"Don't know about the Dicky Dirt, Trev"

We have lived outside the UK, well actually England, since 1985 and on occasion some people ask how English I feel and such things like that. Well the answer is a tough one as whilst I still have the same English voice that I have always had, we have lived essentially in a North American environment for nearly 35 years. So I like (a lot) and am used to lots of things that North Americans take for granted. Stuff like driving big cars, pancakes with maple syrup, great steak restaurants, fantastic cocktail bars, big houses, tall ceilings, wide and long parking spaces, yes even tall buildings, but not bacon or sausages I'm afraid. English are still the best there. Chocolate too.

So mixed feelings is I guess the answer.

What about politics? Please don't ask me that! It is only the current Brexit mess that has forced me to even know the names of current British politicians. And armed with that knowledge I now regret even that as I don't think many of them have covered themselves in glory and seem to have succeeded only in ruining a previously very good reputation for a parliamentary system that whilst quirky had stood the test of time and sort of kind of worked. But I do know the American politicians and system reasonably well. Canadian too. All I will say there is that seemingly no leader anywhere is currently giving a great impression of being a statesman. Everyone is too busy taking care of themselves and their re-election prospects even as the (whichever) country is at risk of going to the dogs.

Politics isn't the theme of this blog though, rather it is the question of Englishness. Great word that. The French with all their Academie Francaise hubris don't have a word for it. They'd probably use 7 or 8 words along the lines of 'le coeur et l'âme d'être français' and that still doesn't mean the same thing.

I just returned from England where I watched a couple of Tottenham Hotspur games, one Premier League and the other Champions League, and rediscovered (I did need reminding) what a great city London is. Huge, busy, so many different languages on the street, so many different ethnic restaurants. Even one of those really annoying advertisements you get which end in a voice speaking really fast telling you what the ghastly side effects of this new wonder drug is, was a French girl. Speaking English very fast and with great articulation. Made me really sad to think that this could all go soon.

Some things don't change though.

It was at the first football match which was the first game at the new Tottenham stadium. Great stadium, lots of fanfare, completely inexplicable opening ceremony which had a rapper and a gospel singer duetting something for some reason that eluded me. Great seats, wonderful view, good facilities inside for the fan and the really neat thing that I liked was that whilst it was built along the lines of a US NFL stadium (as it plans to host NFL games too), there is absolutely zero parking. The stadium is right in the middle of Tottenham, so houses and little shops and pubs across the street and all around. The local co-op is just around the corner. Walking out of the train station, the stadium was right there in your face and well so was the rest of Tottenham.  (An aside here: I do hope my reader understands that Tottenham is nowhere near the centre of London. It is 30 minutes by overground from Liverpool Street Station. Miles away in fact. Tottenham Court Road is in central London and I suspect its name reference is pure accident).

It was at the other end that things of course fell apart and sometimes you do wonder. The stadium build overran by 6-7 months and it is clear that the club is hurrying to get it open so at least some games in the 2018/19 season can be played at the new home. I don't want to think that that is a money reason, but it obviously could be. Most things are.

Opening night for the stadium

So the station is half built and on coming out at the end it was clear that nobody had mentioned to the train/tube people (it isn't London Transport any more, it has another name that I don't remember) that around 10 pm over 60,000 people would be coming out of the ground looking for a way to get home. Stuff like this is something I definitely do think the English (OK British. Why just diss the English on this?) do not do well. In the USA/Canada, this would have been thought through and dealt with so that within 30 minutes everyone would be gone. It took ages but as Tottenham won 2-0, all were in good humor.

Great view of the match

Credit where it is due though for by the second game, this had been resolved. Sort of. For someone had hand written a time table of trains heading back into London so that at least we all knew what the situation was even though we still had to wait. And as a subsequent follow up, I just received a notice that the club is now putting on free shuttles from the ground to 4 or 5 different public transport hubs around so at least this issue has been recognized. It would have been better or course to consider this in advance rather than have to scramble around for bandaid solutions.

Now that I have exposed myself as a football fan, I will get to the point. Having returned to Penang I found myself staying up half the night watching Tottenham games and by association other games that have an impact on the final league standings. So I don't know how I ended up watching a West Ham game a few days ago. But I did. These days there's always at least two commentators for every sporting event, the primary one and then the analyst. I missed the names for this game but the analyst was clearly a West Ham fan and potentially an ex-player so the primary commentator spent a lot of time making general clarifying comments for the audience as the analyst was getting quite worked up as it was a really close game.

The camera panned round into the crowd and found a familiar face, someone I immediately recognized as one of the greatest footballers of the time that I was growing up and familiar with when I was living in England, namely Trevor (or rather Sir Trevor) Brooking. The analyst picked up on this fact and waxed lyrical about him before coming up with THE line of the day:

"Oooh, don't know about the Dicky Dirt, Trev".

Now my home town is Southend-on-Sea, only some 20 miles down the road from West Ham and our local patois is not entirely dissimilar to cockney, which was what the analyst was. It is curious for only a couple of days previously I had had dinner in Penang with someone from Streatham in South London and to the untrained ear, the accent is the same. Sort of what is these days called 'Estuary English'. But it isn't. South London is quite different from Estuary and very different from Cockney and indeed my own Essex whine (which I keep only for special occasions and school friends). But I understand them all intuitively so as soon as these words were uttered I almost wet myself laughing.

This would have been fine at any other time but unfortunately I was drinking a cup of tea and my laughing made me ingest the tea which went down the wrong way, sparking a mass of coughing and spluttering, gulping for air, more laughing and culminating in the spectacle of my tea making a reappearance out of my nose. From where it ran down onto my shirt. Sorry Viv!

What made things funnier I think was the realization that I was probably one of only 5 or 6 people in the whole world who actually understood what had been said for this was the Premier League's own feed so it would have not been sold in England, only outside. In England, the Premier League rights are owned by Sky and BT Sport only. It occurred to me then and now that it would be almost impossible for any non-native English speaker to have a clue what had been said. It wasn't rude although I was waiting for the rest of the program for the analyst to make the ruder follow on comment, say, about Trevor Brooking's neighbor, referring to him as a 'friend of Trev' -- which is!

Confused yet?

Not our war, mate

Quite a few points to ponder coming away from Sabah/Borneo unrelated to cute jungle creatures, rather the nastier aspects of history. In this case WWII. It is my age, I know, and background that gives me this interest in this time of history. For both my parents, it was the defining part of their lives. Had WWII not happened, there would have had to have been some extraordinary circumstances and coincidences to have taken place for me to be sitting here typing away like this. Anyway this is my blog, so there!

When big history remembers WWII, it is the western front and D-Day, the US' staged jumps through the Pacific islands and the Soviet march to Berlin. Rarely do people remember all the rest. That is why the army that conducted the Allied Burma campaign was referred to as the 'forgotten fourteenth' and General Slim is all but forgotten/ignored despite his record of almost unblemished major victories. So who remembers Sandakan?

What? Who? Where?

This is the top right part of Borneo. In WWII there were no roads in the interior, just jungle trails. Everything that moved, moved by sea. The Death Marches of 1945 went in virtually a straight line from Sandakan to Jesselton... but none got there

It is difficult to visualize if you don't know where it is so hopefully the map helps.

The Japanese landed here very soon after the first landings in Malaya and were as successful as quickly as on the mainland. Borneo was considered a source of raw materials for Japan after sanctions were imposed by the USA and Britain over atrocities in China by the invading Japanese armies choked off the supply of oil and other raw materials. Japan has virtually zero natural resources so imports everything. On the other hand, oil, timber and a host of other raw materials are to be found in abundance in Borneo and elsewhere in the region. Hence the notion of the 'Greater South East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' -- what a euphemism! Chairman Mao didn't have to look far for inspiration for his little red book!

As is documented elsewhere, the Japanese were awful colonial masters. Terrorising, torturing and killing virtually anyone they came across, it must have made for a shocking time for the local population of whom one in six were killed during their less than 4 year occupation. As for the POW's who were shipped in and housed at a camp at Mile 8 (outside Sandakan town and into the jungle), their job was to build a runway for the Japanese Air Force. Over 3,000 mainly Aussies plus also British had the job but did it (deliberately) so slowly and inefficiently that by early 1945, it was clear to the Japanese that even if the airport could be commissioned, it would never be used because of the dominance of Allied air power. So they stopped work, burned the town to the ground and marched all the POW's out into the jungle in a series of Death Marches and massacred them all. Only 6 survived (all Aussies) because they were able to escape and were helped by local people which is how this story is known. Who knows where else in the Co-Prosperity Sphere did this get repeated but with no witnesses?

The survivors

But seemingly this story is known only in Sandakan (and of course presumably in the families of the dead).

We only learned the story because we visited the memorial with a group of Germans as it turns out. Both Viv and I were riveted by the sad story but the Germans were in and out in less than 10 minutes. Not their war. Theirs was probably worse by a magnitude. But it did make me wonder because all of this was fully known and a number of Japanese were tried for war crimes and executed, just why is it that the world excoriates the Nazi regime (totally justifiably) but pretty much gives the Japanese a pass? Is it because 2 atom bombs were dropped and people feel guilty about that? For I certainly don't. The Japanese would have fought to the death. At the time of the surrender there were 2.5 million Japanese soldiers still under arms and given the experience throughout the Pacific campaign, there was no chance they'd simply surrender. Allied plans called for at least 1.5 million US and British troops to take part in the invasion of Japan with the transfer from Europe already taking place... Including my mother who was an army driver and had received her posting instructions to 'somewhere in the Far East'.  Bloody Hell, Mum!

Anyway, I now know and I will remember.

Is IPL the Future of Cricket?

I truly hope not but I am absolutely riveted by IPL 2019. It is on TV at ungodly hours of the night so I slavishly stay up all night and feel wretched the following morning/day but do it again that same night. Again and again.

It is wonderful!

The format seems simple: 8 teams play one another home and away. Top 4 play semi-final and final. Pretty easy. Actually it sounds like they took the same format as the Bermuda Evening Cricket League, the oldest T20 competition in the world.

Imagine some of the best players in the world, batters and bowlers, hammering away full bore over a very much shortened period to say a 5 day test match (my preferred format for cricket). Colorful outfits for the cricketers (even we played in colours in latter years), same for the huge screaming, howling crowds and 1,000 decibel Indian hip hop music played continuously and you have total bedlam. It is absolutely wonderful!

As I type I am watching a re-run of a game from a couple of nights ago, only in my own defense because Johnny Bairstow and David Warner are batting together. Again. As a batter myself I just love watching great batsmen batting well. And these guys batted really well in this game. Really well. Again. Ironically neither will be available for the latter stages of the tournament as they have cricket commitments elsewhere so their team will have to do without them. This will be tough as they together have scored over two-thirds of the total runs scored by their side so far in the 8 matches played. Absent them, I wouldn't say the team is rubbish but well they don't score many runs. So maybe yeah, their team is rubbish.

Both got hundreds in this game.... which of course I watched!

The format allows for up to 4 non-Indian players per team and these days there are many cricketers who only play this type of cricket: fast, hard going, every ball hit hard. A new breed of cricket mercenary. The likes of Chris Gayle spring to mind in this category. No longer play test matches or for the home nation, just T20 all over the world. The money attracted to this event is huge so attracts the top, top players .... like Bairstow and Warner and of course the terrific Indians too, remembering they are the #1 Test nation at the moment. Still. And with a population of 1.4  billion all of whom are insane about cricket. Little wonder that this event is a success.

So all those ingredients: money, 1.4 billion cricket mad Indians, great event well supported the world over, ever more proliferating short format cricket events... this means that the organisation has to be tight too. And it is... but of course with a twist. Or rather conditions.

India has the money and the population. England and Australia are the only cricket playing nations anyone wants to watch playing tests. Nobody wants to play in terrorist dogged Pakistan. So given this, it is very unsurprising that these three nations have cricket solidly stitched up, money wise, TV wise, pretty much everything wise.

This reflects reality, so OK I suppose. But then again I just watched a documentary on control of cricket and it is just like the cronyism at FIFA and UEFA in football, and I presume every other sport that generates money. Oh hold on wait, it is pretty much only football and certain cricket events and the rugby World Cup that generates money in sport. And of course the Olympic Games. Whoops, nearly forgot tennis. This is starting to make sense.

Now, first job with anyone looking to take control is first take control. Next job is to keep it. So having taken control of the International Cricket Council (ICC) that's what they did. Top jobs for the boys (and I do know one such from Bermuda in this category -- alright Neil?). Everyone else gets favors aka scraps. But do not, and I do repeat, do not allow anyone to come in who may ultimately challenge you. So the ICC has so far not granted sanction to China to become an ICC affiliate country. According to this documentary, something like 300 million Chinese play cricket! I may have got the decimal point misplaced but what if I haven't?

It is really difficult to not get cynical when a game gets hijacked by business interests and money as many sports have. Trouble is that when the sport is so good and the event so wonderful, you just forget about 'that other stuff' and just enjoy the spectacle.

And what a spectacle IPL 2019 is!

Headhunting

We made it back from Sabah a couple of weeks ago now and if you are interested you may follow the daily detail on Chris' wonderful Track My Tour App... thanks as always Chris.... right here. If not, well that's OK just follow on from below once I get going.

Sabah is well within my 3 1/2 hour circle for direct flights from Penang...

Sabah is the top right bit

So Borneo, well Wikipedia has a lot to say of course (see here and thanks for this) and as you take a look at where it is located on both the maps, remember that 73% is Indonesia so the rest of it is now Malaysia with a hint of Brunei thrown in. That is the top part. The left hand side is Sarawak and the right is British North Borneo that was but is now known as Sabah (again thanks Wikipedia -- see here). So now you have all the history that you could possibly want and need, that is the 'official' history. Of course, what is said and what is not are sometimes worlds apart. I cannot say that our 10 days there gave me any great insights about the histories of things but present day observation sure adds some color and textures to what is formally stated.

The old British version of Borneo. Looks like the Dutch were pressing into the British but that wasn't the case at all. The island is so big, they barely met even though the green runs next to the pink. The Dutch were in the south of the island.

Direct flights to Kota Kinabalu (KK from now on as the name is far too long to keep typing) from Korea, Japan and China mean that this formally lush and serene paradise island (actually it never was that!) is now no longer quite so serene. At sundown, the coastal beaches facing the setting sun are overrun with coaches and coaches of tourists bussed in just for the occasion which I have to say is pretty darn amazing actually (not the coaches although that is quite a sight too but of a different kind). I have watched loads of sunsets but never before has it been so cloud free for all of it as the first I witnessed here. One minute the sun is there, the next ... poof... its gone!

Our first sunset!

Our last sunset

Anyway I was busily being cynical about bus loads of tourists clustering together on limited beach space for the 30 minutes that the sunset takes to happen; well approximately if you don't add a couple of cocktails along with things, like we did. Then it gets a bit longer.

But it wasn't me though being the cynical one, it was our Grab driver who rolled his eyes when talking about this. I merely nodded sagely and noted it for future reference as it joins in with a whole lot of other stuff that is out there clear as day but totally either missed or ignored (deliberately or not I wonder) starting with trash. It is everywhere. I asked one of our great guides/drivers/boat crew from Borneo Ecotours (terrific incidentally, thanks guys!!) about this and he was polite and diplomatic to a painful degree. Obviously it doesn't show people in a great light and this is the problem (I don't like that word but this time I will use it because it is a 'problem'). For the problem is that the newly wealthier tourists don't think of the environment at all. Hoovering up all endangered species they can as face cream, special soups, or just deep fried with noodles.

Not endangered of course but rather nice deep fried with noodles

Nothing on land, sea or in the air is off limits. Factor in also on a local basis the indigenous peoples who are poor as church mice and therefore have no compunction hunting a particular creature to extinction if there is the possibility of making a little extra money. And finally.... and this is something I really do not get .... there are really very, very few trash bins so even if you didn't want to throw stuff all over the place willy nilly, the only alternative is stuffing it in your pockets. Which let me tell you people do not do.

This is one of the picturesque tourist islands near the beach. At least this trash is in a bag but that does not deter monitor lizards from getting stuck in one bit. Incidentally I thought these were horrible creatures until our guide told us that is these lizards that clean up the jungle and keep it both clean and smell free. They are carrion eaters. Sounds nasty but very necessary.

If you listen to David Attenborough on the wildlife shows -- which I do as he is simply terrific, there probably is a better word for it but I cannot think of it. On a plane recently I watched a wildlife program about penguins narrated by Morgan Freeman, who has a great voice, but.... it just is not David Attenborough so even though it is really well done, it just isn't.... well David Attenborough, so it can't be right. Well, not as right as when David Attenborough says it. So when David Attenborough speaks, you listen and you give weight (or should anyway) to what he says. He says that Borneo is a stunning paradise for wildlife and then goes on about habitats and stuff. And he is right but then when he is joined by olive oil manufacturing companies who say 'yeah, look at those palm oil plantations...' that is when you should stop and start to think: 'why would that olive oil company (could be any related company) agree with David Attenborough on this?' Answer economics.

This is where I get a bit cynical about the whole eco thing because whilst I totally agree that we are making a mess ecologically speaking and doing things that will have a significant deleterious impact on the planet at some point, I do also think that some of the people going on about it have motives that are not 100% planet positive related, rather money related. And for others, well it is a bit rich them having a go at a newly emerging country trying to make its way when they have systematically cut down all their first growth trees, exterminated all their large mammal populations, turned their countries into concrete jungles, etc. etc. All for them to have a better life. So it's OK for them to do it, but it's not OK for someone else to have a go at making a better life for themselves??

Nice mess we've made for ourselves, isn't it?

It would be nice to see all those eco-friendly joiners in and armchair experts actually come out to all those places and see for themselves and.... try to do something about it out there instead of complaining to their MP back home or gluing themselves to a London Underground (happened yesterday.... really!) or having sunrise group yoga sessions for the world before their Starbucks soya milk lattes. It really isn't easy and there is no easy solution as economics and sinister lobby groups do rather get in the way as they cynically and self servingly talk about carbon footprints and the Paris Accord. But really, will pressure groups in so-called developed nations of the west actually convince the rest of the (developing) world to do what they couldn't and didn't do and in fact raced full pelt to actively do once they found out they could?

Sadly my bet isn't on the answer 'Yes'.

Being in the jungle even if for only a few days and staying at a slick resort does not make me an expert by any means but it does seem meaningful to me that one of our guides is an ex-hunter turned eco-fanatic. Clearly engagement did work with him and of course his uncle, presumably the senior partner in their previous enterprise who became the guardian of the last two Borneo rhinos in existence. They are still alive but sadly both males so don't expect much unless a miracle happens. The species was declared extinct in 2015 but there are still large tracts of first growth jungle remaining -- that is 100 million year old forests that have remained untouched by humans -- where people have never ventured so who knows maybe a miracle will happen. Hope so.

It was all rather wonderful though to be somewhere where critters that David Attenborough in his whispering voice tells us are endangered with their habitats disappearing all over the place simply wander up and start chowing down on some of the many jungle fruit seemingly on every tree and bush. Totally unconcerned by our presence. We kept tripping over orang utans and proboscis monkeys but still the thrill of seeing them in the wild remained. Catching some sun bears wrestling was rather wonderful. As for those noisy hornbills, well you couldn't keep them quiet. What a racket. Sadly no elephants this time nor rhinos and leopards, but there was this rather amazing civet (weasel shaped cat creature) that acted just like my cat Bella (alright ex-cat).

Through a telescope, well it was a long way away but somehow the ranger spotted it

Proboscis monkeys by the river bank. During the heat of the day, they retreat into the jungle but return at dusk to sleep 

This sun bear was terrific to watch enjoying that carrot. Surely not a jungle fruit? Well no it was in the sun bear sanctuary, there being so few remaining in the wild. That's what people think but as they never see them, how do they know?

During the time we were in Sabah, we heard about the kimodo dragon island nearby on one of the Indonesian islands being closed to tourists to protect not the tourists from the dragons, but the other way around. At about the same time, newspapers reported the illegal transshipment of one in a cooler box. The report that did make me almost cheer was that of the unfortunate poacher in Africa who seeking rhinos was trampled by an elephant and eaten by lions. He ticked all the boxes in a wrong way! However, it all makes me realize that there is less and less time still available to visit and see all the marvels that the world has to offer before things change forever and they are gone. We'd better get to it then.