FEAST OR FAMINE

Australians will ring in the New Year with a record number of telephone calls and texts. Telecommunications provider Optus predicts that its customers will send 76 million texts on New Year's Eve, 10 million more than last year. People will make more than 51 million telephone calls on mobile phones on the night of New Year’s Eve while 44 million calls will be made from landline home phones. That equates to more than one in three Australians who are anticipated to send greetings via social media this year. India, Vietnam and the United Kingdom are predicted to be the three most popular overseas destinations to call this year.

In Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) Olivia meets her older Chinese half-sister and first child of her father, Jack Yee, at the age of five. Kwan, 18, leaves China to live with her step-family in San Francisco. Kwan believes that she has “yin eyes”: that she can see and hear the ghosts of the dead. With the knowledge of the dead, of Chinese wisdom, and the ability to diagnose illnesses, Kwan protects and advises her new-found sister, Olivia. Olivia thinks that Kwan has an opinion about everything. Olivia thinks she is nosey, interfering, persistent, persuasive, talkative and worst of all – Kwan wants everyone, particularly Olivia, to be happy all the time. This is a beautifully and poignantly written story of Olivia’s relationship with her separated husband, Simon, and her half-sister in America and on a journey to Kwan’s Chinese village. Olivia tells the tale with humour, honesty and a sense of guilt at her annoyance with Kwan’s interference in her life. I...

Samoa is a South Pacific island (population 200,000), formerly called Western Samoa, situated on the eastern side of the International Date Line, making it the last country on Earth to end the day. This means that it is a day behind Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and other Pacific countries – Samoa’s trading partners – restricting the country to a three-day business week. It lies south of the equator about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii (and is about the size of two of Hawaii’s islands, Oahu and Maui combined). Samoa was placed this side of the international dateline almost 120 years ago when its trading partners were Europe and the United States of America. Samoa’s parliament passed legislation on Monday June 27, 2011, to reverse the decision on December 30, so that the international dateline lies to the east of the country, bringing it in line with Australasia. Therefore, this year, Friday December 30 won’t exist. The country will literally miss a day to enable th...

Jane Shilling’s The Stranger in the Mirror: a memoir of middle age (2011) is a British woman’s journey approaching her fifties as she comes to terms with her age, her loves, and her career. First, Shilling comes to terms with the definition of “middle age” – “the unequivocal marker of the boundary between youth and what is left of life” and states categorically that “middle age and the menopause are not precisely the same thing.” Interestingly, the author uses comparative literature to juxtapose her feelings and thoughts with those of other authors, past and present. These include quotes from Simone de Beauvoir, Colette, George Eliot, Germaine Greer, Henry James, Nancy Mitford, and Virginia Woolf (such as “Lord, are we as old as all that? I feel about six and a half”) and an analysis of fictional middle-aged characters. She also uses fashion, hairstyles, and cosmetics (and cosmetic surgery) as markers – when one’s ability to wear hot pants and biker jackets with convic...

Andrew D. Miller’s Snowdrops (2011) is set in Moscow from the early 2000s. The story commences with the smell of a dead body that was buried under the snow all winter, emerging with the spring thaw—"a snowdrop". Nick Platt is a British lawyer recounting his four-and-a-half years exploring the seedy and decadent nightlife, clubs and bars of Moscow where every woman under forty dresses like a prostitute when the winter snow melts. Nick sees Maria Kovalenko—Masha to her friends—in a metro station. One stop later, Masha and her sister Katya are accosted by a man in a ponytail trying to steal Masha’s fake Burberry handbag. He scares off the thief and befriends the sisters, eventually helping their aunt Tatiana to find an apartment. That’s when Nick sees the “snowdrop” surrounded by policemen and knows immediately that it was Konstantin Andreyevich, his neighbour’s missing friend. Nick’s friend, Steve, suggests the death was part of a scam common in Russia in the 1...

Paul Hendrickson’s semi-biographical, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (2011) is a mixed bag: mostly engrossing, but often confusing. Hendrickson’s manuscript is more of an expose of his notes than a formal biographical account as he interviews people in Ernest Hemingway’s life and analyses photographs and memorabilia. The greatest piece of “memorabilia” is Hemingway’s boat, “Pilar” – bought in 1934 after his best seller, “A Farewell to Arms” and achieving fame as “America’s greatest novelist.” It is at this time that Hemingway leaves America to live in Bimini near Havana, Cuba, until forced back to America when the future of Cuba nosedives after 1958 under Fidel Castro’s regime. Hemingway describes the Cuban years as the happiest of his life, which he ended early on July 2, 1961 in his Ketchum, Idaho home, shortly before his sixty-second birthday and a year after he leaves Cuba. Not only was it his happiest period, it was also his m...

The Canberra Museum and Gallery in the heart of Canberra, Australia, is exhibiting “Fashioned Here: The business of fashion in Canberra” from September 3, 2011 to January 22, 2012 – a collection of local fashion designers. From private commercial and fashion houses in Canberra, the collection of designer fashions begins with a simple hat block from Stanley Taylor’s 1926 drapery and concludes with a series of colourful outfits designed by Maggie Shepherd in the 1990s. In between are a selection of men’s and women’s hats, suits, and dresses. From the Tracey Lord design collection is an orange turban/beehive hat (circa 1960), a cocktail hat from 1970, an elegant black satin pillbox (1950s), a cream felt beret (1950s), and several straw and raffia hats. The Sylvia Parsons collection includes a green synthetic fur pillbox, a grey felt hat with ribbon trim, and a purple velour pillbox. One of my favourites is from the collection of Christine Waring – a “petit beret” of red velou...

The life and politics of King O’Malley is on exhibition from October 29, 2011 to March 4, 2012 at the Canberra Museum and Gallery in the city centre of Canberra, Australia. King O’Malley, of Irish heritage, born either in Canada or America (he stated both) on either July 2 or July 4 (he stated both), in 1858 or 1854 (he stated both) was a larger-than-life legend in Australian politics. Even his name is suspect. According to O’Malley himself, his parents were William and Mary (nee King) O’Malley. Neither the date, first name, nor the place of his birth is known with certainty, although he certainly died on December 20, 1953. Working as an insurance salesman, traveling around America, he moved to Australia when he was given a medical death sentence – a doctor diagnosed tuberculosis in 1888 and gave him six more months of life. In Australia, a Coowonga man cared for him until he recovered. In good health, O'Malley decided to walk the 2,100 kilometres from Emu Park in Quee...

For more than 60 years (since 1947 at the time of the Partition – independence from Britain) the land debate over Kashmir has continued between India and Pakistan. When the British left the region, India and Pakistan were formed and gained their independence. One state in the north – Azad Jammu & Kashmir – was undecided and hence the United Nations separated the state into two administered regions with a line in between – based on religious and geographic factors. On one side of the Line of Control – the cease fire line that bisects Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK) – is Pakistan-administered AJK (predominantly Muslims). On the other side of the LOC is Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which comprises predominantly Hindus. The United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan passed a resolution in 1948 that the people of AJK could decide their fate through a plebiscite, but this has never happened because neither side could agree on the conditions. Instead, the governments o...

Vicenç Fisas, Director of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) School for a Culture of Peace (ecola de cultura de pau) and UNESCO Chair in Peace and Human Rights at the UAB has compiled the sixth edition of the Yearbook on Peace Processes . It contains analyses of conflicts between countries and regions in 2010 in which negotiations are being held to reach a peace agreement, regardless of whether these negotiations are formalized; are in the exploratory phase; are faring well; are stalled; or are in the midst of crisis. The analyses are provided by countries under regional sections such as Africa; Latin America; Asia and Pacific; Europe; and Middle East. The introduction includes exceptionally detailed descriptions of definitions. These include negotiation [“by negotiation we mean the process through which two or more clashing parties (either countries or internal actors within the same country) agree to discuss their differences in an agreed-upon setting to find...

The prices of most vegetables increased in city bazaars in December across Islamabad, Pakistan. These included tomatoes (up 7 cents a kilogram), green chilli (up 9 cents a kilo), ginger (up 18 cents a kilo), and pumpkin (up 18 cents per kilo). Cauliflower, cabbage, cucumber and onions stayed relatively stable. Potatoes decreased by 4 cents a kilo. Chicken also decreased by 3 cents a kilogram. Almost all fruits remained stable, with pomegranate and guava decreasing by 11 cents a kilogram. Fruit prices on the increase included oranges and bananas (up 11 cents a kilo), and apples (up 9 cents a kilo). Current prices are as follows (in US dollars) per kilogram: Apples $1.25 per kg Bananas 68 cents per kg Cabbage 41 cents per kg Cauliflower 34 cents per kg Chicken (fresh) $1.22 per kg Cucumbers 45 cents per kg Garlic 86 cents per kg Ginger 86 cents per kg Green chilli 86 cents per kg Guava 57 cents per kg Onions 48 cents per kg Okr...

The Second International Conference on Diabetes 2011 (11-13 December) in Karachi, Pakistan, jointly organized by the Dow University of Health Sciences and the Diabetic Association of Pakistan, highlights the global rise of diabetes, the most widespread metabolic disorder in the world. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that 285 million people worldwide have diabetes. By 2030, the number is expected to increase by 54% to 438.4 million and will mainly impact developing countries. In Pakistan, currently 7th in the world in terms of their diabetic population, 7.1 million people are affected by diabetes. With an estimated prevalence of 7.6% of the total population, the number of Pakistanis affected by diabetes is expected to rise to 13.8 million by 2030, placing the country 4th in the world. Diabetes is a chronic condition (i.e. lasting a long time, often for the duration of a person’s life) whereby insulin is no longer produced or not produced in sufficient amo...

In 2002 United Nations declared December 11 annual International Mountain Day (IMD) focusing on the conservation of mountain biological diversity and preservation. President of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Mountaineering & Hiking Club, Mohammed Saleem, posted an interesting article on the mountain ranges of Kashmir (http://www.greaterkashmir.com) to mark IMD. Saleem states that all of the world’s famous mountains taller than 7,000 metres are in Asia and all 14 peaks above 8,000 metres are in the Greater Himalaya range. The State of Jammu and Kashmir comprises three geographical regions: (1) The Lesser Himalayas, also called Jehlum Valley (Kashmir); (2) The Inner Himalayas or the Indus Valley (Ladakh & frontier areas) which is also known as Trans Himalayas; and (3) The Outer Himalayas, also called Southern Mountain Range (Jammu). The Valley of Kashmir is a longitudinal depression in the north-western Himalayan range carved tectonically, and situated at an altitude o...

The International Year of Mountains was held in 2002 at a time when I was in the Himalaya Mountain region in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Now, again in Pakistan, I celebrate International Mountain Day in Islamabad. The International Year of Mountains was launched by the United Nations (UN) in New York on December 11, 2001 to raise awareness of the importance of sustainable mountain development. As 2002 concluded, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed an annual International Mountain Day to draw attention to the important roles that mountainous regions play in water and food supply. Activities focus on book fairs; symposia; themed lectures for students; workshops and press events. Mountaineering and exploration societies often hold lectures and social events on or around December 11. Each year International Mountain Day has a particular theme. Previous themes have focused on freshwater, peace, biodiversity or climate change. The theme for 2011 is: mountains and fo...