I'm in Vietnam. Will blog when the internet becomes more interesting than beach and cheap seafood. Photos when I get back

peace

WV

for the last time,

Hewitt is a fuckwit.

Two photos. But yeah, there's a purpose here. This is the late night Muslim snack joint. They fry up just about anything except pork and you can have it with noodles or rice. I don't think people are aware there is quite a large Muslim population in China. Especially southern China. A lot come up from Malaysia and other SE Asian countries. Anyway, the food is good, and awfully cheap.

sweet potato sweet potato!

This is the honeyman. He walks around the cafes we frequent trying to sell watered down honey with a constant, chiseled-in, smile on his face. When he's not selling honey he's smoking copious amounts of tobacco through a bamboo water pipe or snoozing in the lotus position at various shady spots on the sidewalk. His speech is unintelligible and he's almost definitely a little crazy, but he appears happy.

There are stories to these photos and I should be telling them. This was taken near the water's edge of a relatively unknown Chinese port city on the way to Hainan. The old woman in the bottom left of the photo is sorting through garbage for used wooden barbeque skewers with the slow persistence of aged and weary hands. I assume they will provide here sustenance for the day. She is pilling them up on the edge of the garbage, below the black garbage bag on top of the concrete blocks. You should be able to see them if you look carefully. She did not once visibly recognise our presence. Rare in a country where people will sit and watch you play cards for hours on day long train journeys because you are white.

I'd just like to once again point out the obvious. Basically, why the political leadership of Australia, America and much of the rest of the west is full of shit. John Howard responded to Bush's speech regarding more troops for Iraq by claiming that if there was not a continued military presence in Iraq and Allied forces withdrew it would be a win for terrorism. Let us follow a little train of logic on this,

1. there were no 'terrorists' in Iraq prior to the American invasion,

2. the original reason for invading Iraq was because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (which it didn't),

3. it is generally understood, even admitted by American military leaders, that much of the violence in Iraq is being caused by civil war between rival religious groups.

This is the problem with the concept of 'terrorism'. What is terrorism to you? What is a terrorist to you? Is a US soldier who sits in a tank and fires shells at residential housing a terrorist or is the 16 year old Iraqi kid who fires back with a Russian made AK-47 the terrorist? Who is more morally in the right? Who's cause is more important? Whose blood is more valuable?

Who started it!? And should that really matter?

What really troubles me is that because John Howard has made a decade long career out of feeding the public bullshit, the public mindset has become bullshit. Orwell named it 'doublespeak'. Where you use language in a way which destroys meaning. You know what you're saying is bullshit, but you say it anyway, at the same time believing in it yourself if you're really good at it. Look it up on google for more definitions, or read George Orwell, 1984.

Anyway, enough of that. Also, beware of French-Canadians. I won't go any further than that but they have special powers which you should watch out for. Especially if you're competing with them to chase women.

Do blind people go to sleep really easily? If my eyes were closed all the time, I think I'd go to sleep really easily. But then, maybe if you're blind, its more difficult to go to sleep, because you can never close your eyes. It must be an interesting experience waking up as a blind person. I'm gonna try and wake up with my eyes closed and actually get up. I'll let you know how it goes.

chocolate sure is yummy

'Australians spend more on chocolate than they do on helping poor countries' - SMH, 7/01/2007 (wholey shit its 2007, where's my hover board damnit!?)

Me, personally, I spend more on chocolate flavoured worm tablets than i do on helping poor countries. And I'm not even a huge fan of chocolate. And I live in a poor country, so I really don't have the 'too far away' excuse. I could walk outside right now and find a person within five feet of my main gate, hell, fifty people, who have less disposable income in a year than I have in 2 weeks.

But its cold outside.

PS fuck you google and your American imperialism spellcheck bullshit. Flavored is spelt flavoured in the rest of the English speaking world. Get with multinationalizm.

that z was on purpose, it isn't even a word...

Photo a day 2 weeks!!

There was a, ahhhh, earthquake in Taiwan and it broke a 5 out of 6 of the major telecommunications lines from the outside world to China. So, although it doesn't really seem to have made news in the west, the whole of south-east asia has been struggling with extremely slow internet for the past two weeks.

What it means for me is blogging becomes even more of a chore than it normally is. However, I've just finished exams and final assignments. With the ceremonial 'drink till 6:30 in the morning and feel like poo for most of the day' now out of the way. There's little else to do for the next two weeks except go to the internet cafe, buy pirate dvds and complain about the cold.

Because of my life is boring, so to speak, and because I have a wonderful camera which my parents bought for me at my disposal, I'm going to start carrying my camera with me everyday. And to provide myself extra motivation, I'm gonna post the best photo of the day on my blog each day. Can you believe it?! Daily updates! I've said it, I probably won't go through with it, but you heard it and disheard it here first.