Just to gather up in one place the various scattered bits and pieces I have done:


( this is the collection...Collapse )


This entry was originally posted at http://heliopausa.dreamwidth.org/385.html. Please comment here or there.

Nothing to see here as yet!  I'm just trying to sort out an LJ posting problem.

There was an exquisitely beautiful moon last night over the sea, and Venus hanging in the branches of a Norfolk pine.  It's a beautiful, beautiful day.
I'm back in Australia after being given "leave" directions from the program I'm on.  It was a long, rather jumbled journey (just cancellations, that sort of thing).  Didn't want to leave VN, which still maintains its brilliant record of effective response to COVID-19, and my reluctance was confirmed on arrival at Sydney airport, to find nobody (not even the immigration officers!) wearing masks, nobody keeping a distance, nobody even bothering to check the temperatures of arriving passengers.  I do think that's changing now - or that it will change soon.

And I'm in self-isolation - though nobody has bothered to check that I'm conforming to the advice/instructions given.  (Meanwhile, in Hong Kong arrivals are tracked by mobile phone tracking and by bracelet.  Easy-going laid-backness has its charm, Australia, but it's blinking useless as a response to an epidemic.) 

I have to be quick - this laptop is conking out repeatedly, and will have to go in for repairs on Monday.
So much to say - COVID-19, for a start.  It's being so well handled here, but it's touch and go, now.  Just a fortnight ago we were almost in the clear - all sixteen cases recovered, the one town which had to go into lockdown having finished their time of isolation.  And the medicos rightly so proud... and then one woman flew in Milan-London-Hanoi, and since then about a dozen other people on that plane, and her own uncle and her driver and her maid, and... and now we're all on tenterhooks again.

Not that it was all her, but she was the first to bring in the disease, after things had been stable and looking so good - the government reaction from the first days after Tet had been quick and efficient, and it worked.  Schools were shut, gatherings of any discouraged - like concerts, etc,. that town -  a group of workers had gone to Wuhan for a training course - was put in lockdown.  (And the hospitals were really good - had the equipment ready to go, as needed.)  Everything was looking really good, until that one flight on March 2nd.

But it hasn't all been her.  More recently, another woman, who had flown Vietnam-Korea-USA-Qatar-Vietnam, also brought it, and has infected several.  So now there's over fifty cases - that is, including the first sixteen, who are now all recovered, tested negative and out of hospital.

There hasn't been the panic-buying that has happened in other places, blessedly, but things are quieter, the mood on the street is a little more sober than usual.  Quieter market this morning, a few street-food places not operating, easier to cross the street.
The government has restricted entry further, and is making mask-wearing in crowded places compulsory from Monday.  I'm not sure what other new regulations there might be.

I'd better post this now, before the laptop goes again.  Here, to be cheerful, from Iran - handwashing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgaL-XV_7BM

With fellow-feeling from rainy Hanoi - well, not just now it's not, but last week it was, so here are two pictures from a rainy day.

A corner of the market, the tail-end of the morning.



and:

Cat, seeking shelter in a back-lane gateway.




The weather is just the way I like it right now, actually, when it's not raining.  It's good walking weather, and I had a couple of great walks over the weekend - but I felt it would be more fitting, in view of the wild weather elsewhere, to post pictures of last week's rain.  :)

The COVID-19 quietness is still evident, and all Hanoi schools are now closed until next week, but businesses are generally open - big places have hand-sanitiser dispensers at the entrance.
It is interesting to see from this very mild exigency what systems a rapidly growing city needs to develop, to meet population shifts.  I was told most seriously by workmates that fruit was in short supply (the government has put healthy eating, including fruit, as one of the ways to boost immune systems, hence they were eager to buy up) but I could see plainly in the markets, shops and streets near my place (neither a wealthy nor a poor area) that there's an abundance of all sorts of fruit.  Thinking it through, the problem is (it seems to me, not a rigorous analysis here!) that the apparent scarcity is in the new high-rise apartment blocks, which have their own smallish supermarkets on the ground floor; those supermarkets haven't established really robust supply chains (and warehousing/transport systems?) and maybe weren't used to much in-house demand for fruit, and so were vulnerable to a sudden rush from the high-rise's residents. 

I was much taken this morning by this headline in the online Guardian:

Running reaches crossroads as Nike-led footwear arms race infects mainstream

I think it's surely a contender for most mixed metaphors, ever.

Another New Year - the months rocket by.  In fact, it's already past the first full moon of the year, which as you all know is Year of the Metal/GoldRat.  Here in Hanoi things have not yet got back into full swing after the Tết break - it officially ended last Monday, but concerns about the coronavirus have kept things quiet.  All government offices are open, as are most workplaces and large businesses, but some smaller shops are not bothering much - and the market's a bit quieter, too.  Schools, encouraged by the government, electing to stay shut an extra week or two, and people putting off visiting and business trips - not invariably, but traffic is perceptibly less.

Here's from a local communal notice-board, the chalked new year greetings, "Chúc Mừng Năm Mới, Canh Tý 2020" with a sketch of spring flowers - and then, stuck on a week or so later (but considerately leaving the community greeting still clear) a government notice about health precautions to take, to minimise chances of spreading the new virus - these suggest hand-washing etc.



The government is taking a serious but measured response to the whole thing.  It is compulsory to wear face-masks on public transport, but not otherwise (though obviously individual places of business could require people to, if they want; I don't know of one that does, but I know one that requires everyone to use their hand-santiser as they enter the office.).  The border crossings to China are not all closed, but most are.  Big gatherings are being postponed or cancelled - the first few days of Tết itself weren't impacted, but the post-Tết spring pilgrimages are well down, and concerts and things have been put off.
Locally, the celebrations for the 994th anniversary of the founder-benefactor of our village pretty much didn't happen,  The temple was open, and people came by twos and threes to burn incense and drink tea, and donate to the community association and receive small token presents in return, but the usual night-time, whole-community concert, and traditional music band, and the day-long ceremonies in traditional costume and big free lunch for all comers - all these didn't happen.
"So we have no lễ hội [festival] this year," I said to the man pouring out the tea.
"We've got the lễ [ceremonial occasion] but no hội [gathering]," he said, and laughed.

Mmmm... well, it was funny at the time.

It's Mid-Autumn Festival again, and I have been out gazing at the moon - yes, there's the miraculous tree, and there's the Moon Boy lying down under it!  
But that's as far as I've got by way of recognising the day - no mooncakes, no persimmon, no green tea.  I did bestir myself - partly because there are two children coming this weekend, to cook and play games - to buy two star-lanterns, and some papier-mache masks, but that's as far as I've got.

What rotten times we live in.  The natural world is still beautiful, but the political/social world seems to be unravelling everywhere.
Well... is it time to try to scrape up five things in the world that I'm happy about?
1.  The displays of fresh fruit and vegetables at the market - so lovely!
2.  Saturday's cake-making session, which has boosted my language skills as well as resulting in two loaves of banana bread, one each.
3.  Language itself, and the fun of finding links from one language to another.
4.  Vanuatu, which has been really throwing itself into the work of extricating their land/region from environmental disaster.
5.  (Long pause, while I tried to think of one more thing.  Then a dear friend sent me this:
        https://www.adaptnetwork.com/nature/penguin-swims-5000-miles-reunion-man-saved-life/
     So that can be the fifth.)

The weather is at that indeterminate point where it's hard to decide if there's any need to have hot water to shower in or not.  Hot, but not brutally hot - 32 now, and maximums not above 37 all week.
Still, it's hot enough that it's not really the weather to want to bake in, but the woman next door asked me, after I'd taken them some cakes as a return for their kindness a while back, if I'd teach her how to make cakes - cakes, generally, not some specific cake.

Not that I'm much of a cake-maker - I wouldn't be thought of as such by the CWA, or indeed most home-cooks in Australia - but it's not something that home cooks have done here much, to date; most home-cooking has been stove-top, pretty much, so here, sometimes I'm thought of as knowing about these things.
And the upshot was that, there we were, on the weekend, me and the woman next door, who doesn't speak English, and a school-age niece, who does speak English, plainly brought along to help just in case (to my chagrin, because I like to practice my Vietnamese). 

A pleasant time ensued, with me demonstrating the simplest, quickest cake recipe I know (passionfruit-yoghurt cake, recipe on request!) and them occasionally taking over for stirring etc.  The chat went on in two languages, only once having recourse to a dictionary - for "neighbourhood" - the niece said the word I was using was very old-fashioned, and that nobody used it now.  I wish I could talk to a linguist about that - about why it's old-fashioned, or if that's just a school-age view, and if it's not, what the different connotations of the different terms were.
And we all had cakes to finish, of course - we made the mixture into cupcakes - and they took home two dozen or so, and the remainder are downstairs in a biscuit tin.  Next time - a banana loaf (so useful for using up bananas!) and after that I'll have run out of recipes I know well enough to make while someone's watching, I think. 

It will have been a short, but flattering, career as cake pundit.