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IN THIS ISSUE

• Louise Kruithof describes another link in a long journey
• Kate Brookfield tells of the start of another adventure
• Richard Ross resumes his Indian Chronicles
• Geoff Goodship writes from Brazil
• Verda Cook forwards a poem about the value of character
• Catherine Green, Shirley Conlon, Ron McVey and Tom Telfer recommend sites

Louise Kruithof and her husband have reached the outskirts of their city in their

JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE ROAD

When we finally reached Huolinguole, we could not keep on going on the road because the entrance to the city was also under construction. Another dirt track, this time with rudimentary lodgings along the road. Since we kept being told that this was a small town and not to expect much, I assumed that the whole town would be quite rudimentary. But believe it or not, the entrance to this little town was clogged with a traffic jam of trucks and trucks and more trucks! This little town was a hive of activity.

The Chinese have put a lot of thought into the infrastructure required to be an industrial powerhouse to the world and some of the manufacturing plants are already producing. This city was started because of the huge source of coal taken from an open-pit mine. They produce electricity, which they export to the South of China, and since the production of electricity is close by, a nearby aluminum plant is a natural because aluminum plants consume a very large amount of electricity.. The aluminum produced here is exported to the South and they hope it will be exported overseas. It already is used at different smaller plants scattered around here, such as a small plant turning raw aluminum into window mullions. There is a need for quite a fleet of trucks to take these finished products to the South for consumption within the country and also for export. The Chinese government has already been working for quite a few years on revamping the rail transportation system also.

Back to our journey: It took a whole half hour to make less than one kilometre progress in this traffic jam. Very large trucks and concrete trucks were trying to pass one another on this dirt road with maybe a foot (30 cm) between them when crossing one another. We were stuck behind a line-up of large trucks at the only entrance to the town. In the meantime, someone was waiting for us at the hotel and they were getting impatient and we knew that because every ten minute or so, the driver was getting a phone call asking about our whereabouts.

This was getting a bit much for the driver so he shut the engine off and walked up ahead to see what was happening. He came back, started the engine, and inched between trucks to make it ahead. Again, one had to trust the driver! This passing a very large vehicle with barely enough room to manoeuvre was hair-raising, to say the least. Then he stopped again, this time behind a concrete truck. It looked as if there was no room to manoeuvre. The barrel on the concrete truck was turning, indicating that there was concrete in the mixer that should be getting somewhere before it would start to set.

After fifteen minutes behind this concrete truck, the driver again shut off the engine, walked away, came back and started again. Willem said that it was really useless to try but the driver knew best: he had gone to check. Do you know what was happening? I had no clue and neither had Willem. This concrete truck about whose cargo I had wondered was stopped because the driver had gone into one of the houses to have something to eat! We passed the truck, and lo and behold, an asphalt road, nice and smooth. We were in a town with paved roads, just a smooth five minutes from the hotel.

We were welcomed there by a translator and an engineer from the plant. They showed us to a room which was too small, with barely enough room to walk between the end of the bed and the desk; definitely no room to hang all the winter clothing we had brought in the suitcases. Remember all that winter clothing? We were told that tomorrow we could change rooms and then were shown where the dining room was. It was in another building, only a two-minute walk away. We were also told that there was no water in the hotel until the next day!

They left, and we were ready to order some food. We now love those menus with pictures showing the dishes. There are still some mysteries but there is nothing wrong with having a surprise or two once in a while. That way, one can discover really good dishes! We ate and went back to our room and went to sleep. We were still trying to recover the 12 hours time difference between Canada and China.

To be continued.

Kate Brookfield recently returned from one of her many trips. This one was to

SHANGHAI

I was fortunate enough to be invited to visit Shanghai with a friend whom I met at the yuan ji wu classes. Alice has rich business friends who own an apartment in Shanghai. Before we went, she took me to meet these friends, who live in a sumptuous apartment right next to the101 building. I have never seen such luxury.

The apartment was a full floor of a high-rise building. They took a lot of photos of me in different parts of the apartment, but to date, I have not received any copies to share here. The rooms were all large and decorated with expensive works of arts, including a huge gilded leopard in the entrance hall. The bathroom was huge, with a large hot tub, and from the window you could enjoy the sight of the illuminated 101 tower. The complex includes a swimming pool, exercise rooms, including a room with all the exercise machines.

But the highlight of the evening was when the husband pressed a button and a huge screen came down and a projector opened up from the ceiling. They had a karaoke machine with 10,000 songs on it. The machine played pictures of different places on the screen and the words of the song appeared on the screen as he sang to us. Fortunately, he had a reasonable singing voice. Then they sang a duet. It was nice to see them enjoying themselves with something so simple as singing silly songs. Their business is exports to Nigeria, car parts, I believe and they are just getting into cosmetics.

Anyway, thanks to their kindness, we were going to stay at their apartment in Shanghai, so all we had to pay was the airfare to get there. At first I was told by Alice, my interpreter at the travel agent´s, that they could not get me a visa and I would have to go to Hong Kong to apply for a visa for mainland China. This method was complicated as you must put in the application at the airport before 9:00 a.m. and pick up the visa the following day, making it compulsory to stay overnight in Hong Kong. Also, there is no guarantee that you will get the visa and they don´t have to say why you are refused. When they told me that recently the wife of a European couple was given a visa, but the husband was refused, I decided that I was not going to take the risk.

Then I contacted the travel agent we have used here who speaks English. She told me she could get the visa but it would take a week and I had to pay 4,000 NT for it. I thought it was worth the fee and better than the uncertainty and expense of going to Hong Kong. Then Alice told me that her travel agent had said they could get the visa but the fee was 7,000 NT, so she omitted to tell me this option. Once I had the visa we could take advantage of the new deal for direct flights from Taiwan to mainland China. So we booked a flight with Shanghai airlines and in a few days after getting the visa safely in my passport, we were on our way.

The flight was from the domestic airport in Taipei, so just a short drive to the airport instead of the hour-long journey to the Chiang Kai-shek international airport. Shanghai airlines is very basic but the flight was only three hours. I was a bit disgusted with the toilet facilities. They had one small dirty-looking tablet of soap for everybody to use. No paper towels, just Kleenex for drying your hands. We were given a meal, but most of it I didn´t eat as I didn´t know exactly what it was!

We left Taipei at 1:00 p.m. and by 4:00 p.m. we were in Shanghai. A driver from the company and one of the young women who lives in the apartment met us at the airport. This was very nice as the airport is also a long way out of the city and the car journey to the apartment took a good hour. The traffic was busy with rush hour by the time we arrived in Xinzhuang, a suburb of Shanghai.

The apartment was on the 13th floor of a 14-storey building. It was spacious and beautifully decorated. Two women, relatives of the couple who own the business, live in the apartment and they had their own suite of rooms. In addition, there was a large bedroom for the owners when they come; we just got to peep in to see the luxury of it. Alice and I each had separate bedrooms. A maid came every day to make breakfast and wash the clothes and clean up. She had her own apartment in another area.

Xinzhuang is the terminal station of one of the branches of the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit), or metro, so it was easy for us to walk to the MRT station and get a train to almost anyplace in the centre of Shanghai. We were really lucky to have such a convenient place to stay for our visit.

To be continued.

Richard Ross resumes his neglected

INDIAN CHRONICLES

In hope of debunking some of the allegations of abandonment and/or death, I want to present this chronicle for all of you to be rest assured that I am still flying high. I must admit that taking on a few more commitments has usurped some of the time that once was devoted to the Chronicle. I promise that once I leave Delhi and start more rigorous travelling, I will once again proliferate.

Tonight, the diary opens on the eve of Diwali, India´s most anticipated and rousing holiday. With the same contagious rapture that Christmas brings to the streets, Delhi´s marketplaces and residential neighborhoods are brightly festooned with vibrant strings of lights. The homecoming dash of families appears no different than the "there´s no place like home" attitude during the American holiday season; and might I add, where congestion and chaos already slows the flow of movement, "Gee! ... the traffic is terrific!"

Even more impressive than the traffic, however, are the exploding skies. For the past week, the deafening crackle of recreational fireworks has shaken the powdery dust off the ground. The spattering eruptions and choking smoke would honestly lead you to believe that Hitler´s Luftwaffe had re-emerged, air-striking Delhi´s skyline into sheer smithereens. As well as fireworks, other dicey activities such as card-playing have seeped into the popular tradition of Dewali. Leading up to the holiday, friends and family gather around tables, hoodwinking one another, while chancing their hard-earned rupees in various poker games. This year, sadly, the celebration´s celestial potential is dampened by the hardship of the year´s terrorism and economic ills, but if you ask all the shell-shocked, whimpering canines, they´d be sure to tell you that Diwali is as ballistic as usual.

To bring you up to date: I have begun working for a high-flying and snow-balling Delhi-rooted NGO by the fetching name of Goonj ( http://www.goonj.org). In the late 1990s, the founder of the organization, Anshu Gupta, spent one curious afternoon following his local mortician on his daily route. He discovered that this mortician during the colder months of winter, ran a small business on the side. Despite what you may have heard of India´s inexorable heat, Delhi, especially around Christmas, can be a chilly place - and for those who live on the streets, it is at times unbearable. So unbearable that this mortician earned an extra stipend by leasing freshly- deceased bodies to the shivering homeless, who relied on the fleeting warmth and increased weight of a corpse to survive the bracingly cold nights. Aghast, as I assume you are, Anshu was struck both by how tragic such an unfathomable reality was, but also how possible an alternative could be. That New Year´s, after stuffing their car full with the heaviest clothing and blankets they could find, Anshu and his wife drove around Delhi, distributing a less-macabre source of warmth. Goonj from that point on has addressed the fundamental necessity of clothing, which surprisingly, is often grossly overlooked in the grand scheme of India´s development.

Owing to Goonj´s clear vision and creativity, the organization recently won the World Bank´s "Development Market" award and more impressively, "India´s NGO of the year (2007)." Mostly, I assist with writing newsletters, reports, and catchy slogans. but in the next few weeks, I will take on a responsibility much more engrossing. With Goonj, I´ll volunteer in the far-flung villages of rural Bihar, an area of northern India that always has been unrivalled in poverty and disarray, but lately, as a result of a catastrophic flood, is in an unprecedented state of crisis. Take some time to check out the website and find out how you can "spread the Goonj."

November yielded much reason to celebrate. Needless to say, Obama´s victory made crashing headlines as Indians and expats alike expressed delight at America´s radical make-over. I will happily report that already, the reception for the American abroad is on the brink of a grand renovation, and as sad as I am not to be in Washington for the momentous inauguration, I am equally delighted to travel with my head high; dangling, not burying my blue-covered passport.

I recently ran the Delhi half-marathon, by far the most unbalanced running event I´ve ever taken part in, where police outnumbered spectators 20 to 1. Nevertheless, to run freely on the regularly clogged roads provided a rare opportunity, but running in Delhi is like swimming in the Hudson - avoiding the pollution poses the greatest challenge.

Marathon picture here. Sorry the paragraph is so short!

The longer that I am here, the less noticeable the debacle-des-jours seem. I´m sure the debacles still occur, but constantly blending together, they have lost all episodic distinction. In order to reside in a place as different as India, maintaining both your composure and concentration, you mustn´t continue to dwell on, but rather, desensitize yourself to the never-ending unpredictability. In essence, you must submit yourself to India. At first, her every whim will unstitch the very seams of your patience, the threads of your temper, but once it rips, let it rip entirely. You´re then free - free to be at peace with her mercurial nature. Free to gaze into the eyes of the unicorn and accept her as just another horse.

I realized something ripped when the other day, jogging, I ran past a man pedalling a bicycle with a washing machine tied to his back. Where in America I would take a second, maybe even a third glance at the occasional mattress tied on someone´s car roof, I looked at this man, as devil-may-care as he was, performing perhaps the greatest display of strength and balance the world has ever seen, with deadpan indifference. Stomping elephants, horses and buggies, pet monkeys on motor scooters, a man lassoing a cow - it´s as if you woke up every morning front-row at the Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey Circus.

After two grounded months in New Delhi, the starting gun will sound this weekend. For the next six months, easing in gradually, I will start to shed the ties of fixed residence. In the company of "The Stray Dogs," my ultimate Frisbee team here in Delhi, I´ll be headed to the southern port of Chennai for India´s one and only ultimate beach tournament. I´ll also spend a day and a night in Pondicherry. A place that owes a lot to its French settlers, Pondicherry offers a much more laid-back, congenial version of India.

Once I return to Delhi, it will only be a few days until I head north- east, to Bihar, where I´ll experience firsthand the same gruelling reality that almost 70 percent of all Indians experience - rural subsistence. Not long after, I´ll join the rest of my sister´s family for a white Christmas - white sand - on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. Naturally, in the days leading up to New Year´s Eve, I´ll rush to the world-famous beaches of Goa to join the spate of dread-locked hippies and recently-discharged Israelis for what´s to be the wildest NYE celebration in all of Asia.

If still standing, I am to meet my mother and Richard in Mumbai, fritter rupees away in India´s largest and most flourishing city for a week or two, and hop a flight back to Delhi. Saying my good-byes in Delhi just in time for its unpleasant cold, I´ll run away again - beginning in Bangkok. At first, while my bank account seems strong, I´ll swagger around Thailand and Malaysia, and once my money runs low, I´ll stagger through Singapore and Indonesia. Along the way, I´ll be sure not to lose touch. Squiggling in a journal and trawling internet cafes, I will do my best to keep you abreast.

To be continued.

Geoff and Freddie Goodship are holidaying in Brazil, and Geoff sends this description of

THE BRAZILIAN HUG

The most interesting part of travel often lies in the customs you encounter. On our first visit to Brazil we experienced the Brazilian Hug. We are guests at a large Brazilian family gathering, the preliminary event to a large wedding later in the week. I´m one of five Canadian guests. One of us has a vague acquaintance with the Portuguese language but I´m not that fortunate person. There are about 120 Brazilians who speak very little or no English. The stage is set for some interesting body language.

Our customary "Hello, I´m pleased to meet you," accompanied by a hand shake just doesn´t cut it in Brazil. Here it´s a full-body contact. The handshake happens but it´s only the opening step of the dance. From here it´s chest and cheek contact accompanied by back or shoulder slaps or pats. Usually it´s right cheek to right cheek. but it is sometimes followed by a switch to the other side. Im unable to discern any difference in the kissing sound between men and women.

While the standard physical approach is the same, considerable variations evolve, depending upon various physical features. When confronted by a barrel-chested hairy six-foot male, a certain amount of defensive posturing is inevitable. When it´s a five foot, barrel- chested female with a drink in one hand, additional but unspoken precautions fall naturally into place. Age is another caution, for one learns to tread carefully around the youth and aged.

The most baffling situation arises when confronting the many very beautiful Brazilian women. It´s fortunate when you get a short one for now you can bend slightly forward, touch cheeks, embrace both gently and briefly before moving on.

Greeting a woman who is taller than yourself is infrequent but particularly dangerous. You must be careful that something does not fall off. Meeting men your own size is comparatively safe. It´s best to ignore what you thought you heard mumbled in your ear.

The most challenging situation occurs when a gorgeous Brazilian female, certainly a model and with looks that paralyse, approaches with a smile. Hmmmm, will this be a passing of shadows or a full- court press?

After the handshake but before the embrace there is a split second when the perfume arrives. Is the olfactory message passive-aggressive or aggressive-passive? In a split second one must adjust the approach to accommodate the floral arrangement on the bosom or hairdo. It´s considered uncouth to come away with some adornment that belong to the exchange greeter.

The names blend after awhile. Was that Roberto or Ronaldo? Im trying the best memory tricks I know but after 25, all the names enter my mental mixmaster.

Canapes, drinks, and a couple of hours later it´s time to say "obrigardo," "ciao!" The whole process is repeated in reverse except that the caipirinha has paralysed my tongue and collapsed my mind. Never mind. Brazilian hospitality is warm and sufficiently forgiving to comfort idiots who smile a lot and say little.

ED. NOTE: To save you the trouble of looking it up, Wickipedia defines caipirinha as "Brazil´s national cocktail, made with cachaca, sugar and lime. Cachaca is Brazil´s most common distilled alcoholic beverage. Like rum, it is made from sugarcane."

Verda Cook forwards a poem by Michael Josephson, who has granted permission to reprint it here:

WHAT DOES IT MATTER...?

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no days, no hours or minutes.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame, and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.
So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will all expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won´t matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived.
It won´t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Your gender, skin color, ethnicity will be irrelevant.

So what will matter?
How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success, but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage and sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you´re gone.
What will matter is not your memories, but the memories of those who loved you.
What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn´t happen by accident.
It´s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.
Choose to live a life that matters.

ED. NOTE: Mr. Jackson suggested that we ask readers to give their opinion on the name of a new teen website they are creating. The deadline is December 12. All you have to do is hit the Vote Now button on http://www.charactercounts.org

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES

Catherine Green suggests this site: http://arunaurl.com/2l71

I also enjoyed this Hawaiian singer´s version of the Hawaiian national song:

http://arunaurl.com/2l70

Shirley Conlon believes Canadians will be interested in a five-minute video of Andrew Nikiforuk speaking on the tar sands and the "petro- state" at http://watch.ctv.ca/news/clip104609#clip104609

For an introduction to his book about the tar sands, go to http://arunaurl.com/2l6l

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Ron McVey and Tom Telfer recommend a site where you can type the name of a song, or a singer, or a kind of music, which will then play your selection, and continue with the same kind of music: http://www.theradio.com

If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.