict a wonderful time to be had by all :)

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life is definitely not on hold until then. there is simply too much fun and excitement to be squeezed out of brisbane in the meantime :)

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pic 1 - big s and little b

pic 2 - false advertising

pic 3 - mum HOing into two icecreams at once

pic 4 - nick and vov at a nearby beach

pic 5 - my sexy look

pic 6 - mum and her two babies looking rather sick and damaged at the airport

pic 7 - new fun, boys and adventure in brisvegas :)

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`Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy afternoon` Susan Ertz

kde domov muj?

the last thing i expected to see when i visited the benxi water caves (a 3km underground navigable river - the longest of such open to visiters in the world), was a drag queen. in a bikini. with a large python around her neck. performing a show in a crocodile pit. with 3 live crocodiles. surrounded by chinese families. clapping. politely. well...clapping politely until she ran through the crowd with that big snake and a large contingent of audience members stampeded (in a controlled way) out through the nearest exit.

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unexpected? yes. suprising? after 4 months in china? not at all. suprise? i'm no longer familiar with that term.

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so from baihe to shenyang, i made an overnight trip - the chinese way: i got a hard seat in a crowded train, entered into a loud discussion with everyone in my carriage and half the people in the next, got involuntarily plied with alcohol, cigarettes and processed meat while making pledges of lifelong friendship and mutually beneficial business agreements with people i couldn't even see, and spent the next two hours clinging to the window for dear life while the train went into a freefall spin around me and my stomach did backflips, before passing out with my face on an opened packet of chilli sausages.

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from shenyang i popped over to the aforementioned water caves. though i don't really enjoy caves secondary to a growing claustrodiscomfort (more an uneasiness and boredom than a full blown phobia), a 45 minute boat ride on an underground river with your very own chinese fan-club is simply magnificent. turns out there are some things money can buy.

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but i won't harp on about all of that. i'm back in beijing and my days in china are up: i'm writing this entry to conclude.

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a couple of years ago, on a different trip, i sent a final group email entitled 'kde domov muj?' (where is my home?). in it, i concluded that my home and heart belonged in melbourne.

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though a big piece of my heart still resides there, mainly because many of you live there (but particularly and especially because mum and dad live there), i've come up against a bit of a hurdle - a wall: home. i can't reconcile myself to the term.

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china has been wonderful (much more than that, as you may have gathered from all the ranting in previous blog entries). but it's not just china - it's this whole damn world that's turning me on. and the being 'me' part of it - the living of my life - is something i find wonderfully intense. i didn't know what to call it - happiness? sadness? love? but then a friend here in beijing pointed out that another czech had already described it perfectly - it's the unbearable lightness of being. spot on milan - way to go bro.

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maybe ondrej's changed and maybe he hasn't. probably hasn't actually. but my trip's resolved something for me - i feel deep within myself that my heart, home and me belong out here - out there. not in any one particular place - but everywhere.

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i'm looking forward to seeing those of you who are in melbourne. as long as i don't have any problems with australian customs (like the embarrassing incident of the coral i stole from venezuela in 2001), i've got a bottomless bag of hugs and kisses that i'm bringing back with me for individual, group and wholesale distribution.

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whoops! five and a half months has passed a bit quick hasn't it? yes it has. and now it's finally time to say: good bye china...hello ondrej!

the chicken or the egg?

in the darkened evening streets of chinese villages, ladies stand over thin troughs of embers, fanning them to heat the skewered meat that they cook and sell from the top.

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i ordered 5 cow-meat skewers before i spied something in the darkness that i'd never seen before - roughly ovoid shaped, with a yellow yolky section, but other parts that were squiggly, or smooth, or sticking out. i decided that it was a mushroom and ordered two.

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when they came, i pulled a little leggy thing off one before biting into it. the taste of yolk was distinct, mixed with another rubbery, almost meaty flavour.

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i looked down at the leggy thing on my plate. it was a leg. in the other mushroom i made out little feet, a head shape, a yolk - no longer an egg, but not quite yet a chicken. my stomach lurched. i staggered home and brushed my teeth for 7 days and 7 nights.

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after all the things i've eaten in china, i don't know why this should have affected me in the slightest, but it did. i was revolted.

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ondrej has found his limit.

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pics - chinese mushrooms

plan b

the eastern-most section of the great wall lies along the yalu river (which forms the chinese/north korean border), originally built to keep the heathens in pyongyang and out of beijing (so to speak). i spent a morning last week climbing this steep section of wall and blissing out in the sunshine before part of the mountain i was standing on was unexpectedly dynamited and i had to throw myself under cover as i shat my pants. that's china for you.

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there's actually a massive slab of land on the chinese side of the river that mao gifted to the north koreans as a show of friendship, so there's a long section of border where north korean land and chinese land is only seperated by a 2 metre wide creek. it's dotted with army posts. from a recently built (i mean restored) great wall watchtower on the top of a mountain, i looked through the grandmother of all binoculars at an airfield on the north korean side filled with modern bombing-and-killing-people type aircraft and other military bits and bobs. closer to home, at one of the army posts, i spied smoke coming out of individual nostrils of a smiling north korean soldier. it seemed extraordinary. i could have descended the mountain and initiated creek-side peace talks, but i don't think i would have been able to get back up the mountain again without my leg auto-amputating, and probably would have ended up with a bullet in my arse for my troubles.

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in dandong there's a bridge that only stretches halfway across the river. the americans accidentally blew up the other half at the same time that they accidentally blew up dandong's airstrip in the 50s. you can walk around on the remaining bridge on the chinese side. on the north korean side, in the direct line of sight, is a little 10 metre ferris wheel - the sort you see at country school fetes where older kids rock up stoned and start punching each other while their parents lie paralytic in the grass. the ferris wheel is an obvious attempt to show that north korea is wealthy enough to afford leisure, but a quick glance at the chinese side of the border, where modern apartment towers line the shore as far as the eye can see (in both directions) exposes the sham fun fair for what it is, and the irony is very saddening, and very troubling.

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i moved on to baihe, near changbai shan, the largest nature reserve in china. miles and miles of virgin pine forest stretch all the way to the horizon, crowned by the beautiful heaven lake, sitting in a volcanic crater that straddles the chinese/north korean border. it's the origin of the songhua river (you know, the one they dumped all the benzene and other chemicals into last year and then lied to everyone about?)

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i spent a wonderful day soaking it all in before being abandoned about 20 km from baihe for reasons i'm still grappling with. 3 hours later i was on my rescue bus with a group of chinese university students who all lined up to have their photos taken with me. much to their delight, i wrapped my arms around every single one like a bitch on heat while they struggled with their digital cameras on the bumpy road. i hadn't realised how much i was craving physical contact, but one busload of gorgeous young men later, as i sat back grinning like the cat who had had too much cream, i thought: 'wow...i needed that' :)

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after my plan to visit north korea went pear-shaped last week, i turned to plan b: make a dash over the border in the middle of the night with my pen torch and a packet of tim-tams. if it had worked, i'm sure i could have made it all the way to pyongyang and re-established peace and security in north east asia for generations to come: round table 5-nation talks, naked mud wrestling adjudicated by dwarves from vanuatu, and smiling nigerians taking it three ways were not even the tip of my masterful, top-secret grand-plan iceberg guaranteed of success.

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anyway, the plan fell through, for the obvious reason: they don't sell tim-tams in china. in fact, the chocolate here is heinous, like eating brown ear-wax but worse. i met some children so thin you would presume they had died of starvation had you found them lying on the ground, and tried to gift them my chocolate stores. their eyes brightened as they asked 'is it chinese?' i said 'of course it is'. there was a pause and an un-focusing of eyes as they replied: 'we're trying to lose weight'. bless.

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the only other thing worth writing home about was an incident that occured this morning. i was prancing around my chinese-only guest house looking for a shower wearing only a little pair of porn-shorts that left less to the imagination than had i been naked. ladies appeared and swarmed, and a ruckus ensued. eventually, the substance abusing owner emerged, and with his eyes on the prize, said "put some clothes on", before offering me the services of a prostitute. i followed the command, but declined the invitation.

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yes i'll be in australia next week. on top of everything else, it means that i'll finally be able to read my blog comments, so please feel free to leave messages from now on! go on, you know you want to :)
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pic 1 - the great wall at dandong
pic 2 - propaganda dropped over the border by the chinese during the korean war (from the museum to commemorate the fight against US aggression and aid korea). in a country where all major tourist sites have chinglish signs like 'no sexy moves or plunging down the staircase', the mind boggles to see perfect english being used over 50 years ago.
pics 3 + 5 - heaven lake on the chinese/north korean border
pic 4 - hello ondrej (minus feet) at the 'underground forest'

[beep]

i fled from beijing and headed to shanhaiguan, where the great wall meets the sea.

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i stayed in a nasty little hotel in the industrial part of town with crumbling wall plaster and a bathroom so unsavoury that i was afraid to enter. my room hosted a squadron of mosquitoes that would fly around my room in formation, and suck me dry each night (in a bad way).

the main square was an enormous rounded affair, bigger than the open area of fed square. big speakers were set up in all four corners playing music in the afternoon as groups of people played shuttlecock, hacky sack, laughed and talked and hung around.

at dusk, the square was transformed. imagine this: ~ 1500 people crammed into a big city space all dancing, jumping, laughing and clapping their hands wildly like energiser bunnies whilst the speakers blasted music. not chinese or traditional music either - but hardcore eurotrash techno. and then, rising above the sexy, deafening electronic beats, the following lyrics:

this is the time to rock! this is the time for sex!
this is the time to rock! this is the time to [beep]

but the [beep] was inconsistent, and at the end of the track the angry german girl's voice roared: "this is the time to fuuuuuuucccckkk!!!", whilst all around, old grannies pounded the concrete in their little chairman mao slippers and threw their arms up in exhilaration with great big smiles on their faces. i had a great big smile on my face too, though i was vaguely concerned that i'd stumbled into an alternative universe.

the sense of community and inclusion is powerful at these nightly gatherings. i've experienced them in a number of towns now, and i wish we had the same sort of thing in oz, and i don't just mean raves. you just feel like you're in love with everyone. and you are.

the great wall enters the sea at a place called 'old dragon's head'. it was fairly disappointing, having been built (sorry restored) in 1987, so i was over it before i arrived. but then the wall crosses a plain to a city fortress, called 'first pass under heaven' which is beautiful, and then heads up into the mountains. i swallowed my pride and took a chairlift to the top of a section of this mountain wall. for about half an hour, there was no-one else there. to walk along the wall, with the sun beating down and the mountain cliffs and crags falling away beneath you, and to be totally alone with all this...history...was exhilarating.

i went to an excellent great wall museum with some interesting propaganda, but it had a sign at the exit that i really appreciated. it said 'the great wall does not belong just to the people and history of china, it belongs to all people.' it really resonated with me because it appealed to a feeling that i have always held true - something difficult to express without using cliches. that we are all the same people - one enormous family of people. that anyone's history is everyone's history. that your story is my story. that no man is an island.

fact: at any given moment, there are an estimated 10 million people on trains in china.

i hopped onto a train with what felt like about 10 million other people, and came over to dandong this afternoon. it's right on the border with north korea! i can see north korea over the river! i wanted to cross the river and poke around for a bit, but apparently it's not that simple. what sort of an idiot turns up at the north korean border without a visa and expects to be over it within 24 hours and a minimum of fuss? hello ondrej?

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pics 1 + 4 - the great wall at jiao shan, shanhaiguan

pic 2 - reeking of piss

pic 3 - first pass under heaven

communism with a chinese face

nothing symbolises runaway consumerism like the designer thong. a thong for goodness' sake. i have always claimed to distance myself from any such expressions of materialistic indulgence. but a few weeks ago, as i was swinging around in ya show, (the 5 storey westerner-focused clothes market in beijing), i spied them - my first pair of fashionable flip-flops. who put that black stripe there in the middle? genius. i had to have them.

of course it didn't stop there. i needed to buy some shorts to match my new thongs, and a fake D+G cap to match my shorts, and how could i survive without ersatz italian sunglasses to top off the combination? i was swooning with all the bargaining. i emerged from the market in my completely new, completely fake, completely matching set and cruised down the street as if i was the coolest banana in beijing.

no - i still believe that there is no happiness to be found in materialistic pursuits, but no trip to china would be complete without a visit to the new temple - the market - for a spot of worship at the twin alters of capitalism and consumerism.

and of course one mustn't forget to wear one's designer thongs. because they just look so good.

assume the position

ondrej is in beijing

after blogging from yichang i arrived back in this monstrous, polluted, beast that is beijing, and haven't left since. my secret location was dispensed with in favour of a period of rehabilitation and study. i study 1.5 hours a day with a tutor, the rest of my time is spent doing private study, exploring the city, engaging in interactions ranging from the bizarre to the unusual, and having lots of ondrej time (of which i seemingly can't get enough).

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i'm staying in a forgetable little hostel in wudaokou. it's the sort of place where middle-aged men fall asleep at night with cigarettes in their mouths and people are discovered in cages in hidden basements. last week i found a ladder that led up to the building's tarred-over roof. there are six solar panels, a blinking neon hostel sign, and increasingly, a ponderous young australian sitting at the roof's edge at night watching the orange moon shimmering at the horizon. it's added a whole new dimension to my stay.

health - vaseline saves the day (again)

for my birthday three weeks ago, i got an angry, red, weeping rash that covered over 60% of the surface area of my body (using the rule of 9s). at night i would abandon myself to an itching-scratching frenzy. my topical hydrocort didn't seem to touch it, and when certain personal activities of daily living became almost impossible, i decided to prevent a mental health incident and started myself on a course of low dose oral prednisolone. it worked - the rash was replaced by a body wide lock-in of dry skin (i couldn't even turn my head properly my neck was so dry) replete with a different sort of maddening itch. i also developed big boils all over my body. these erupted at various intervals - the one on my right buttcheek popped during a chinese lesson, and my teacher was sickened when i pulled a blood and pus-stained hand out of my pants (or was he sickened by the grin on my face?). on another occasion i was having lunch with a friend. he turned to me and said "ondrej - you're squeezing blood and pus out of a boil on your arm and we're about to eat". i looked up suprised and asked: "is that not ok?". i found the life-cycle of the boils endlessly fascinating. for those of you who have never had boils but love squeezing pimples, you'd be in for a real treat.

my hip/leg injury is getting slowly slowly better. i've given myself a provisional diagnosis of iliopsoas tendonitis, which seems to fit everything. i still can't move very fast and have to take sets of stairs slowly slowly or right leg first, but it's getting there.

cruel and unusual

things took a turn for the weird when i went on a date with a guy called hu (not the president) from northeast china. when he turned up, so did a 26 year old californian high school art teacher - his self-professed jealous ex-boyfriend who was having trouble dealing with the break-up - and decided (to hu's embarrassment and my disbelief) to chaperone us on our date. he sat on the other side of the table over dinner staring, smoking cigarettes and scanning the environment like some sort of space alien. i was convinced that he was wearing an animal hair wig. at one stage he leaned across the table and gave me the name of an american felon who was working in beijing as a plastic surgeon. suggesting a chemical face peel or laser remodelling, he declared: "ondrej - something can be done!". i asked "about what?" to which he replied "about the...feet around your eyes".

it was the absence of the word 'crow's', as in 'something can be done about the crow's feet around your eyes' that so enraged me. going on a first date is awkward enough without an ex-boyfriend turning upt o catalogue your shortcomings.

beautiful bj

beijing is hot, dry, polluted, crowded and wonderful. i can honestly say that before my experiences on the beijing metro, i never truly understood what it meant to 'elbow your way through a crowd'. beijing's little old ladies have now been taught the meaning of fear - when i'm in a hurry, no-one's safe from the cruel justice inflicted by ondrej's sharpest angle. every time i squeeze myself onto a rush hour train - like that last pair of socks being stuffed into an already bulging backpack - i wonder where i am going to get a hit of the same experience in australia? the crowds, the jostling, the press of people even in suburban streets at 11 o'clock at night is something rich for me - a pulsating aliveness that i think we lack in oz.

beijing is famed for its hutongs. these are the inner city's alleyways dotted with doorways that lead into ramshackle courtyards and passageways surrounded by the dwellings of several families. crammed with washing, pot-plants, derelict bicycles and toothless old people who are delighted for you to just wander into their homes and say 'ni hao'. it is these that are being leveled to make way for the new beijing. is it good or bad? does one preserve cultural heritage at the expense of an acceptable standard of living, or improve quality of life at the expense of history? pockets are going to be preserved, but i feel that the beauty of the hutongs is the spreaded-outness and everywhereness of them - the way you can spend a day lost in their mazes. one cannot look at a tree and understand what it is like to be in a forest.

i leave beijing in a just over a week for a final bout of 'travel for the disabled'.

pic 1 - they ate all the real camels

pic 2 - bell tower

pic 3 - fishing in the forbidden city's moat

pic 4 - a typical hutong scene