Archive for the 'Travel' Category

We’re not all about high-brow stuff and books here at Fusion View. Ladies, if you want some eye-candy, a pretty boy, a big slab of countryside hunk, we can help you find one.

Just head on over to Beaut Blokes at www. beautblokes.com.au and sign up for a weekend in the stunning Australian landscape with some stunning Australian men.

The strap line for the site is “revitalising rural communities.” It seems that too many smart women are heading off to the cities for big time careers, leaving too many beaut Ozzie blokes in the countryside. The Beaut Blokes events are aimed at bringing the women back to see what they are missing out on - hopefully, they will find the man of their dreams and revitalise the parched countryside.

This is not a solely Australian problem. In China, there are likely to be 30 million single men by 2020 - partly due to the country’s one child policy where many female foetuses were aborted and partly due to many young women preferring to move to the cities for their careers.

In the UK, farmers in Wales will appear on milk cartons with the enticing invitation, “Fancy a Farmer?” with contact details for the ladies to get in touch if he tickles their fancy over their breakfast cereal.

In some ways, I suppose it was just as well that we were offline last weekend, which was the 13th anniversary of Angie and me getting it together. Being cut off from the virtual world meant that we could spend time with each other in the real world without being distracted by emails etc.

We went for a walk along the Thames from London Bridge eastwards to Rotherhithe, taking in views towards London across the river that we had never seen before. It was a gloriously sunny day, and deliciously warm for early February. The warehouses and docks along the south bank of the river had now been transformed into lovely apartments and housing right up against historic pubs and important archaeological sites.

We came across the Mayflower pub right on the river, where 400 years ago, the Mayflower taking the Pilgrim Fathers to America was berthed. The Rotherhithe Tunnel that now features on daily traffic reports was built by the Brunels, father and son, its location marked by a giant red iron machine that looked like iconic modern art.

For foodies, I really recommend Borough market by London Bridge station on a Saturday. We headed there for lunch after our walk and it was thronging with trendy crowds, buying organic foodstuffs from the stalls and chomping on freshly made roast meat baguettes and spicy oriental barbecued dishes as they strolled along the streets. We had lunch at Fish! Restaurant with superb views of Southwark cathedral through its glass ceiling – I had yummy grilled swordfish and Angie had fish pie, followed by sticky toffee pudding: perfect for a winter’s day.

It was good to be reminded of these things that we’ve always loved doing together (apart from being netheads) – exploring hidden corners of London, taking long walks and indulging in good food!

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On Saturday 24 February, I will be joining the inauguaral Breakfast Club for LitBloggers in Kuala Lumpur. The event is run by MPH Bookstores and will be at MPH Bangsar Village Phase II from 10am - 11.30am. MPH have invited me to speak about how blogging has helped me with my writing and give tips on how to get published in the UK. If you’re in KL that day, do come to the event and say “hi”. The other litblogger will be poet Sharanya Manivannan and I am looking forward to meeting her and hearing about the poetry scene in KL.

Eric Forbes, MPH’s book editor, has put up more details on his blog - click here.

How did this come about?

Well, just before Christmas, I made plans to go back to Kuala Lumpur for a week at the end of February. I emailed Sharon Bakar who blogs at www.thebookaholic.blogspot.com to let her know and ask if she would like to meet for coffee. Sharon is originally from the UK but has been living in Malaysia for over twenty years and is KL’s creative writing guru. I came to know of her through the global literary blogging community and we’ve been in touch via email and keeping up with each other’s blogs.

Anyway, Sharon suggested to MPH that they might like to involve me in an event and they emailed me to invite me to the Breakfast Club. I am thrilled to have a chance to meet readers, bloggers and other literary types at their event - and it will also be the first time that I will be seeing Sharon in person. It’s going to be a fun morning so I hope you can join us.

I hope also that they lay on a lot of coffee for the Breakfast part of the club - I’m arriving from London late the night before and I’ll need the caffeine to blast away my jet-lag!

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Will Buckingham’s first novel “Cargo Fever” is set in Indonesia, using a myth from the region as the basis of his story. He speaks Indonesian and is an expert on Buddhism - and I am delighted that he is joining our fusion community here at Fusion View with a post on how he came to write his novel, his connection with Indonesia and what he’s working on now.

Will writes:

When I travelled to Indonesia, it was not with the intention of writing a novel. The novel came much later. I had recently graduated in Fine Arts, and was planning to undertake postgraduate work in anthropology. In between, I had a year to spare, and I had been fortunate to be given a grant to undertake research in east Indonesia into the work of wood-carvers. So I caught three planes, two boats and finally another plane to Saumlaki in the Tanimbar Islands (http://www.tanimbar.org.uk), where I spent several months.

It was in Tanimbar that I first decided to write a novel. It was, I sometimes think, something as simple as nostalgia for the English language that got me started on my career in fiction. For months I had been speaking only in Indonesian and I missed my native tongue. So just after the rainy season had begun, when I borrowed a manual typewriter to write up my field notes towards the end of the stay, one afternoon a story came to me. I put a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter roll, and I wrote. I still have the original story—a fable called “George’s Devil”—and whatever its literary virtues, I remain particularly fond of this tale that for me marks the beginning of my life as a writer.

It was almost ten years before my experiences in Indonesia, both good (the generosity of my hosts, watching master craftsmen at work, the insights into another culture) and bad (malarial fevers and exorcisms) found their way into what is now officially my first novel, Cargo Fever. I say “officially” because there are several now abandoned projects that preceded it. My first attempt at a book was a travel book, but somehow I felt restricted by writing non-fiction. Then I turned to fiction, writing two novels on other subjects, neither of which (I hope) will ever see the light of day. Somehow, however, I kept returning to my experiences in Indonesia. There was something that remained unsaid, and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

When I got round to writing it, however, it was not the novel that I had expected to write. At first I’d planned the novel as a kind of Heart of Darkness for the twenty-first century, but somehow it did not seem to take off. It was not until a small and curiously furry creature wandered into my mind—an orang pendek, the “short man” of Indonesian legend—that the story came together. So I left my fantasies of becoming the new Conrad behind, and wrote the first scene: Ibu Nilasera, a pious Christian, walks into the church one Sunday afternoon holding a clutch of plastic flowers that she is going to offer to the Virgin and sees, seated in the front pew, a devil, its head bent in prayer. It was a short scene, but by the time I had finished it, I knew I had my story.

From this moment to the final draft—sent to my publishers only a week or two ago—much has changed. Early on, I decided to shift the scene from the all-too-real Tanimbar islands to the fictitious island of Kenukecil: the change allowed me to invent much more freely than otherwise would have been possible. Whilst I was writing my second draft, I picked up the newspaper to find that my short man was front-page news: in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, archaeologists had discovered the remains of what they believed to be a new species of tiny human, Homo floresiensis. It was a strange experience looking at the front page and seeing a real-life prototype for my mythical hero.

In the constant writing and rewriting, my sense of the novel itself has changed. There are stories that I would have loved to have told, but that didn’t fit into the flow of the narrative. Inevitably many things have had to remain unsaid. But now that the novel is ready to go to press, it is a question of casting it adrift and seeing how it fares in the world. I wish it—and its protagonist—well. For now, however, my mind is on other things. The next novel is already in the early stages, set far away from Indonesia in Bulgaria and Paris.

Written by Guestblogger: Will Buckingham

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Will Buckingham blogs on literature and related subjects at http://www.willbuckingham.com/blog and on Buddhism at http://www.thinkbuddha.org.

Cargo Fever is due out from Tindal Street Press in the spring, and can be pre-ordered from amazon.co.uk - click here to pre-order Cargo Fever

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Matthew G., a regular commenter on Fusion View, wrote this in response to Jennifer’s comment to my podcast Two Voices (which I highlighted in my comment round-up Chop Suey). What he says intrigued me so I thought I would share his comment more widely by giving it a post-space all to itself.

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Matthew writes:

I am native English speaking with Japanese as second language and French as third (measured just by proficiency). I have exactly that sense that she mentions of adopting a slightly different persona especially when in Japanese and I do wonder about it sometimes (” is it real me, who am I etc”). Occasionally my British work colleagues have commented (not unfavourably, though) that I look like a somewhat different person when I am talking to a Japanese colleague in Japanese (though they don’t understand what we are talking about). But I don’t think it is about being some kind of chameleon with no “true” core. If that is how you express yourself in a certain linguistic context then it is from within, so it must part of you. I think it just goes to show that language and communication is not just about the spoken word.

It is often said that the ear is more important than the tongue. I would add that a “sense of immitation” is also the essential ingredient for a successful linguist. Every language is rooted in a context of cultural and social patterns / values and this is probably all the more so between say European and Asian languages (eg honorifics). So it should be no surprise that operating successfully across this linguistic divide involves more than just words. This leads into the bowing debate. Have you ever tried having a discussion (eg mutual thanks after an enjoyable business dinner) when your guest bows to you? It’s so difficult not to feel like bowing back! (or is that just me?) Many times I succumbed but I resist it now having seen so many westerners trying to bow and we are just not good at it! Get in with a handshake first! This is a bit off the subject but we all know how different English can sound according to who is speaking it (eg a Glaswegian versus a Home Counties type).

But how voluntary is our default accent or “presentation” in each of us? How easily can the Glaswegian sound like the HC type if he tries (not that he would want to)? I believe most people find it very difficult to immitate. In the Japanese case the difference between “standard” Tokyo type Japanese and, say, the Osaka dialect is huge, not just an accent but very often different words, verb endings etc. Yet I am always amazed to hear how easily the Osaka types for example switch into standard Japanese when say they are on the phone to someone in Tokyo. And then switch back without turning a hair when they put the phone down. There’s something different there!

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My thoughts on what Matthew has written above:

What intrigues me is the thought that one is someone different in a different language. I touched on it in my Two Voice podcast - I feel warmer and more exuberant speaking Malaysian English and more formal and verbose in English English. Matthew’s comment makes me think about the existentialist movement and those “who am I?” writers like Camus and the one who wrote the play about the cockroach (”Metamorphosis”). Would Camus’s books have been more devil-may-care if he had been fluent in American English rather than so angst ridden in French? Would the protagonist of Metamorphosis have changed into another kind of creature if the playwright had written in another language?

Body language is also a huge part of communication - some say it’s 90% of the message you are conveying. And I have experienced the “immitation factor” that Matthew mentions. With some French people I used to know, I started adopting the Gallic shrug which involves a shrug of the shoulders, an exhalation of breath through pouty lips to make the sound “boff” or “bouff”, ideally accompanied by the wave of a cigarette. I don’t smoke so a wave of the hand stands in for that part. Anyway, I’ve lost touch with the French friends but I’ve retained the Gallic shrug in my English life. The interesting thing is that I think the Gallic shrug has made me less uptight and worked up about things that I might have been exercised about in the past eg. Old me: “It’s outrageous! How can they do that!” (Slam table and rant); Gallic me: “Boff, what can you do? Let’s just forget about it.” (Languidly pour more wine/ slice more Camembert).

The Cornish Pasty is the iconic food of Cornwall. Everywhere we went during our holiday there a few weeks back, the delicious smell of pasties wafted out at us from bakeries and whole shops devoted to the speciality. They are savoury portable meat pies in a distinctive half moon shape. To my Eastern eye, they look like giant curry puffs.

The outer case of the pasty is made of golden brown pastry that crackles and flakes as you bite into it. Its shape comes from folding a large circle of pastry over the filling and braiding the resulting curved edge. The traditional filling is steak and potatoes but these days, there’s lamb and mint and steak & stilton and a whole range more. They have a satisfying, heavy feel in your hand, about the size and weighty book.

Curry puffs are much smaller. They can be the same handbag shape as a pasty or sometimes can look like a fatter and shorter sausage roll. Inside, the filling is made of minced pork, chicken or beef, onions, vegetables and potatoes fried in dry spicy curry. You can get fried puffs with crispy oily pastry or baked ones with flaky puff pastry. Even describing it now makes me drool…. Bizarrely, the best curry puff I’ve had was at the canteen in Singapore General Hospital some years back.

Pasties are really yum on a blustery Cornish day. We shared one in Falmouth as Hurricane Gordon blew itself in across the Atlantic, the sky glowering darkly and the sea sharp and choppy in the bay. The light drizzle was like a sheet of pins thrown at us by the wind. A hot pasty in our hands, steaming in the cold, was just what we needed.

But there is always a slight disappointment in the back of my mind. Tasty as pasties are, they strongly retain their ancient British identity as solid, rather bland but nourishing food. They aren’t - and never will be nor should be - spicy, meaty curry puffs wafting of garlic and coriander and burning your mouth with the more pugnacious taste of the East. Sigh. I do miss a good curry puff eaten in the sweltering heat of a street market…

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Can you tell which is the pic of Cornish Pasties and which of Curry Puffs?

Picture A

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Picture B

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Answer: A = Curry Puffs; B = Cornish Pasties

During our holiday in Cornwall, we visited Newquay, once a fishing village and now a prime destination for surfers from all over the world. The town sprawls down the clifftop nestled within several magnificent bays where the surf rides dramatically into shore. High cliffs circle the bays like fortress walls.

Just outside the main town, perched on the very edge of a soaring clifftop, is the historic Huers Hut. Made of stone, it looks like a white-washed domed temple that might just as easily have been in Greece. Its curved walls face the land while an open patio looks out to sea, a giant fireplace and chimney taking up most of space inside.

In the fourteenth century, this was where the huer would stand watch, gazing out to the vast ocean waiting for the pilchards. When he saw the shoals of fish, he would raise the hue and cry to alert the fishermen in the village and they would rush out to launch their boats and head to catch their precious livelihood. Standing on the cliff top, the huer would direct the boats towards the pilchards like a general mustering his army, using hand signals and calls.

The pilchards have declined and commercial fishing is not enough to sustain the people of Newquay. But “raising the hue and cry” remains.

Continuing my report from our holiday in Cornwall….

We arrived at our holiday cottage in a valley not far from the north Cornish coast late in the afternoon. We tumbled in, tired and grumpy. We had had a long drive from London and there was still the unpacking to do. But the charm of the place perked us up. It was one of those cute, tiny little cottages with timbered beams across a low ceiling and vast open fireplaces dating from over 200 years ago. There was an richly textured garden of flowers and shrubs in the front and a lawn at the back. And - perking us up even more - there was a basket of fresh scones, a bowl of strawberry jam and a pot of clotted cream waiting for us in the kitchen.

The unpacking could wait. At at time like this, there was nothing for it but to put the kettle on, lay out the cream tea spread out in the garden and settle down for a yummy time.

Clotted cream is made from the thick cream floating at the top of full fat milk. You skim it off and boil it down till its even thicker and richer. Then you let it cool and refrigerate for a few days. The result is a gooey, vanilla-ish, glop that you can dollop on any dessert or fruit.

Scones are a cross between bread and cake - the best ones are light and fluffy with big fat currants in them. The genius of cream teas is that somehow, the blend of crumbly scone with strawberry jam and a dollop of clotted cream interspersed with lashings of hot tea just meld together into a taste experience of sheer bliss.

Whoever said that English food is not much to write home about?

Throughout our week in Cornwall, wherever we turned, there was clotted cream. You could have it on apple and blackberry crumble or with fresh strawberries or on fruit tarts or more scones than you could dream of. We took to having cream tea for breakfast as well as tea time. We walked on cliffs all over the coast but clearly did not walk long enough or hard enough to burn off the joys of clotted cream. Looking at our snapshots of our holiday, you can see me getting chubbier and rounder as the week goes on… Oh dear.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Daphne du Maurier and I’ve read as many of her her books and short stories as I could get hold of. Most, if not all, of her novels were set in Cornwall and described a dramatic and beautiful coastal landscape punctuated by empty moorland. The most evocative works, I think, were “Frenchman’s Creek”, “Jamaica Inn” and of course, “Rebecca”.

Curiously, I had never managed to take a trip to Cornwall until last week when we headed down for a week’s holiday in a country cottage. I had had a hectic time at work and I was tired. It was a long drive from London and as we got stuck in yet another traffic jam, I was beginning to wonder if it was really going to be worth the effort. But then, we pulled out of Exeter and haded up into the heart of Bodmin Moor and it was as if we had dropped out of the hurly burly of reality into the landscape of great fiction.

Bodmin Moor was just how I had imagined it to be - vast swathes of heath and moor, sweeping out across the vista like a stormy sea carved into the dark earth while in the distance, craggy tors brooded sullenly. You see - the drama of the view even makes one wax into purple prose. I was thrilled to see that you can go to the Daphne du Maurier Experience at Jamaica Inn - yes, there really is a Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor - where you can see her writing desk and recreations of scenes from “Frenchman’s Creek”. (We didn’t stop this time - but next time, I shall be there with my camera for a must-have pic of The Desk…)

We went for walks along the cliff tops and again, it was like being in one of her novels - this time, “Rebecca”. The South West Coastal Path perches you on the cliff edge, one precarious footstep away from certain death on sharp, rugged rocks in a foaming sea. I kept thinking of Mrs Danvers saying to the nameless heroine, “Go on, jump. You know you want to.”

Happily, the thought of cream teas and saffron buns kept me from the hypnotic pull of the rhythmic waves… you know you want to, you know you want to. No. No, I don’t want to. I want hot buttered scones and clotted cream.

I shall now have to dig out my old Daphne du Maurier novels and re-read them all. With the nights drawing in and the winter chill in the air, the next few months will be a great time to snuggle up in bed with hot chocolate and a windswept book.

If you’re a Daphne du Maurier fan, do share your thoughts about Cornwall, her books, your favourite characters/ scenes, cream teas… please add a comment or email me.

From our man on the scene, Fusion View brings you an eyewitness account of the recent Edinburgh Festival. David Grantley, poet and micro-short story writer*, reports:

For readers intrigued recently by Yang-May’s account of Brighton (the Saint Tropez of the English South Coast?), Edinburgh may be worth a visit. It is not so much trendy as the Piccadilly of the UK: everyone goes through at some point.

There are several festivals going on at the same time. The Film Festival (first showing of ‘Kill the Messenger’, that brilliant if no doubt controversial TV film), the International Music Festival (of music, opera, ballet), the Fringe (comedy and anything goes with hundreds to choose from), and the Book Festival (authors talk about their work).

Then there is an intermediate thing (I think) which includes The Lady Boys of Bankok (my cousin didn’t fancy, and five minutes for me would be enough) and the something or other of the Penis (Spanish friends recommend, but cousin’s husband didn’t fancy: he doesn’t like looking at what he calls human ‘bits’).

And there are art exhibitions, some good, some ‘interesting’ (cousin insists I see). It wasn’t until I got to Newcastle (the capital of England-lah, if you are young enough to survive it) on the way home that I found the contemporary Scottish artist I like: Michael McVey (please don’t spread the word about until I have bought one). Finally, (still in Edinburgh) there is street theatre (anything goes again). Food is plentiful, inexpensive and varied.

I had been booked to hear Andrew Rowson, cartoonist, on his cartoons, a man called Johnson who wrote the wine map of Europe (his love is only for the wine of France so only gets part of my vote), and Andrew Motion, the poet laureate talking about his autobiography: he came over as a very pleasant very English man (tall, too).

As ever I made a bee-line (wasp, hornet?) for the street theatre. My favourites: Peruvians singing in Spanish and playing all manner of pan-pipes: very jig-enticing sound when not deeply sad. Then some Tibetans, men and women, playing all manner of drum-like objects and a strange trumpet while a tall Tibetan does a dance with a long circular ribbon (if not Tibetan what could they be?). New ears needed: none of the guessable tonalities or tunes of any music I know (Indian, Moroccan, African, Chinese, Beethoven) but fascinating. There are also various magicians and excellent circus-like climbing and juggling acts, and even, this year, a ten-year old (I suppose) doing elementary juggling – he had to get two members of the audience to hold him up so he could be seen. All this free, of course, though donations expected (‘for foreign tourists the £5 note is the one with 100 written on it’).

Can’t imagine a cheaper holiday in the UK once accommodation is found.

Then there are constant oddities. Why was the wine talk sponsored by a whisky company? I came out with a wad of vouchers for free drams of their 12 year old single malt product. A dram is a very generous pouring out of a bottle into a generous glass. Whatever their reputation, the Scottish are never mean with the drink. The drams were poured in a refreshment tent-pub with tables and comfortable seats to the accompaniment of a skiffle and US country-music band. You don’t have to pay for a book-talk to use it. Free kazoos if you want to make a noise. As for the whisky, I like it, but it doesn’t like me. The morning after it takes half the day to stop hating the emphasis on thistles and tartan and everything Scottish (even Lloys-TSB is Lloyds-TSB SCOTLAND). Notable at all the events is the large number of local (= Edinburgh or Scotland in general) people out to enjoy themselves.

Of course I’ve forgotten to mention the Edinburgh Military Tattoo (bagpipes, marching and heavy-metal). But not for me, I’m afraid.

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*Inspired by a post on Fusion View about writing short stories in 55 words only, David submitted a macabre tale to micro short story site www.55fiction.com. Read more here.