The all new Cecilie's Pen & Wok Blog
One hundred per cent humidity! “That’s a shower”, I used to joke when I lived there, but now it’s true. Floors are slippery and rivulets of water trickle down walls. Oh, my HK. But 100%! I have never experienced it. Except in the shower.
So I have to think about that every time I long for Hong Kong or wish I had more adventure in my life. At least the air here is dry!
Not according to the people who live here of course. They complain about damp, sauna-like conditions. Yeah right. It’s 47% humidity here today.
Be thankful, be very thankful!
Another reason to be thankful is that the less stressful environment has influenced even me. The other day I was in a small vegetable shop (support the local farmers!) to buy a piece of ginger, and there were four or five people in front of me in the line for the till.
An old woman – by “old” I mean older than me and very bad at walking – suddenly half limped, half darted in front of me in the line, supporting herself on her shopping wheelie bag.
If I had still lived in Hong Kong I would have been irked, irritated. Quite frankly, I would have said something.
Now?
I just thought yeah whatever, I have time.
Then she did the same thing to the woman in front of me in the line, who turned around and gave me a meaningful glance. And when the old woman did it a third time, successfully reaching the till, the woman in front of me and I started laughing soundlessly and exchanging remarks. It was funny! Community feeling!
When she had finally got what she wanted and left, the second woman, the one last overtaken, wanted to have a good chat with the proprietor about vegetables. She made him take some out and put them back, then changed her mind, wanted some kind of tuber she spotted behind the till and to talk about their properties, all their properties.
When she at long last had filled all her bags and paid, on her way out she commented: “Oh, what a long line!”
It was true, at least ten people were now lining up behind me, through the shop and out to the pavement. She thought that was funny.
I have discovered that the people here are very generous with other people’s time. But hey, I no longer have to rush here and there, so I can just smile and laugh.
Talking of food, today’s word in the Cantonese podcast CantoNews from Exile is EAT!
Learn Cantonese the Natural Way – from a Norwegian! Now also with patience, and of course zero violence.
Today’s Cantonese: 耐性 Loi seng – patience
The tractors are a majestic sight as they thunder down Palma’s main drag Jaume III an overcast afternoon in February. On and on they come in their hundreds, horns tooting, cow bells clanging. Many of the drivers seem to be fathers and sons or young couples. They smilingly receive the cheers and applause from the people of Mallorca lining the street. What is their message? Farming or death!
Enough is enough –¡basta ya!
Like hundreds of thousands of farmers all over Europe and the world, Mallorca’s agricultores are at the end of their tether.
The absurd ‘net zero emissions' demand that is strangling the economy of ordinary people everywhere and none more so than farmers, have in an astonishingly short time seen the ‘elites’ – elected and non-elected alike – succeed in inventing increasingly punishing taxes, rules and regulations to “save the climate.” You can say what you want about the 'global warming', now conveniently 'climate change' ideology, but getting rid of those who provide food surely can't be the answer.
You will own nothing and be happy
You will own nothing and you will be happy, chirped our unelected masters in the World Economic Forum in 2016, and since then this august body has wasted no time in making sure we the plebs know our place as we hurtle towards a new feudalism, forelock a-tugging. How they manage to square that it’s better for the environment that everybody is poor, is a question many ask themselves, but then again, they’re not really interested in the unsexy environment. That was so last century and something we can actually control. No, it’s the climate we must all be in constant panic mode over now – and someone must do something, anything, now, now, before it’s too late.
Impossible to grow food
So after deciding that cow farts were the greatest threat to life on earth, the WEF turned their hungry eyes to fertilizer, the one reason why Europeans and others have had enough to eat the last several decades. That, and cheap and abundant fuel, which the WEF is also working to eradicate. In the Netherlands the government is trying to ban fertilizer altogether, leading to a massive farmers’ revolt which spilled over to Germany and then France – thousands of tractors rolling into cities shouting ENOUGH!
For how can you grow any amount of food without fertilizer? And how can you keep the farm going and pay staff when tools, pesticides, electricity and seeds have doubled and tripled in price? When the tax on fuel is so heavy, you can’t afford to run machinery? When you have to sell off tracts of arable farmland to rich tourists to afford to pay staff?
Barely surviving
“We are barely surviving,” says Keith Churcher, a farmer from Mallorca’s northern part where he grows cucumber, cabbage, potatoes, lettuce and other vegetables.
“I wanted to expand, to start exploring the hot pepper market, but the way things are…” shrugs Churcher, who came to Mallorca and started farming “to lead a more honest life.”
“No work is more honest than farming! And yet when we want to keep on doing it, to proudly supply our country with our own produce, we are called extreme right wing. We are not extreme, just ordinary people. And the mainstream media is not reporting these protests that have now been going on now for a very long time. Even I only knew about them through independent media, like Joe Rogan.”
Cheaper imports
When I ask people along the streets “do you support the farmers?” they all answer “of course!” but will they support them by buying produce grown here in Mallorca, when they themselves are now severely out of pocket after two years of not being able to work because of the government’s draconian Covid restrictions?
Because one of the farmers’ demands, or rather, polite requests to be allowed to survive, is that local shops and supermarkets buy from them first, instead of importing cheaper products from abroad. The crippling CO2 tax has got to go, as has the fuel tax.
“We have tried and tried to negotiate with the government through farmers’ associations, but we have nothing left now except direct action,” says Churcher, who praises Mallorca’s farmers for their restraint in this peaceful protest.
“They aren’t doing anything, just sitting in their tractors. But I saw some police in riot gear, totally unnecessary,” he says, shaking his head.
Police helicopter
At that moment a helicopter starts crunching the air above us, looking suspiciously down on people doing absolutely nothing but exercise their democratic rights.
Your tax money at work.
But maybe it’s not so strange that they should be supervising a completely peaceful protest. These are, after all, the same police that flew helicopters above residential areas day in and day out during lockdown, looking for people who dared to be on their private roof terraces, trying to get some of the vitamin D that the government had deemed out of bonds.
The tractors keep coming – more than 300 at a reliable count. A farm-sturdy girl, held aloft in a tractor shovel, raises her arms in victory. But has she won? What is her future if this anti human situation is allowed to continue, with people like the WEF’s Klaus Schwab (a “Bond villain” according to Churcher) deciding who will and will not win?
It’s 5:30 pm and the tractors roll quietly out of Palma’s city centre, back to the farm. Unlike the politicians and the self-appointed WEF overlords, they have honest work to do.
This year I had, by way of an English guy I found on Facebook answering my question "who else is a board game fiend who also loves Sichuan food?" or something, found out that there are actually CNY celebrations here in Palma. Who knew? So far I had only heard about some kind of gambling that would start at 9:30pm, in other words way too late for me.
The extravaganza was in Pere Garau, 49 minutes' intense walk from my gaff. They (or a newspaper article) call it Palma's Chinatown, and yes, in the sense that there are Chinese people, Chinese restaurants and a very good Chinese supermarket there, I suppose it is.
Compared to my hometown for example, where Chinatown is a wooden building, Pere Garau is like the Chinese mainland itself!
But still, the Chinese New Year extravaganza wasn't the riot of red and dragons and cymbals that I had envisaged. Especially since I got there too late for the morning procession and too early for the afternoon one. The throngs were 99% non Chinese, for a start.
On a stage stood a bunch of teenage boys all dressed in black and holding red fans. Oh, now it begins, I thought. Now we're going to hear some rousing choir, possibly revolutionary, perhaps even about the 8th Army beating back the Japanese devils. The boys looked suitably nervous and I felt myself transported to the China of yore, the China I knew so well, in a time before cars, before mobile phones...
The music started, the boys opened their mouths and
started miming - to a Mandarin pop song.
I only talked to a single Chinese person that day, but by an incredible stroke of luck she turned out to be from Guangzhou, the very cradle of Cantonese language and culture. That cradle was always a thorn in the eye of the communists, who have managed to more or less eradicate Cantonese from that province, as evidenced by her talking to her children in Mandarin...
I thought how absolutely hilarious it would be if they could take Cantonese lessons from me! What a slap in the face of you know who.
They don't know what they are missing by not speaking Cantonese, the coolest and most riotous language in the world. But people now think 'Chinese' is imperialist language Mandarin and awful, crippled, simplified characters.
What happened to the love of the Hong Kong way, of Bruce Lee and Kung Fu? Has it all become just a quaint relic, dusted off at Chinese New Year?
Is the entire culture something that will just live on in scattered pockets abroad, kept alive by fundamentalists like me, but otherwise strangled to death by philistines?
Sigh. So I urge you, if you want to fight back against the hamfisted imperialism of the gang that wants to rule the world, to Learn Cantonese the Natural Way - from a Norwegian!
Having missed (forgotten about) it last year, and the year before, and of course the year before that, I was wildly excited to be able to go to the thing known as San Antoni, where people take their animals to be blessed by the local priest.
Although with a much lower turnout than what I remembered from the San Antoni festival of 2020, it was a fun morning with lots of dogs. As usual, the little ones were the crazed yappy fascists, the big ones dignified.
I recognised one handler and his animal - a falcon! Or some bird that can hack you to death. Or was he the geezer who last time had held a glaring owl?
This year also featured an owl - and oh what a beautiful creature. It looked like it had been embroidered in some Elizabethan court. No one would think its speciality was tearing small rodents apart in the dark.
There were drums, Mallorcan bag pipes and a whole orchestra.
I complemented this musician on his shiny instrument, and he said "Do you know what it's called?"
I took a wild guess. - Oscar? This led to much merriment among the clarinets and bassoons. "Oscar! Ha ha ha!" (or ja ja ja, as they say.)
"No, it's called Corny," he said. I thought that was funny. Much funnier than Oscar! Then he said Corny is the Mallorcan word for French horn. I googled it but it came to naught.
The poor dogs languishing in famous shelter Son Reus were out in force, begging people to adopt them. When my ginga brute Koldbrann is gone, it's going to be so hard not to do it. But it turns out running a dog show solo without servants (or "helpers" as they used to be called in Hong Kong although I think this is misleading because help is free) is just too ... Unfree. But who wants to be free from a dog?
Ah! People! Animals! I must go to more of these things, because Mallorca is packed with festivals and holidays, pagan and Christian.
Talking of going to, in the latest Cantonese Podcast I explain the many uses of the word GO. (去)
It's a verb, but also a preposition! Who knew? I did, that's why I recommend to everybody that they ought to Learn Cantonese the Natural Way - from a Norwegian!
Last week health minister Monica Garcia from the socialist minority coalition told Cadena Ser radio: 'We are talking about putting on a mask when you enter a health centre and taking it off when you leave. I don't think it is any drama."
Really, not any drama - like locking down society for 15 days, followed by month after month, "to flatten the curve"? That drama didn't end properly here in Spain until July last year, more than two and a half years since they started handing out the first fines for exercising basic human rights.
As anybody who has taken even a fleeting glance at socialism the last 100 years or so knows, it's never "only" a little this or a little that. They start with "only" in hospitals and health centres, then what? Mandatory masks on public transport again? In shops? In the street?
Garcia didn't even mention the word covid, just "respiratory illnesses". What, like colds? Coughing and sneezing? Because that never happens in winter. And even if it is covid and the cases are on the rise, so what? It's a flu among many.
Ironically, the Spanish Flu (which apparently didn't originate in Spain at all, although scientists give varying answers about its origin) is still with us! That's right. The dreadful disease that mowed down millions of children and young people at the beginning of last century, is still around. As a flu among many.
Interestingly, the same day as I read about the latest socialist "we know what's best for you" bleatings, I went to local supermarket Carrefour for some food, to find this right inside the entrance:
Not light blue masks made in China anymore but black ones, made in Spain? Keep the fear up and the people in continued submission but make sure China isn't raking in all the cash? And packs of 50, how many trips to the doctor is one person or family expected to make?
The aforementioned minority socialist coalition, by the way, is deeply discredited in Spain, in fact there have been riots and protests against it for months. One of the main instigators of month after month after month of lockdowns, restrictions, fines and ruining of businesses and lives, Pedro Sánchez, who should be in prison after what he did to us, is inexplicably still prime minister after having been voted out of office not long ago. Is this what they want people to look away from now, with this the thin end of the control wedge?
We still have zero proof that the masks and other "measures," let alone the so called vaccines, were any use at all.
Indeed, last week the architect of the fascistic rules, Antony Fauci, admitted that the six foot distance rule was just taken out of his arse (thin air), according to New York Post - "it sort of just appeared". So why should we believe anything else these people say?
I have something to say: Lei yau mou GAAAAAAU cho ah!
This excellent Cantonese expression covers every situation and especially this. If you want to know what it means, listen to my latest podcasts
and
Yau mou gaaaaau cho ah is in Podcast number 13 quite fittingly, although in Chinese the unlucky number is 4...
Down with tyranny, learn Cantonese the Natural Way - from a Norwegian!
This category contains episodes of the CantoNews From Exile podcast.