Monday, 5 December 2011
CE books in China
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Names again
I was travelling in Australia in 1987/88, at a time when people, centres and organisations throughout the world working with children and adults with disability were taking great care in their choice of words to describe their work .
During my stay in Australia I visited centres for people with disabilities in Sydney and in towns furthur north along the coast. I was somewhat surprised to discover that use of the word "spastic" in their names was still considered acceptable. Elsewhere in the world "cerebral palsy" was the term being used to describe the condition.
http://mt-druitt-standard.whereilive.com.au/news/story/new-name-for-spastic-centre-less-stigma/
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
There is one person who you really must meet
At the time I had no idea why I should meet the person mentioned but, by the time that pre-Congress workshops the Congress and the post-Congress visits were all over I most certainly did know, and I was very happy to have had the pleasure of meeting her.
On the Sunday before the World Congress started I took myself out of the hotel door, armed with a map to guide me through the streets and the underground rail network to reach Kowleen, to take part in a pre-Congress workshop, in Cantonesse, about using art with children with disability.
In an email that I had received from the secretary of the Congress several months before, soon after I registered for this workshop, I had been asked whether I had made a mistake by registering for a workshop that was to be held in Chinese. I had not made a mistake and as it turned out I had rightly believed that I would manage all right, as a workshop about art would be mainly visual.
Armed with a map
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Hong Kong revisited
Monday, 17 January 2011
Michael J.Fox and the Botanical Gardens


"Tea-time" 


"Parrots"
"Museum of Tea"







I wrote the following posting on the plane home from Hong Kong. It is one of many that I am slowly unearthing.
On leaving Hong Kong I was not as tired as I had been on leaving Germany two weeks previously, when I had fallen asleep as soon as I got into the plane, to awake refreshed just a couple of hours before landing.
My final day in Hong Kong I had spent visiting the Botanical Gardens. I had discovered this very small idyll in the middle of the business centre of the island.
While there I heard bird song for the first time since I had been in Hong Kong, I saw white and green parrots flying in front of the mirrored glass of skyscrapers, I watched a heron sleeping high in a tree, and I was mesmerized by huge fish swimming in the ornamental ponds full of beautiful flower arrangements and reflexions of the skyline.
I finished off a perfect day with a final ride on the hundred-year-old tram, Back at the hotel to collect my suitcase and jump on the bus to the airport, I was completely relaxed and the exhaustion from the previous weeks of book-writing and work and the hectic days of the congress had left me.
Talking book
On this the return trip on the plane I was still wide awake when the food and drinks came round and after the meal I decided to take a look at what the entertainment system had to offer.
I am not much of a film-buff and certainly not at such close range. All those flashing images play havoc with my eyes, so I decided to take a look at what the talking books had on offer.
I found the latest by Michael J Fox which was a nice surprise and even nicer was that it was also read by Michael J fox. That was a treat as it sounded as though he was there beside me, telling me his story just as I tell stories in my blog.
I listened for several hours to the second installment of his account of life with Parkinson’s disease, dozing off and waking several times.
This was just the right thing for a flight home after such an interesting time at the Congress in Hong Kong.
I was not in the mood to listen to a thriller or watch a comedy film or a love story. I had read through the Congress’s abstract book while I waited for the plane, and for the food on the plane, and I did not want to write postings all night long. I thought that it would be quite nice to shut my eyes and listen to a story, so a talking book with the lovely voice of Michael J Fox was just perfect, especially as I learnt so much through his story that will help me when I work with my clients.
Notes
Michael J Fox -
Lucky Man: A Memoir
Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
What Confucius says and what the China Daily writes
What a shop window in Wan Chai says in Chinglish!
The Hot Incense Pot, Ngong Ping, Hong Kong, December 2010
Written in Hong Kong, 11-14th December 2010
The coffee is good too as there is warm milk to add, just like I wish I always had time to do at home!
Since I was nineteen-years-old, when I left home for art school with the promise to Mum not to jump on my bike in the mornings without eating, I have loved breakfast.
I love breakfast with a newspaper and tea and toast, with a notebook, or a paintbrush and a bowl of muesli in my own kitchen. I love it sharing a crossword with my Dad at home or after a night on the sofa at my sister’s house. I love breakfast in the café beside the duck-pond near work, and I loved the early morning eggs-sunny-side-up or easy-over breakfasts that I experienced in America.
I also love the breakfasts here in Hong Kong. On the Congress days they were spent with a variety of friends old and new, getting up to refresh coffee or to collect pancakes with maple syrup and a selection of exotic fruits, while at the same time hugging a long lost Hungarian, Scottish, Australian or English friend. Even a few book-signings took place over breakfast!
Now in the quieter days, when Congress-goers have left for faraway places, I can spend some time with my newspaper on one side and my notebook on the other.
A word from my paper
Each morning I wake to discover a copy of the China Daily delivered to my bedroom door. What a treat to have a newspaper all of my own. My Mum used to treat me to the same when I was home. In Norwich it was The Times that she ordered for me, here it is a different story.
I had managed to scan the front page of the paper most mornings during the busy days and picked out a few articles that I may comment on later, but now I actually have time to read it.
Three days ago I read an interesting article on how English words are being introduced in the Chinese language and how new English words are creeping into the Hong Kong English. This reminded me of the campaign to keep the German language German by the people who oppose Neu Deutsch, but with a difference. Here in the China Daily there were no protests. No, on the contrary, the journalist Raymond Zhou describes it as something positive, telling us that the words that are creeping into the Chinese people’s languages “indicate how vibrant the mother tongue of Confucius has become.”
The article was a bit confusing. I was not sure whether I was reading about English words in Chinese or Chinese translated into funny English, but as the China Daily stated, I was reading about “language at is most vibrant, breaking out of fractured rocks like the legendary Monkey King, spurning conventions and hopping from treetop to treetop”.
This word that initially attracted me was one that sounded very German and one that causes problems for the older generation in Germany.
This word is “ Geili” which means to give power or force. It is reported to come from a dialect but nobody could trace which one. As I said it sounds very German to me!
For a second time in the article I read about the Monkey King, as it was after being used in a dubbed Japanese film about the Monkey King that this word became the in word for cool or awesome.
Coincidence
The hip word for cool or awesome in German is Geil! How it derived this meaning forat least the past ten years, having meant homosexual for many more years previously, I have no idea. Older generations in German still have difficulty keeping “cool” when confronted with a grandchild for whom everything is geil!
Geili in China has been turned into a verb and has also taken on English forms “gelivable” and “ungelivable”.
More Chiglish
The China Daily article mentions a host of other words and phrases that are coming into use. One of my favourites is a word that describes smiling and saying nothing: “Smilence”. Apparently this word was created to describe Chinese stoicism or prudishness.
Other words in daily use on the Internet are “Chinternet”, “goveruption”, “livelihard” and “shitizen”!
Apparently although there is no Chinese equivalent of Urban Dictionary, there are scholars like Huang Jiwei, who collect witty sayings, but he feeling is that most of the grassroots wisdom will be soon lost when the next round of “geili” sayings hit the streets.
In a paper that I read while I waited at Hong Kong airport a week later, The Sunday Morning Post from 5th December, I noticed that the pre-Christmas best sellers list for non-fiction books listed at numbers one and five respectively Chinglish and More Chinglish; speaking in tongues, both by Oliver Lutz Radtke, who sounds like he could be German to me.
I saw enough Chinglish to fill one of these books while I was in Hong Kong, but unfortunately photographed very little of it, but one odd sign heads this posting.
Notes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong
I later discovered that Oliver Lutz Radtke is German:
Oliver Lutz Radtke – Chinglish: Found in Translation is a fine little book from Oliver Lutz Radtke, a German sinologist who was partially trained in China. ...
http://www.amazon.com/More-Chinglish-Oliver-Lutz-Radtke/dp/1423605845/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
More of what the China Daily says:
13th December 2011, Hong Kong
What else was there to read in the China Daily had landed at my door each morning?
There was also the 11th December- opening of the Asian Para-Games to read about on several days, in what appear to be very positive reports. Describing it as a stage for athletes to display self-esteem, self-confidence, self-striving and self-reliance, in an atmosphere filled with joy, friendship and dreams. The Games are following on after the Para-Olympics in Beijing with the same slogan “Spirit in Motion”, with the goal of fostering a more inclusive society and to inject vitality in a bid to constructing a harmonious Asia.
On the neighbouring page is a huge full-page article with the heading “ Stick to the path of peaceful development”.
What is that one all about? The first paragraph states:
“The CPC Central Committee’s Proposal for Formulating the 12th Five-Year-Plan for China’s Economic and Social Development adopted by the Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee has drawn the grand blueprint for China’s development in the next five years.”
On the following page the article is headed with the word harmony and the next with humanity. Another says that China needs adaptability and then there is the Monkey King with all his transformations and the vitalisingof Confucius’ language with the addition of a bit of Chinglish.
On another page there is a dramatic picture of students jumping off burning park benches in London underneath which readers are told that despite a “rebellion by members of the coalition government, student fees were raised.
There are articles telling readers not to be too complacent about the standards of education in Hong Kong despite the high grades that students are getting.
The paper is produced for English-speaking visitors to China. Sometimes while reading I felt like I was back in Hungary reading an English language newspaper in the late eighties.
Now alone I even quite enjoyed the piped music, that played quiet, classical versions of familiar Christmas songs, while I read the daily report on the Nobel Prize and its winner.
Nobel’s empty chair
There had been something written in the China Daily every day since I arrived about Lui Xiaobo, the imprisoned Chinese man who received the Nobel Peace Prize. I have been following this news story since the winner of the Prize was announced. I have been reading about it in Time Magazine, the Guardian Weekly and in German newspapers.
Here in the Chinese newspapers I read a different story. I will not go into the politics of that here, although it is really interesting to have been able to read about it in both the East and the West. I am glad to have had the chance to read about world news in the country in which it is actually taking place, even though it is news sorted out for the tourist.
Today (Monday 13th December) the China Daily put Liu Xiaobo and the Dali Lama, who was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in the same category. They were both prisoners who had committed crimes against their homelands.
What Confucius said
It was today’s headline for the Nobel story that caught my eye:
“Peace Prize mockery of its ideals”
“Confucius once said that when something was called by the wrong name it was the result of failure of understanding and an inability to perceive reality.”
This is the tone of most of the articles that I have read on this subject while in Hong Kong, dramatically different to what I had been reading at home. The general feeling that I get from the reports is the belief that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee have little understanding of what the people of China really wish for, and that they should take a trip to find out.
January 4th 2011
I have just spent a very pleasurable two hours after writing up my notes for this posting re-reading several days’ worth of China Daily, Hong Kong Editions. Actually for a paper that is for visitors there is a huge cross-section of news with the balance tipping towards social matters and the next Five-Year Development Plan. I am really glad that I took the time to read the newspapers while in China and make the effort to bring so many snippets back with me.
Notes
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Hong Kong leftovers - 4

The bottles that I paintedFirst the blue one with the handle just a shape that I imagined,
then the green one was done through touch only.
Although blinded-folded, though, I seemed to know what colour the real bottle was!
Andrew Sutton’s Chinese takeaway –4
http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/world-congress-take-away-4.html
Re: Ivan Su's post Congress workshop. My thoughts during this workshop were that we should have gone through the whole of the Congress, and any time spent later meeting people and in discussion, with a much better understanding of SAHK and its "culture" had we all heard Ivan’s most brilliant lecture first.
As it was, the very small audience was so tired by the two jam-packed previous Congress days that we could not do it justice. I was actually enthralled by the workshop and how Ivan was enthusing us, despite our exhaustion.
Even if my eyes were physically drooping I was wide-eyed mentally as I soaked it all in.
One thing that I realised among other things was that having such a business-like approach is what is missing in most centres offering CE in the West. I do not mean by “business-like” that it is about making money, it is not, but it is about not loosing money and having enough resources to provide for the best life-style possible for clients.
These resources are the human resources and yes, they do cost money. Not only that, SAHK has a psychology department, all four of the centres that I visited in my two weeks in Hong Kong had a psychologist in the team, a team more often than not headed, as Andrew Sutton mentioned, by a social worker.
I remember “talking” to Andrew a couple of years ago in an email, about how excited I was to learn about what was being done in Hong Kong “conductively”. Andrew had then just returned from China after a week of busy visits and meetings. He was still making up his own mind about what he has seen and said nothing to influence my enthusiastic mood.
Much later, as the 2010 Congress neared and I read more about SAHK’s work, I was even more convinced that my own conductive-style living and upbringing was nearer to what was happening in Hong Kong than to what I experienced in some other conductive centres that I have visited in the West.
I was not at all worried by the time I actually got to China, that I would be disappointed or that my mind would have to change.
I certainly was not disappointed
From what I listened to, observed, and heard in Ivan Su’s post-Congress workshop, SAHK has developed a conductive culture in all of its teams in a way so similar to the conductive cultures that I strive to develop within the structures of all the families with which I work.
I say again now what I said to many of the people I met in SAHK's centres, I really am very impressed and learnt a lot that will help my own development.
I wonder if I would have came away with the same positive feelings if I had only been in Hong Kong for the four days of the Congress.
I know that that final, post-Congress workshop was the key to understanding much of every thing that I had seen up to that point and it gave me a very good idea as to how I wanted to spend the following week in Hong Kong discussing and observing conductive work .
I came away hopeful of more of the same! The determination of these teams of people at SAHK was inspirational. It showed me that it really can work on a large scale.
It works fairly well in my small world of conduction here at home, where teachers, school aids, parents grandparents etc., all work with a conductive aim for our clients. But that is small fry compared to what I saw in Hong Kong.
I came away inspired and even more determined in my own efforts to teach more families about conductive upbringing.
It is already taking place, it seems that I only have to think about communicating to a wider audience and it happens. As if by magic ,as my athetoid clients would say!
As I say to those children what it really comes down to is a lot of hard work
As far as the “wetwear problems” go, those that Andrew Sutton described when discussing the Social Networking Platform, I encountered none in my meetings once I was in Hong Kong. Perhaps I too should give it ago on the Platform again. Like Andrew, as the Congress neared, I had eventually given up on it.
Re. German Christmas Market
I had been looking forward to having a Christmas-card photograph taken with a mug of Gluhwein in my hand at this market. I asked many people its whereabouts while in Hong Kong. I even had some Hong Kongers searching the Net. I searched Andrew Sutton’s blog and mine for any reference to it, to no avail. I should have looked in the social networking site where I think it was also mentioned but by then I too had just about given up on the Social Network. So as it turned out, I too missed the Christmas market.
But I did see a huge market in Causeway Bay as I was travelling on the top deck of a double-decker tram, having visited the headquarters of SAHK, in Hong Kong’s North Point.
The market looked like a mini-expo and the signs indicated that it was selling “all things Chinese”. The place was still swarming with visitors at six o’clock in the evening. I made the choice of travelling further down the line to have supper at the Hay-Hay, on what was my final evening in Hong Kong.
Perhaps I would have had an even better choice of food had I taken my weary legs to the front of the tram, paid my two dollars and jumped off at the market, but I carried on. In the end my meal of cashews with prawns, and fried rice with veggies, was a perfect end to the trip!
Friday, 31 December 2010
Transport in Hong Kong

Tram, taxi, Methodist Church, a building site, and always a row of motor cycles,
my view each morning
Trams at the busy intersection where the Indonesian maids met on SundaysYou can just see their heads where they sit on the bridge sharing their meals

The delights of travelling by public transport in a city that is even more efficient than in Budapest or in Germany. All mentioned earlier this week by Andrew Sutton at:
http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/chinese-takeaway-2.html
The lovely old, green trams are not all green any more. There were red ones, pink ones, black ones, white ones and blue ones. Even maroon ones with Christmas lights for party goers! The MTR (underground) is incredibly sleek and shiny and never-ending! The red and beige taxis are everywhere. Travelling on the Peak Tram reminds us adopted Magyars of being in Budapest, although the views in Hong Kong were far more spectacular. And all the double-decker buses reminded me of home! The ferry was something novel for me and using it gave me a better idea of the distances between the islands than did travelling by MTR or bus.
My favourite after the double decker trams were the lovely Hong Kong little buses, but I forgot to buy myself one for the top of the fridge!
Notes
MTR, buses, ferry and green trams and more -
http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/chinese-takeaway-2.html

























