Goodbye, Goethe!

At the last gathering I had with my German friends last summer, I made a bold announcement. I said that at the next naturist gathering which will be in summer next year, I would be speaking High German with a liberal sprinkling of Goethe quotations.

When I got home, I tried my hand at my first German lesson. I thought that with some determination and industry, I should be able to memorise a list of German words and construct sentences with them. But what I was not prepared for  and didn't know then is the ubiquitous elision in every German phrase.  For example, I can memorise every word in this sentence:

Und wie geht es Ihnen?

But when the sentence is spoken, it doesn't sound at all like its written form. It sounds more like 'Unt-veegeete-seen'. Everything is elided into something totally different. How can I possibly learn such a language? There's no way I can speak it even if I can memorise all the words.

It's not as if I am a complete linguistic idiot. Although I am certainly no language expert, I'd like to think that I'm reasonably competent in coming to grips with at least a few languages which are very much linguistically diversified. The differences between English and my native Oriental language are huge, to say the least. You can't find two other languages that are more dissimilar than these two. I can also speak like a native an Indo-Polynesian language which is unique in its own way. I didn't think that German which is of the same Germanic family as English would be that difficult but it proves to be insurmountably difficult. According to the US Department of State, the German language is placed in Category 2 in terms of difficulty while French is ranked only 1 in difficulty. So, German is twice as difficult as French and everyone knows how impossible it is to speak French.  But the same website also lists Chinese under Category 4 or one of the 'super-hard languages'.

I remember reading a long time ago that our brains are incapable of acquiring a new language in adulthood. The three languages that I can speak today are languages that I acquired in my early childhood. I know a few people in my country who because of cultural chauvinism taught their children only the Chinese tongue. Their children learnt English only when they went to school and it's easy to see lapses in the language of these children.

For example, one of the peculiarities of the English language is the obligatory nature of the determination of noun phrases which is a feature that is totally absent in Eastern languages. It is so important in English that even in instances that do not admit of the determinative element, linguists speak of it as if it's still there. I have noticed that people who can only speak English after they have gone to school have a tendency even in later life of mentally reverting to their native language by analogy and they seem unable to internalize this simple feature of English grammar.

When I was a boy, I was made to do exercises in Latin. I remember sitting at my desk many a dreadful afternoon fruitlessly declining and conjugating words.  And to what end? I can't speak a word of Latin even if it's to save my life. I can't even shout 'Help me!' in Latin if I fall off a cliff and am hanging on to a frail branch for dear life.

I am positive that any attempt to learn German is going to be a repeat of my childhood drill of 'insula', 'insulae', 'insulam', 'insularum' etc and I'm sure I have mixed up the singular declension with the plural in the list.  It's sad but this is a limitation of the human brain and there is nothing I can do about it. Whatever language that was not acquired in early childhood is lost for ever. And I really thought I would be reading Goethe in the original next summer.

German is a beautiful language and if I can't learn how to speak it, I can at least take a selfie with it.

Gender stereotyping

Now that I have removed almost all my photos from Flickr which has announced that they are going to delete all my photos (the moment SmugMug took over Flickr, everyone knew it was the beginning of the end and now the end has come), I get to see a lot of my photos which have hitherto been buried under a pile of other photos.

Like I've said, every photo tells a tale - that's the beauty of taking selfies. And you should never conceal your face because the face tells more of a tale than other parts of the body.  For example this photo tells me a lot about gender stereotyping. When I was a boy, most of my clothes and toys were what the world has dictated a boy should have. Blue was my favourite colour and you could never catch me wearing anything pink. For some reason pink was taboo. I always thought it was just a natural thing but of course that's nonsense. It's gender stereotyping that the whole world seems quite united on. Every maternity hospital issues blue blankets to newborn baby boys and pink blankets to girls.

In this pic which was taken in Taiwan, someone suggested that I should pose in a sea of flowers. We were all trying our hand at taking artistic photos and someone suggested this would be artistic. But one can tell from my face that I felt uncomfortable and a little sheepish.

That was in March 2013 (as the date stamp tells us). Today, I am no longer affected by such gender stereotyping. I have no qualms about posing with flowers - the more, the merrier. But I still won't wear a pink t-shirt and it's got nothing to do with stereotyping. It's a matter of taste. I just don't like the colour. The colour pink is a representation of the neither-here-nor-there indecisive dithering that I dislike. I like a bold red or a pure white but a mixture of the two that produces a half-hearted tentative pink is just not my cup of tea. I may have abandoned gender stereotyping but I still have good taste.

It's Christmas today, for me.

Guess what? It's Christmas! Christmas has just started for me this morning since I have been so very ill for the past two weeks. With a mince pie in one hand and a Dickens in another while soaking in the gentle tropical sun, I'm as close to Christmas as I can get. Besides, you may not know this but the former altar boy in me can tell you quite authoritatively that it's still Christmas, at least until Epiphany. Merry Christmas!

It has been a rather depressing Christmas. I did not go to church at all. I just stayed at home and looked at the photos that my friends who played in the church orchestra sent to me from church. Except for very rare occasions, every Christmas has seen me in church since my earliest childhood. And I'm always the one who takes the most number of pics and I would post them online or send them to my WhatsApp groups. You may not realise this but church musicians have a lot of time to take photos and selfies and we are at a vantage point for photo-taking. But this time, all I did on Christmas morning was to lie in bed and look at the photos taken by my friends.

There was a time when the Christmas Eucharist would have been brought to me when I was too ill to go to church on Christmas day. But I'm no longer a religious person and I now think it's a bad thing to trouble the clergy over such a small thing.. Like most people, I grew out of my childhood faith but unlike many people, I have continued to serve in the church. 

A few of my readers have asked me some questions about my personal religious faith after I posted this blog post: Did Mary know?  I'm not a private person and I've always found it amusing when people insist on their privacy over almost everything. So, I don't think it's rude to ask me such questions and I'm not averse to answering them. But it's very hard for me to explain in detail what my religious position is. What I can say briefly is everyone, from the most religious to the least, has to solve the internal conflict in him between fact and religious myth. Most adult Christians will say that 'the wise men from Orient land' who were 'led by a star sweetly beaming' is a myth. But to most children and a handful of adults, this is fact. As one Bible scholar puts it succinctly, that Jesus preached to his disciples is probably a historical fact but that he worked miracles is a myth. People of course differ as to what constitutes 'myth' to them. What is myth to one Christian may be fact to another. In my view, it would be wrong to conclude that the more myths a person believes as factual, the more religious he is. If anything, a case may be made out that believing in myth as fact is more an indication of gullibility than piety.

But at the same time, I'm reluctant to give more examples of myth and fact. What is myth to me may be fact to another and if the person is a fundamentalist (like my own brother), he can be offended if he hears me describe as myth what to him is sacred truth. People aren't just amusing in their strange need for privacy; they can also be touchy on subjects which one would have thought would naturally invite a hugely diverse range of opinions.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

For most people, the first thing that springs to mind when they think of Christmas is the partying and the drinking. Although I'm quite a jolly guy and partying is fun, my idea of Christmas does not revolve around such fun. I get up very early on Christmas morning and I'm in church before 7 to rehearse the pieces with the church orchestra. I will then be playing at the different Christmas services all morning, listening to the same sermon until lunch time when I'll go home exhausted.

Going to church early on Christmas morning has been what I have always done from the time I was a toddler and served as an altar boy. And it's not just Christmas. It's every Sunday and on all holy days but of course Christmas is the world's most famous holy day.

A couple of weeks ago, I was attacked by a most virulent flu bug and I became very ill. Although I have recovered, I can't get out of the house this morning and I certainly can't go to church. Christmas doesn't feel like Christmas when you don't go to church.

My policy is always to make the best of everything in every situation. We have lovely Christmas delights particularly the pudding but I can't eat much in my current state. I can at least lie down with a book and my laptop and I can at least blog about my current condition and even post a photo in my photo diary.  Merry Christmas, folks!!!

Flickr needs ninnies. Are you one?

As everyone knows, I have been complaining ad nauseam about Crooked Flickr. They promised 1 Tetrabyte of free photo storage space and then suddenly, just a few weeks ago, they announced that they will delete the photos in all free accounts that are in excess of 1,000 photos. They will delete your photos as early as 5 February next year. One way out, and of course they recommend this, is you become a paid subscriber. Pay them USD 50.00 a year and they won't delete your photos. But if you should forget to renew your subscription for whatever reason, their scissors will go to work and your photos will be deleted.

Flickr knows that the world is full of ninnies. Threaten them with the deletion of their photos (never mind your earlier promise that they would be given 1 Tetrabyte of free photo storage space) and people will generally go on their knees and hand you whatever money you ask for.  Flickr needs ninnies but alas for them, I'm not one. There may be millions of ninnies out there and they don't need me but the fact is I'm not one and can never be one. You can threaten all you want to delete my photos unless I pay up but the fighter in me will do what I can to salvage my property and ask you to bugger off.

I decided to spend weeks downloading all my photos systematically. And when I last checked, I had more than 180,000 photos on Flickr. I paid more than USD 200.00 to get reliable hard disks and for the next couple of weeks or so, I put my nose to the grindstone downloading everything. I'm happy to say that I succeeded in downloading ALL my 180,000 photos. I have a back up in case one hard disk crashes.

I will still maintain my Flickr account (for free) so I can tell people not to allow themselves to be blackmailed by Flickr. But I will direct people to this blog. There won't be new content on Flickr - my intention is not to benefit Crooked Flickr in any way.

The good thing about getting out of Flickr is my photos now have a new lease of life. They used to be all stored up somewhere deep in Flickr and quite inaccessible even to me.  Today, all my photos are stored in folders according to the date. I can pick any photo according to the date when it was taken and post them on this blog; it's that easy.

For example, here is a photo taken in a haunted house that I booked in Sarlat-la-Canéda close to Christmas on 19 December 2013. It is a house that dates back to the 17th century and it was shortly after midnight (the photo time stamp says it was 1.10 am) when I decided to take lots of selfies to see if I might capture the image of some ancient ghost in my photos. But I had no luck; the only ghost was me.

If you have a Flickr account and you are not a ninny, start downloading all your photos. We must show large companies (such as Flickr) they can't get their money by going back on their word and threatening their users that their photos will be deleted if they don't pay up.  You cannot conscientiously pay such a company any money.

Happy Christmas!

As the whole world remembers the Holy Birth, allow me this opportunity of wishing all naturists and all my readers a most joyous merry fun-filled and blessed Christmas.

The only connection to Christmas this photo has is the faded colours of green and red.

Did Mary Know?

This is a touch religious but here's my excuse - it's the season to celebrate the birth of Jesus and I honestly am treating this topic more from a historical / intellectual perspective than from anything religious. If you know me well enough, you will know I am not the religious kind.

Anyway, I have just recovered from a terrible flu and I'm lying down most of the time with nothing better to do and I just read an article in Christianity Today.  The writer, a PhD theology student from St Andrew's University, in reply to the question posed in the famous modern Christmas song 'Mary, did you know?' argues that Mary knew Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God and God himself. Here's the link to the article.

The writer's only argument is based on Luke 2 in which is described a scene where a multitude of angels appeared to a group of shepherds and announced the birth of Jesus and these shepherds went to Mary and told her what they saw. In Luke 2:19 we are told that in response to what the shepherds told her they saw, 'Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart'. From this alone, the writer of the article in Christianity Today concludes that Mary must have known that the baby before her was God himself.

I will show why the writer was badly mistaken in drawing her conclusion. There are many stories in the Gospels of Jesus attracting large crowds of followers who wanted to listen to his preaching and his family, i.e Jesus' mother and brothers would go to him to take him home. Sometimes, it's written that they thought he was crazy and sometimes, his rebuff of them is made clear.

In Mark's Gospel, we are told that Jesus' family heard of how crowded Jesus' preaching assignments were and in Mark 3:19, we read 'When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind".'

Also, in Luke 8 we read this: 'Now Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you." He replied, "My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice."

If Mary really believed that Jesus was the Messiah or the Son of God, she would not have thought he was out of his mind and would not have gone repeatedly to take him home when he was preaching to crowds of people. Presumably that would have been part of the job description for a Messiah. 

That's all I wanted to say - that I disagree with the writer of the article and in reply to the Christmas song 'Mary, did you know?' is a resounding 'Of course she didn't know. Or rather, she didn't believe it.'

I have more to say about what else I find unconvincing in the Christmas story but hey, this is my naturist blog and not a religious blog. And besides, it's just two more days to the world's most important birthday celebration in the history of humanity so let's not have any more controversial posts. Haha

Formed of frailty

I have been salvaging my photos from Flickr which went back on its word to provide 1 Tb of free photo space and has now notified all users that their photos will be deleted in early February 2019. Rather than be coerced by Flickr into being a paid subscriber and pay them US$50 a year, I have bought more than US$200 worth of external disk space to upload my more than 175,000 photos on Flickr. I had more than 180,000 photos on Flickr at my last count.

But I cannot, as a matter of principle, pay a company money for having gone back on its word. Naturally, Flickr's greatest wish is for every user of Flickr to become a paid subscriber. By threatening to delete all their photos, Flickr is hoping to push everybody into paying them money just to save their photos. This is a vile dastardly deed that I cannot tolerate.

I have worked very hard to save all my photos and a few days ago, I succeeded in downloading all my photos and I have backed them all up in at least two external hard drives. In the process, I have discovered many interesting photos of me and my family.

Every photo tells a tale and even the ugliest photo that you probably would be too ashamed to show anyone has a story to tell of your life. This photo is an example. It was taken on 18 June 2012, more than six and a half years ago.

My father has hypertension and diabetes for a long time. A thorough physical examination revealed that I had neither. But my cardiologist was not so satisfied with my blood pressure which seemed to be extremely variable. He thought I became nervous every time the blood pressure kit was strapped on my arm and the reading became inaccurate. That's how unreliable a blood pressure test is. And there are many people who are hypertensive but their blood pressure only goes up in the middle of the night when they're asleep or when they least expect it and not when they are being tested for it. To get a most reliable reading, you have to put on the above.

It is a mobile blood pressure test kit which is strapped to your body for the next 24 hours. You can't take a bath or a shower during the entire duration, which isn't such a bad thing if you are prepared for it and your home air-conditioning is working fine. What was really torturous for me was the strap on my left arm which tightened once every 15 minutes for the next 24 hours to take my blood pressure reading. Even when you're asleep. your arm gets an almighty squeeze every 15 minutes. You may think it's nothing. It's the same feeling you get whenever your blood pressure is taken and your arm is squeezed but you have to multiply that more than a hundred times. Once every 15 minutes for 24 hours.

The next day, I was back at my cardiologist's and boy was I glad when the hateful strap was removed for good. And the results made the suffering worth while. I was found to have a consistently normal blood pressure. Except for very minor variations of one or two points, 99% of my reading was the perfect 120 by 80 even in the middle of the night when I would have thought the extreme discomfort caused by the blood pressure kit would exacerbate my blood pressure.

The misunderstood selfie-taker

Many years ago, two chefs from two different restaurants decided that they would ban all cameras and photo-taking. One chef said that food was to be eaten, not photographed. He particularly did not like to see his customers snapping selfies with their food. It didn't take more than a month or two before both restaurants had to close down. One of them tried to salvage his business by declaring that he had changed his mind; he now encouraged photograph-taking. Take as many photos as you want, he pleaded. But it was too late. When a person wages war against a selfie taker, there is no turning back. The die is cast and every selfie lover will do his bit. In most cities in Asia that would mean just about every single customer of yours. 

Restaurants that ban selfie-taking may survive in Europe but there's no way such a restaurant can make ends meet in Asia. When I think about it, if I have a choice to eat something without once taking a pic or to pose for pics with the food without eating it, I would rather pose for pictures with the food than eat it. 

Posing with food

It's very hard to explain why Asians are so obsessed with selfie-taking. I was once in a nondescript Underground station in London and a friend I was with asked me why a group of Korean tourists were taking selfies in the station itself. It was quite an ugly station actually but they were all busy taking selfies with their phones/cameras. Before I could think of an answer, a train approached and out came my phone for a quick selfie. I just had to take a selfie with an approaching train and I do this even in my own country. 

The selfies taken in this blog are nude because this is my naturist photo diary. But I have a lot more clothed selfies than nude ones. I was asked why I took selfies when I cycled beside the Elbe river last summer into the Czech Republic. I take selfies when I'm cycling to the grocery shop in my own hometown and I don't take selfies when I'm cycling beside the Elbe??? I don't even understand the question.

Selfie taken beside the Elbe

Now, for an explanation of what goes on in the head. I can't speak for others but I have always been an avid diary keeper. I have kept a diary since I was 7 and every day of my life is documented. I almost never read my diary entries after I have entered them but they do have their uses. Since the advent of digital photography, I began to make fewer and fewer diary entries. Photographs take over the need to write anything. 

Have the photos helped me in any way? Oh yes they have and many times too. I'll just recount one incident. A few months ago there was a thunderstorm and for some reason, something snapped in the electronic auto-gate of my house. We couldn't open the gate and the cars parked within could not be taken out. I needed to act quickly. I looked at the fuse box and there were hundreds of switches. Which controlled the gate? I also looked for the key that could unlock the gate manually but I had a whole chest of keys and there were thousands of them.  Which one was the right key?  

I vaguely remembered that three years ago, I had my gate repaired. I went into Google Photos and typed 'gate'. All the photos I took that had something to do with the gate appeared. As it turned out, when the gate repairer repaired my gate three years ago, he showed me the key to the gate that I should use in a moment of emergency. I took a picture of it  I also took a picture of the correct switch in the fuse box that controlled the gate.  Everything I needed was in my album of photos and all were searchable in Google Photos.

You can never go wrong for taking a photo. 

Why nobody defends English grammar

Let's suppose someone writing a book on French grammar decides to classify 'chien' as a conjunction and not a noun. You can be sure there will protests from Paris to Port Moresby and from there to Quebec. The reason is obvious. French-speaking people do know their French grammar, at least, those who are reasonably educated.

But when Bas Aarts advised the British government to drop the teaching of the subjunctive in schools in Britain, nobody protested. Thankfully, the government didn't listen to him.  At that time I could not understand why the public was silent and I put down my thoughts on a different platform from this but if you are interested in why I say Bas Aarts is totally wrong about the subjunctive, you may read what I wrote about three years ago which I've uploaded here.

The reason for the total silence in the English-speaking world is nobody today understands English grammar or knows it enough to be able to raise any meaningful objection. If Bas Aarts had been around in the first half of the 20th century, countless people would have written scathing letters to the Times complaining about his attempted massacre of the English tongue. To understand why people don't know a thing about English grammar today, we must go back half a century to the then 'modern' idea of language learning. In the 1960s, the prevailing school of thought was that language should be purely communicational. The study of grammar was viewed as laborious and tedious and to some extent deleterious to a student's general well-being. This view was hugely popular and was accepted by every English language educator. It was believed that all you needed to do was to teach a child to speak and write reasonably correct English. A child didn't have to delve deep into grammar. This view was so popular that it affected the teaching of English in every country in the world including my country. Schools taught English without going into the fundamental workings of the language itself. Children were taught to construct correct sentences without being taught the basic parts of speech. But this philosophy didn't affect the teaching of other languages and we were all taught 语法 for Chinese and nahu for the Malay/Indonesian language. It only affected the teaching of English. There were some families that were resistant to change and the kids in these families were given extra language lessons outside of the school curriculum and kids were made to do the usual parsing exercises. By the way, most of the people I know today to do not even know what 'parsing' means. 

Recently, educators in Britain and elsewhere decided that it was a horrid mistake not to teach children grammar. We now have a whole generation of people who do not know English grammar. In this climate where almost every English-speaking person lives in a grammarless cavern (if I may borrow the barbed words of Robert Burchfield, the former Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary), British schools suddenly re-introduced grammar as a necessary part of primary school education and naturally, parents are up in arms. Some go so far as to get their children to boycott classes.

Now, you can see why they don't protest when books that tear apart traditional English grammar are published but everyone is up in arms when their kids are forced to study grammar. Nobody knows enough grammar to be able to tell if a book contains any teaching that is not in conformity with standard grammar. Unless we are very old or we have a different education, most of us would have gone to school long after the 1960s; we all belong to the grammarless generation.

Just three years ago, the Daily Mail reported that teachers in Britain had to be re-educated because most of them were totally ignorant of basic English grammar.  But what the Daily Mail reported on Britain is perfectly applicable to all other countries in the world where English is taught. This is what the Daily Mail says, 'More than half of undergraduates, many of whom will train as teachers, have such a poor grasp of grammar that they cannot recognise that "and" is a conjunction, identify "in" as a preposition, or describe "technical" as an adjective.'

You don't need the newspapers to tell you that. You just have to think of the people around you. If they speak only English, chances are they don't know a thing about grammar. That practically covers the entire English-speaking world. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have our early education tailored differently from the national curriculum must have countless experiences with people who know absolutely nothing about grammar. And the insidious thing about grammar ignorance is most people don't even know that they are ignorant of grammar. And another insidious thing about it is you cannot even talk about it. People are sure to be offended if you point out to them the obvious - that they don't know grammar.

I was once seated next to an Englishman in a concert hall and before the concert started, he went through the programme with his young daughter. He explained to her what a sextet was. And then he came to the word 'contentment'. Now, this father was thorough and conscientious in educating his daughter. He first told her it was a noun. So far, so good. He then reduced the word to "content" and gave his daughter a sentence with the word in it by way of illustration: 'I am content', he said. He asked his daughter what part of speech 'content' in the sentence was. When his daughter was silent, he proceeded to explain to her that an adverb was a word that described how something was. Since "content" described how he felt, it was an adverb!

In another instance of 'involuntary' eavesdropping, I was in a restaurant seated at a table next to that occupied by a man (unmistakably British from his accent) and his wife who I think was Japanese. They had a young child who said his plate of chips were 'my all chips'.  His father corrected him, 'All my chips' to which the child responded quite cleverly, 'I like ALL CHIPS. These are my all chips.' The father replied patiently, 'It's ALL MY chips'. 'Why?' asked the child. 'There's no why to it. It's just the way grammar is' was the father's answer. The child refused to accept what his father said and kept saying 'my all chips' annoyingly throughout the dinner.

In both instances, the fathers had no intention of misleading their own children. They really believed they knew grammar and they were teaching their children 'standard English grammar'. In declaring to his child that 'it's just the way grammar is', the father in the second instance was doing what most people who are ignorant of grammar love to do - make grammar out to be disorganised and capricious. But grammar isn't like that at all. There is a sound grammatical reason why we only say 'all my chips' and never 'my all chips' and to tell your child that that's just the way grammar is won't help your child in any meaningful way at all. For one thing, it will put the child off grammar. Nobody wants to read up on a subject that has no rules and you only say it one way because that's 'just the way it is'.

Two or three years ago, the UK schools minister Nick Gibb was asked by a BBC interviewer what part of speech 'after' was in the sentence 'She came home after I had eaten my dinner.' He said it was a preposition and of course the interviewer laughed at him quite cruelly. This was the same question taken from a test for 11-year-olds and the education minister got it wrong.

It was here that the wayward grammarian Bas Aarts stuck his foot in. He said the schools minister was right if you go by his own analysis of grammar which I must stress differs entirely from standard grammar. I only know of two such wayward grammarians in the world of English grammar. Everyone else classifies 'after' in that sentence as a subordinating conjunction and not a preposition. Schools in the UK and all over the world follow standard grammar and Nick Gibb would have been marked wrong if he had taken the test (his own test) for 11-year-olds.

Every English dictionary in the world including the definitive OED (in 20 volumes) follows the classification of standard grammar. I once wrote to Bas Aarts on this and he replied very briefly that you can't assume the standard analysis is right just because it's been around for a long time. But he didn't elaborate why he was right and the whole world wrong.

I have always simply dismissed the view of these two renegade linguists because honestly, who cares what they think when billions of linguists including all English dictionaries say they are wrong. But these two grammarians are extremely renowned and they have written authoritative books on grammar and surely we ought to know at least  what they are saying?

It was in this context that my son recently got me Bas Aarts'  Oxford Modern English Grammar and very cheekily told me that it was good to read something 'heretical' - the very same advice I have given my kids since they were very young.

Well, I have finally read the book and this is my verdict:

As you can see, Bas Aarts' book is rightly used as my footrest. The book in my hand is the most authoritative grammar of the English language and is commonly referred to as the Bible of English grammar - A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language written by four of the world's best linguists including Randolph Quirk. The CGEL is the standard followed by the entire world wherever English is taught in a school curriculum from Britain to Brunei and you will need to read it every now and then if you happen to be reading Bas Aarts' book - just to restore your sanity.

Do I recommend Bas Aarts' book? Certainly not. You should only read it if you are perfectly familiar with standard English grammar and you can tell whenever there is a deliberate departure from it. I can say more about Bas Aarts' book but this is not the right forum. This is my photo blog on my life as a naturist. But we naturists do have other interests apart from sitting around naked. It's just that I don't want to hijack this blog with non-naturist articles.

TWG - honest or deceptive?

I place an absolute ban on the purchase of TWG products for my family because I believe they are dishonest in giving themselves a fake origin. Then what am I doing with TWG tea this afternoon?

I am now quite unwell and I felt I needed a hot drink. But because I have taken Klacid, milk is contra-indicated. Without milk, there is nothing I can drink that is hot. But someone gave me a tin of TWG Christmas tea which is drunk without milk and I might as well drink it, seeing that I can't drink any other hot drink.

TWG is a big name. It's one of the most successful tea companies in the world. They have outlets in every major city all over the world and in reputable shopping centres. There's TWG in Harrods too.

But TWG is a Singapore company called The Wellness Group which dealt in spas and other health-related products before they started a tea business under the name TWG in 2008. But the TWG logo always has the year 1837 emblazoned on it.

The TWG has been sued in various parts of the world and the argument they give why they have 1837 written on their logo is that the founders love and respect the Singapore Chamber of Commerce which was established in 1837. But there is nothing in the packaging that will even remotely disclose to the purchaser that TWG is a Singapore company.

Look at the next TWG label:

Does this not look like something lifted from an illustrations in one of Charles Dickens' books? Do you think they are deceptive or is all this just coincidence and any potential customer can tell quite easily that TWG is a Singapore company that started life in 2008?

If I were a businessman and I started a tea company, I would print 1564 on the label and if I were questioned, I would simply say I loved Shakespeare and it was he who inspired me to start a tea company.

For further reading:

South China Morning Post
Straits Times

Never-ending illness.

At 4am, I felt my body was burning. I tried to go back to sleep but I could not. I went downstairs and checked my temperature. My fever had spiked again.

But later in the morning when everyone was having breakfast, I felt a lot better. I could even walk a bit  as my wife sprinkled BTI pellets in the drains, etc to kill mosquito larvae.

But later in the morning, my fever went up again and I was knocked out one more time.

In sickness and in health

Yesterday I had my dinner of Thai green curry but I found it a bit too spicy and I didn't have much of an appetite. Immediately after my dinner, I became feverish. My daughter took a photo of me as I placed a thermometer in my mouth. She said I looked the picture of death and she's right. I couldn't even sit up properly.

And this was my temperature: 38.7

I went to bed immediately after taking paracetamol to lower my temperature. The next morning, I felt better and I thought the worst was over. But at 10.45am, I felt feverish and my temperature had gone even higher - 39.1.

I took paracetamol and Klacid, an antibiotic and I'm fine again. Here I am feeding my fish at 1.30pm looking fine again. Let's hope the fever doesn't come back.

The rosy picture did not stay on very long. At 5.45pm, I felt my body burning again and sure enough my temperature has gone up again.

Down but not out

I woke up this morning with a very bad flu and sore throat. My nose has been runny the whole day and even now (6.25pm).

Someone on this blog remarked that I didn't seem to have bad days. But this is one truly rotten day for me. Sore throat and flu.  But I have always refused to allow the cruel hand of fate to ruin my day. I always make the best of a rotten deal. As the poet says, under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.

So I got myself a cup, dissolved a tablet of 1000mg Vitamin C and helped myself to a persimmon and took selfies of course! I read somewhere once that a selfie addict is always a happy person.

You can't even tell I'm unwell. I really believe that if you smile and have a good time, all your troubles will be miles away (OK, my excuse for plagiarizing is it's so close to Christmas!).

My wife said I should be clothed today because I'm not well but hey, I live almost on the equator. I'm sure I will feel better without the impediment of clothing.

In my country, the government is very disturbed by the high proportion of people with clinical depression. I believe a lot of it is due to the extremely high expectations people place on themselves. Let's all take it easy and have a truly merry time as we prepare for the birth of the King of Kings.

There's always a first time

I've been telling some of my friends to try out naturism. There's always a first time.

Lately, I've been downloading all my photos from Flickr to my hard disks because Flickr will be deleting thousands and thousands of my photos early next year. As I download the photos, I get to see some of them that I haven't seen for some time.

This pic is the very first photo I took of myself in a social naturist event. I have been a naturist for a long time but I had not joined other naturists and the thought of social naturism had not even occurred to me.

There's always a first time.

Privacy - is it really all that good?

I have written two posts that I decided not to post. When I started this blog, I wanted to freely post anything that came to my mind. But it's not that easy. I'd like to think that I keep no secrets and my thoughts are open for the world to see but alas, it's not that simple. People are generally intolerant and if they think you hold certain views that they don't accept, they will hate you for them. And I have decided not to make enemies.

The pic I was about to post showed me reading a book. If you noticed, I have always been very careful about not showing the titles of the books I read. I don't like to be judged based on the books I read. But in the series of photos I took this afternoon, the title of the book can be seen.

Just in case you think I am into some weird ideology, I'm not. The book is a book any parent would be happy to place in the hands of their kids. It's not political, religious or pornographic.  It's just that people have fixed ideas about things. The other thing is the two posts I wrote went on to more than 2000 words. This is my photo diary and I must not be tediously wordy.

Here's a pic of me feeding my fish this afternoon. The sad thing is since my old set of fish had died, I no longer see my fish jumping out of the water during feeding time which they did in the past. I took a lot of pics during feeding today but this is the only photo that a bit of my koi can be seen. Just a flash of orange.

Home sweet home

The first thing I did when I got home was to leap for joy. This is a pose my wife has told me not to do. She thinks I will one day fall into the water and knock my head against the side and drown. But I'm used to living dangerously. I'm really quite careful. You can see I'm leaning slightly forward so I don't fall backwards. And I'm not wearing footwear which means my toes have perfect control.

Some anonymous person remarked in one of my posts that my recent hotel photos were 'flirtatious'. He suggested that I should go outdoor for photos which was impossible because I was holed up in my hotel room in Kuala Lumpur which had just held a rally on the supremacy of Islam in Malaysia. Had I done any nude outdoor shot, I would probably have been stoned to death according to Sharia law. After having been flogged a thousand times, no doubt. 

None of the pics in this blog is flirtatious or remotely sexual. They are calculated to normalise nudity. For some people who are addicted to sex, nudity in a hotel room will of course remind them of sex because presumably that's what they always do in hotel rooms in an illicit manner. But that was not my intention.

It's good to be home. 

A punnet a day AND female genital mutilation

I don't like apples and there's hardly any vitamin C in them. It's oranges that are chock-full of them. Anyway, it's Monday and I'm leaving for home later today. I've had enough of racist Malaysia. I arrived at the height of their racist rally with all embassies warning their citizens not to go to KL and I can't pretend that I'm sorry to go home to a sane country. Contrary to the prediction of the Chief of Police in Malaysia, the rally didn't turn into a riot. But there was no cause for a riot when the government agreed with the racist people that anti-racial discrimination has no place in Malaysia because Malaysia practises racial discrimination and intends to do it for as long as it can.

And there is one more thing that appeared on the news in Malaysia. The Malaysian government informed the UN that female genital mutilation is a part of Malaysian culture. Naturally, when the west hears that something is cultural, they tend to think it must be OK and not to be meddled with. Here's the news report by Malaysia's official English language newspaper.

Of course it's religious and not just cultural. If you are one of those who think female genital mutilation is purely cultural and has nothing to do with Islam, you may want to read the official position under Islamic teaching.  In Islam, female genital mutilation is considered mustahabb but not obligatory. Mustahabb is in Arabic and it means important and laudable. If you are a true Muslim and you believe something is religiously important and laudable, would you not do it to your infant daughter? So, please don't say it's not religious. Let's be honest.

It's not just racism. There are just too many things I feel obliged to say when I visit Malaysia. I'm so looking forward to bidding this country farewell and going home.

Editorial message: Moderation of comments

Good morning! I'm glad to say that the racist rally yesterday did not worsen into a riot. The rally was to thank the government for endorsing racism in Malaysia and for rebuffing the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Much as I hate this country for its rank racism, I must say the people are generally very nice and the food is great. It's time for breakfast. But first I have to work hard on the settings of this blog. I need to change the comments settings. I had allowed for comments to be posted freely but sadly my blog was flooded last night with lewd comments which have no place in this blog. That a family man and a father of two can be the target of such licentious comments boggles the mind. We naturists clearly have enemies among non-naturists who obviously hate the sight of decent nudity.

Please do not feel disheartened when you see that your comment is under moderation. I will post them as soon as I can. You can disagree with me or post criticisms of any sort and I will allow them. I just won't allow lewd comments. I have also removed blogger's requirement for word verification when comments are made which can be irritating for you when you make a comment. The purpose is to ensure that you're human!  I don't think I need any assurance that you're human. Frankly, I would more than welcome comments from non-humans and Martians.

Me working hard on my blog

Kuala Lumpur

Thanks for all your comments on my blog as well as the private messages that some of you sent me. I read every single message and I answer each one without fail. A few of you complain that this is supposed to be my photo diary but I'm rather sparing in photos. One of you wrote that I posted more photos on Tumblr. I will redress that error immediately. I don't want this blog to be any less than the Tumblr blog that I have abandoned. One person asked me why I hid my genitals in the photos. I didn't. I don't believe I have ever done that. Someone asked me what I liked best about Malaysia.

Much of my time is spent reading.

I have more to say about this book I'm reading but I will leave that for another day.

I confess that in my earlier post, I had a choice of a few photos to pick that showed me sitting by the window with a view of the ground on which the racist rally was held but I chose a photo which did not show my genitals. I did that not because I'm ashamed - I don't think anyone can seriously believe that  I'm ashamed of my body. I suppose I chose the no-genitals pic instinctively. I can't deny that I am to some extent affected by the non-naturist world and I'm glad one of my blog readers raised this question because it tells me more about myself that I didn't know earlier. We're all affected by the textile world but I make a conscious effort to rebel against such unwholesome influence.

As for the question what I love best about Malaysia, it's without a doubt the food. I had to add a plate of satay to my usual nightcap. Malaysian satay is incredibly delicious and much better than what you can get in other countries. But it's impossible to get pork satay in Malaysia which is quite common in Singapore and Bali. The satay in this photo is chicken and beef.

Caught nude in a racist rally!

Many people in the West are not aware of the open racism practised in Malaysia. Racism is written into the Malaysian constitution and laws. Children become aware from a very early age what it means not to be a Malay or a Muslim in Malaysia. There are schools you are not allowed to go to and places in schools and colleges are very much limited if you are not a Malay or a Muslim. Every aspect of life is tainted by firm racist policies. Even private developers who sell houses to the public are required to give a huge discount to anyone who is a Malay and a Muslim and to charge the non-Malay and non-Muslim a higher price. A church has been ordered to remove a cross from its roof because it was offensive to Muslims who lived nearby. And Hindu women whose husbands secretly converted to Islam have been refused custody rights of their children when their husbands divorce them under Islamic law that allows for easy unilateral divorce by the pronouncement of three 'talaks'. A typical Malaysian is plagued by millions of racist abuses every day of his life from cradle to grave if he is not a Malay or a Muslim. 

I keep saying 'Malay or Muslim' but in reality, all Malays are required to be Muslim by law. Apostasy (the renouncing of faith) by a Muslim is not permitted by law. Under Sharia law, the penalty is death by stoning. Any Muslim who loses his faith is under Sharia law to be sentenced to death by stoning, no questions asked.

I booked my hotel and flight to Kuala Lumpur (KL) last week. Last night, I got a travel directive alert from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in my country warning all citizens of a huge racist rally to be organised in Dataran Merdeka in KL which happens to be just next to my hotel. The thought did cross my mind to cancel my trip. But I told myself what a wonderful blog post I could write if I continued with my trip. I could post a photo of me nude at my window overlooking the place where the racist rally is held. Wouldn't that make a wonderful photo? Just think about the risk I took just so I could write this blog post!

What is this rally all about? When the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) asked countries to sign a treaty against racial discrimination, Malaysia dithered. Malaysia then took the decision to oppose ICERD. This rally in KL is not the first rally against ICERD. There have been other such rallies all over Malaysia. This rally in KL is the biggest. Many Malay and Muslim groups including the former ruling party UMNO, the Opposition Islamic Party PAS and many others encourage the holding of such rallies all over Malaysia. The Islamic Party PAS which rules the State of Kelantan even announced a public holiday on Sunday (tomorrow) to encourage its people to come to KL for the rally. Sunday is normally a working day in Kelantan; their weekend is on a Friday, the Muslim day of prayer.

But the government of Malaysia is all for racial discrimination against non-Malays and non-Muslims in Malaysia. Racial discrimination has been a part of Malaysian life since its independence. It's because Singapore refused to accept racism in its internal politics that Malaysia expelled Singapore from the Federation in 1965, and thank God for that!

What then is the purpose of the rally when the government has made it clear that racial discrimination must continue in Malaysia? What this rally has done is to declare to the world that organised State-sanctioned Constitution-protected racism is very much a part of its culture. The Malays / Muslims in Malaysia want to make a firm statement that nobody should try to abolish racism in Malaysia.

Here's a link to an article in the official Malaysian newspapers, The New Straits Times, on the huge rally today:
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2018/12/438588/anti-icerd-rally-so-whats-estimate

Now, that I'm safe in my hotel room, here's a pic of me by my hotel window overlooking the rally ground. After the risks I've put myself through, I deserve an applause for this photo! And it's a good photo to post because naturism is inherently opposed to racism. Racism is all about skin colour and the usual prejudice we see in the world is against the dark skin. But it's still no less racism when the discrimination is against those of a lighter colour, as is the case in Malaysia. Of course, in Malaysia, the racism also takes on a religious tone - non-Muslims are discriminated against. Didn't Ben Affleck in a talk with Bill Maher give Malaysia as an example of a moderate Muslim State? Western defenders of Islam such as Ben Affleck should look for another more palatable example of a moderate Muslim state, if they can really find one.

Why the non-naturist thinks this way

Recently, Tumblr announced that it would ban nudity from 17 December onwards. A friend of mine said that he had always equated Tumblr with porn and this came as a surprise to him. I have used Tumblr and I have never thought of it as a porn website. I have always viewed it as a website that allowed nudity because it was enlightened enough to know that nudity is not indecent. I don't care if a website or a blog-hosting site bans porn. That's up to them. But it puzzles me how they can lump naturism with porn, which is what Tumblr undoubtedly does.

It has been pointed out that of the entire animal kingdom, we are the only species that has conditioned ourselves to take offence at the sight of our own nudity. But what caused this in the first place. It can't be that we sat down one day and decided that we should learn to find our own bodies repugnant and offensive.

Recently, I sent this pic to a WhatsApp group of my former classmates and one of them replied, 'How sad. Would've been a lovely photo if not for the nudity.' Someone else replied, 'The dogs should've been clothed?' What was meant in jest should in fact be looked at in earnest.  Why indeed should the nudity of only one species ruin a photo? What made us pick ourselves as the only species whose body is so repulsive that it can ruin a photo if it's not covered up?

The answer is as clear to me as the midday sun in a cloudless sky. It's something I've been talking about for years. We naturists are to blame for this. It's the lack of naturist photos on the internet. We should flood the Internet with our decent naturist photos.  Just think about it for a minute. Every photo you see online that shows a naked person is almost always porn. How is the world not to think of nudity as sexual if the majority of people who call themselves naturists are ashamed to show their nudity online? These are the closet nudists I'm talking about. Some of them want to post their nude photos but they hide their faces and identity. Others insist on a camera ban in any place that they appear naked in.

These closet nudists are the ones who tell the whole world that nudity is shameful or wrong or offensive and they don't want to be identified with it. They reinforce in the collective conscience of the non-naturist world the false notion that human nudity is to be discouraged because it's indecent. As one of my non-naturist friends once told me, 'Even nudists know it's wrong not to cover their genitals'. He told me there were two kinds of nudists - first are the normal ones who know nudity is wrong and they will never post photos of themselves naked. The second are the idiots who really believe the lie that nudity is decent and they stupidly expose themselves to the world thereby ruining themselves for ever. He calls closet nudists 'normal' because to him, a closet nudist is really no different from a non-naturist like himself.

Some closet nudists look upon nudity as a sexual activity. They actually get their sexual gratification by being nude which explains why they only do it furtively. These are people with a weird sexual-nudity perversion. They have a sexual need from time to time to get their sex fix by going to a nudist resort.

But I must be clear about one thing. Not all closet nudists are people with sexual-nudity perversion. Some closet nudists are genuine nudists who because of circumstances  beyond their control are forced to live their naturist lives in the closet. I know someone who is a genuine naturist. But he's very careful when he sees a camera and I'm one who's rarely separated from the camera. He has to be cautious because he's a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Citizens of Muslim countries or countries with a Muslim majority will of course have to consider the serious consequences of their nude photos going viral. I asked him what the penalty would be and he said he didn't know but in Saudi, the punishment usually ranges from years of imprisonment with severe flogging to the death penalty. I totally support closet nudism for such people.

Should all naturist groups and resort allow free photography to get rid of people who make use of naturism to gratify their sexual-nudity perversion needs? Nudist resorts won't ever do that because they want to collect as much money as they can and this group of closet nudists is easily much larger than the number of true naturists.

There is also the problem of discouraging closet nudists who are true naturists but who are still new to nudity and have genuine fears of the possible repercussion of having their photos go viral. Even though there is zero repercussion and I can testify to that, the fear is real and if you tell them that all naturists will be photographed and the photos posted online, many of them may not wish to join in our activities.

Where do we go from here? I live in a country where naturism is strictly illegal. There are of course no nude beaches. If you swim in the nude in the sea even though you are on a deserted stretch of the beach, you can be sure that the police will be waiting for you on the beach to arrest you. This has been reported before in the press. The police are super-efficient. Of all the people I know, from my school to my university to my colleagues to my entire profession, not a single one of them is a naturist. The same goes for my church - I am the only naturist in all my circles. You would have thought it would be impossible for me to be open about my naturism and I thought the same at first. I thought breaking the news would be difficult but I have always valued honesty and as soon as I participated for the first time in social naturism, I announced it to my entire world, complete with photos. I expected to be condemned and ostracised and I was prepared for it. I hate lies and I didn't want to live a dishonest life where people were only nice to you because they didn't know you were a naturist. I thought that if people were to ostracise me if they knew I was a naturist, then it's only fair for them to have the liberty to do so.

But as I have already written about my experiences, there was no serious consequence at all as long as people understood what naturism was all about. Many did not have a clear understanding of naturism. Their objections were always sexual and the moment they knew that naturism was not sexual, even the church had nothing negative to say to me. If anything, the church is probably more concerned about my lack of belief than my naturism.

If you are an open naturist and you are equally concerned about how the whole concept of nudity is being perverted by the world, I urge you to flood the Internet with your decent nude photos. If every naturist does this and the Internet is full of decent nude pics, the non-naturist world will begin to see that there is a huge chasm between naturist nudity and porn nudity. And the world will realise how deluded it had been all this while to immediately associate the human body with porn.

Only we naturists can change the tide. The day may come when the world when viewing the above photo, will accept that there is nothing offensive about the nudity of the three of us in the photo.

The drawbacks of nudity?

What I am going to say is sure to offend some naturists but I believe in speaking the truth and in any event, this is my personal photo diary and the words here are nothing more than my thoughts and surely, I'm entitled to express my own private thoughts?

Our bodies are designed to be naked and that much is clear. But if you live in a country that has a harsh winter, clothes are of course necessary. You may think that a tropical country, where I live in, is ideal for a naturist. But here in the tropics where everything that has life thrives in great abundance, there are natural drawbacks for the naturist too and it can be fatal if he is not careful. I'm talking about disease-carrying mosquitoes.

I live in a clean tropical country that has managed to wipe out malaria. You only get malaria if you go to a less developed country. But just when the malaria menace was eradicated, new diseases borne by the mosquito proliferate. Dengue fever is now the greatest threat to the naturist who hasn't got the protection of clothes and footwear. Foreign labourers brought into my country to work in the construction industry have brought with them chikungunya which is also spread by mosquitoes.

But these potentially lethal diseases can be prevented if you take all necessary precautions. Once a week, I apply 'mosquito killer' or BTI pellets in all the drains and areas which may collect rain water. These pellets do not harm any other creature apart from mosquito larvae. I know for certain that the butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies, birds and squirrels that have chosen to make my backyard their home aren't adversely affected at all.

Here's a pic I took early this morning. In my hand is a bottle of BTI

It may be a chore having to do this once a week, every week of your life but it's nothing if you make it a part of your lifestyle. You can also get the pest control people to apply BTI in your garden but they spray BTI in liquid form. You have less control and there's no telling if the liquid BTI will find some means of entering your water supply. I prefer applying BTI in pellet form and I'm the one doing it.

Why I started this new blog.

The world is getting crazier and crazier. Tumblr has just released its latest news - from 17 December onwards, nudity is banned on Tumblr. But nudity is decent, so why ban it?

At the same time, I'm under a great deal of stress downloading my photos from Flickr which will delete all my photos on 5 February 2019. Although we were promised 1 Tetrabyte of photo storage for our free Yahoo account, things have changed since Yahoo sold Flickr to SmugMug. The new rules are get a paid subscription or all your photos will be deleted. I'm not one who will bow down to a threat. So, I have been downloading all my photos - more than 175,000 of them.

I'm a diary keeper and have been one since the age of 7. Since the advent of digital photography, I have also become an avid photo diary keeper. It's natural for me to keep a photo blog of some sort.

It appears that Google is the most trustworthy website. I've trusted Google all my life. My entire life is placed in Google. Every photo that I own is on Google and every personal detail too. Even the things I know, the jottings from the books I've read and all other details are stored in Google.

Google's blogger allows for nudity provided the blog is marked to contain "adult content" at the settings. I have done so for this blog even though I don't think nudity is adult content. It's decent human content.

I am also on WordPress but the bad thing about this blog is there is very little space for photos. Google's Blogger is much better. Since all my photos are on Google anyway, I can easily pick them for my blog. Blogger is seamlessly linked with Google Photos. It makes choosing a photo even easier than writing a post.

Here's my most recent photo. I just clicked on the photo icon and all my photos appeared in front of me. It's that easy with Google. Let's just hope Google doesn't fall prey to the madness that has afflicted so many websites.

THE BLISTERING SUN AND THE WAYWARD GRAMMARIAN

Post imported from my Tumblr account, which I am abandoning after it decided to go anti-nudity.

People are usually confused about my ethnicity because of my dark skin. Just the other day, a cleaner in my gym spoke to me in Malay and when I replied in Chinese, she said she thought I was a Malay because of my colour. But what I find puzzling is there are some naturists who are even darker than me and I’m talking about Europeans who do not have the benefit of my tropical sun. I read in the sun every day which accounts for my colour but how do these Europeans get their tan? Perhaps they fly to some tropical island every now and then to get their share of the sun.

To do justice to my rather bizarre title, I will now talk about my book. It’s a gift from my son. Ever since it was first published in 2011, I had avoided it like the plague. It’s written by one of today’s foremost linguists but he has come up with a grammatical analysis that is very much at variance with what the whole world is familiar with. And I’m not talking about the non-academic world. Every dictionary on the planet disagrees with this linguist in his classification of words. Every grammar you pick up (except the one by yet another equally wayward linguist) is sure to disagree with him.

I once told him why he was wrong and he replied very briefly that the traditional analysis need not be the correct one without explaining further. But if you accept his analysis and word classification, you will have to say that Nick Gibb was not wrong when a BBC presenter asked him a grammar question and he gave an answer that would be marked wrong in any of the schools he’s in charge of as a schools minister.

But to be fair to the writer, his book is pretty good and the reader can see almost immediately what a brilliant mind he’s got. I’ve only started reading the book but I’m not sure how much of it I can tolerate, as he classifies as pronouns some determiners and the existential there, which is what I do not expect of a modern linguist.

My son bought it for me, knowing full well the misgivings I have for the author. He said one should sometimes read “heretical and apocryphal works” and how right he was. This is what I’ve always taught my children to do - to read anything and everything that has some academic or literary value even if the church and society oppose it. It’s good to have my advice hurled back at me. LOL

Behind the bamboo curtain

Post imported from my Tumblr account, which I am abandoning because of its new anti-nudity policy.

Many years ago I met a pleasant old woman at the Hay Festival and she asked me as politely as she could what racial group I belonged to. When I told her I was Chinese, she became fascinated. “I’ve never seen a Chinese before,” she said in excitement.

How could that be when one-fifth of the entire human race is Chinese alone and that’s not including the Koreans and Japanese who are genetically the same?

When we chatted a little more later, it turned out that not only had she not travelled abroad, she had not even ventured beyond Hereford in her entire life. She asked me what China looked like and even after I clarified that I had only been to China as a tourist, she still found it hard to think of me as anything apart from a citizen of China.

I’m sure if she sees this photo, she will be convinced more than ever that I lived in China and fed on bamboo shoots like panda bears.