Well, my first day in London. Arrived last night after a 13 hour flight from Signapore with a 7 hour time shift so upgraded my room (I always forget how small London hotel trooms can be) and went to bed. Despite extensive use of Vicks First Defence, I had contracted a cold on one of the eight flights in the last ten days but managed to get 9 hours sleep and was up and about, ready to go by 10.00 (known as the middle of the day at 42 Mozeley Avenue).

I had booked in to the Charing Cross Hotel because of its location. Trains to virtually everywhere and near to galleries, theatre, shops etc and to anyone who lived in Plumstead the centre of London, if not the Universe. Ann and I spent a few pleasant, exhausted, post-shopping afternoons in the bar at this hotel, which is a slightly old fashioned hideaway type place. The hotel is the original hotel from when the railway station was built in 1865 so I was a bit worried that it might be rather Victorian inside but there’s a nice room overlooking the Strand with a view over to the church at St Martin’s in the Field which is covered in scaffolding, the ENO , the National Gallery and the edge of Trafalgar Square.

When I went out of the front door my automatic pilot heads me straight over to Charing Cross Road and up to Tottenham Court Road. To some people, this is not London at its best but for Ann and I it is what London is about. Old and New, flash and dilapidated, bookshops, theatres, galleries, cafes and restaurants. Everything looks very similar to three years ago though the cafes have often changed their name, the theatres their plays (though not the Mousetrap, which has been around nearly as long as me [55 years – the play, not me] and Blood Brothers which I remember opening but has now been on stage for 20 years). Les Miserables has left the Palace to be replaced by Monty Python’s Spamalot (“Sets the musical back several hundred years” says the marketing blurb). Busy, noisy but London.

Get on to Tottenham Court Road which is even more the technology fantasy land at one end, and the house decorator’s dream world at the other. I’m on my way to get a Reader’s Card for the British Library which is based at St Pancras. I used to use their Reading Room when it was based at the British Museum: the gorgeous old circular room (which you can still visit) where Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital. The new building is huge and red brick, rather sparse and austere and it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste. It took over twenty years to design and build. It turns out to be great place. There’s a nice ‘courtyard’ where you can sit and eat and drink and discuss your work. There’s even a shop. The delay in building worked to it’s advantage as it is technologically state of the art and very efficient and after ten minutes I emerge with a reader’s card with my photograph on it. One of the ironies of the British Library is that much of its stuff is stored at Woolwich, so in the old days I used to travel from Woolwich to the Library to be told I would have to wait six hours before the materials came from Woolwich! Now, of course, you just book it online in advance. very soon I’m told it will be all digitalised so I won’t even have to go there.

Having got that far, go to look at St Pancras Station, one of my favourite buildings. A huge neo-gothic fantasy with turrets, arches, colored bricks. It was almost knocked down in the 20th century as the British took their revenge on the Victorians but fortunately survived though was derelict for a long time. Like Charing Cross it has a hotel (well it used to have) but this is now being refurbished as 66 luxury apartments (“including a 10m pounds penthouse) and a 244 bedroom five star hotel to be opened in 2009. So I know where I’m staying next time. While I’m there I go on to look at Kings Cross which was being regenerated last time I visited. It still is. It has always been one of the more depressing parts of London and the station is the railway equivalent of Los Angeles airport (Ann and I were once attacked there by rampaging Old Age Pensioners – sorry Senior Citizens). It’s still dismal though you can see there will be changes.

Then I start to head back to the hotel but decide to cut through Bloomsbury. This is an area with some deadly modern architecture, but as you go along you keep finding outbreaks of Georgian and Victorian London. It’s also a combination of Council Housing and big houses and Victorian working class housing that has been gentrified. Every so often you get quiet shaded green squares where people are sitting out and having their luch and then round the cornera noisy traffic jams. It’s all very interesting. By now I have remembered just how many pubs there are in London and find myself asking the question I always used to ask – how come all these people (who aren’t tourists) are sitting outside drinking at two o’clock in the afternoon?! As always in Bloomsbury, I manage to get lost and visit Tavistock Square twice, but eventually find my way back towards Tottenham Court Road. I pass nostalgically by what used to be the much lamented Dillon’s Bookstore – the ultimate academic bookshop where you could even find my book! It’s now part of the Waterstone’s chain (there were even demonstrations when that happened). So that I can despair of modern progress I go inside, only to find that nothing has changed, except my book’s not there and there is a Costa’s Coffee Bar. Have a drink there (having been to a Costas in both Shanghai and Signapore) and it leads to a further outbreak of nostalgia – where’s my double shot flat white?!!) Somewhere in London some Kiwis have opened a coffee shop called Flat White, so I must track it down.

As I go along I’m looking for shopping and theatre opportunities. As always the musical rains, but there is a Jeeny Seagrove/Anthony Andrews play (must be early 20th century) and a political satire with Richard Wilson. So I’ll find something. Just to reassure Ann – there’s no Tom Stoppard.

Arrive back at Charing Cross but can’t resist a final revisit – Victoria Gardens down by the embankment, another Ann and Rob hideaway. A small peaceful little garden where people just go to sit, or walk through as they avoid the Strand. Our friend Ed used to be the Head gardener for Westminster Council, who run this garden so it brings back pleasant memories. I go to the cafe and read the London newspapers, and also feed the sparrows who clearly remember me. The newspapers provide some insights into London as it is. The headlines are “Tycoon defends Sex Slur” and “George Michael: I am ashamed”, so not much has changed there. I find out that the Royal Festival Hall is being reopened this weekend after a 115m pounds refurbishment. Many Londoners don’t like the building but I’ve always thought it was one of the best examples of post-war architecture and so will go over and see it. Howver thay are having an open weekend to celebrate (including a silent disco – ? -) so it will be packed. I think I’ll wait until next week. Amongst the other attractions this weekend are the World Naked Bike Ride which will have 1000 participants. One of the great things about London is not just the things you can go to, but the things you can’t or wouldn’t want to. I learn that iPods are now being fitted into the lapels of Marks and Spencers suits (“for men too busy, or too lazy to get out their iPods”) and Ann Summers – the sex shop – are selling something called the iGasm – don’t ask!

Return to the hotel rather weary and worn out but as an induction to London a nice reminder. Tomorrow head South to Plumstead and Lee Green to see Ed & Jan and the leharnes.

Gradually succumbing to American Touritis as the airports, taxis, hotels, meals turn into a blur. But there are lots of differences here in Malaysia. For the first time since I left Auckland there’s a full blue sky even if it is accompanied by 33 degrees and 99%humidity. We’re also surrounded by beautiful green hills and beautiful green gardens. Even the University we visited this morning is called the University in a Garden – The University Sains Malaysia. Everyone speaks English and the food is spicy. Arrived yesterday in Penang about 6.00 pm and leave tomorrow morning at 10.00 am, so another place I won’t be seeing much of. We’re here for a meeting between Malaysian Vice Chancellors and NZ VCs, so I get to pretend for 48 hours.

As always there’s a welcome dinner though, for reasons not fully explained, the dinner is also attended by 20 Australians and people from 15 countries in the British Commonwealth. Whatever Kiwis think about Australians, they’re not usually boring (as opposed to boorish) but I managed to sit next to the exception at dinner. Malaysia, being strongly Islamic, is not keen on alcohol, so it was guava juice and water. We did have a cultural performance, some traditional dancing, but by the time they got on stage most people in the room had lost the will to live so even that was a let down. Eventually, about 10 o’clock I saw a chance to escape, only to find out that the Chair of the New Zealand Vice Chancellor’s Committee wished to call an emergency meeting of us all – in a room without windows – to discuss the new legislation on tertiary education reforms. I thought the low point in my career was when I had to explain to North Shore City Council that the new bus station should be called Akoranga and not Barry’s Point, but this came close. The things I do for the future of New Zealand.

We had a morning meeting today, all big chairs, big titles and microphones and then a celebratory lunch (celebrating still being awake) which was actually quite tasty. However, to make sure we really enjoyed ourselves, they put on band – average age about 45 – who played some ‘all-time classics’, finishing off with My Way.

This is all a bit unfair, because, as usual, the Malaysians are wonderfully efficient, very charming and helpful, and very hospitable. It must be soemthing to do with putting too many Vice-Chancellors in the same building. We should stick to a maximum of two in any city at any one time.

Just going back to Chinese English names which all young Chinese now have (see an earlier blog) – the two receptionists at the checkout in Shanghai were Sky (male) and Cleopatra. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just give yourself another name – I feel a competition coming on! Now how about Troy, or Blaze……..mmm. And going back to street harassment in Shanghai, I was offered a ‘happy ending massage’.

So I leave Asia tomorrow heading for London via Signapore. A total of 15 hours in the air but I manage to end up in London at 7 o’clock in the evening. I think Friday will be a ‘go away, I don’t want to talk to anybody day’, after which it’s off to see the Leharnes and Jan and Ed. Despite what you read on this blog, it’s been a very interesting and productive 11 days (or is it 11 weeks?)

Last full day in China and off tomorrow for Penang for a dinner, a conference, a lunch and two nights sleep before setting off for the UK. However, I’ll be with seven much more important people – the Vice Chancellors of the other seven NZ Universities – so I’ll be able to take a back seat. The Conference is only half a day after which I have the option of visiting a University’s Poison Centre or going shopping (Mmmm… difficult one that). Visited two more universities today, one of which we will definetly (I can never spell that word) be visiting again. They even have a Foreign Visitors Guest Centre which is full of people from all over the world. We are looking for a small number of strong partnerships and we get many Chinese delegations visiting us in China, and we visit many Chinese universities, but this looks like a serious one. The fact that it is in Shanghai is a great advantage as that is always the stopping off point for our visits to China (now that there is a non-stop flight from Auckland). A further advantage is that it even has it’s own little museum of ceramics, calligraphy and painting – a very nice surprise.

Paul has headed off back to Waiheke and Peilin is off to Jinan and also to visit the Chinese side of his family in Beijing. I’m tidying up after the hectic week and about to pack. I’m trying to avoid talking about Tianjin – as I have done in each blog – mostly because I can’t think of much to say. Our partners there are great but it is big (5m people) and dirty and although it is developing and has a nice touristy cultural quarter, it’s a place to be avoided unless your employer sends you there. So that’s Tianjin.

The China Daily yesterday had a big feature on the recently published International Peace Index – ie a league table of how peaceful and peaceable countries are. The China Daily was quite pleased they had come 60th (out of 121) given their human rights record, rates of exceution of people, and the huge defense expenditure. We were quite pleased to point out to our hosts that New Zealand came second after Norway and before Denmark. Cynics would, of course, say that this must really be the Peace and Quiet index!

There has been a big debate going on about whether one of Shanghai’s leading government officials should be executed for corruption after he had fraudulently taken money to support, amongst other things, his 14 ‘publicly admitted’ mistresses. Exceution is regular here and fraud and general social misbehaviour are treated as seriously as murder.

Well I really do have to pack. The next blog is from London which is hopefully less soggy (famous last words)

Today, Peilin, Paul and myself visited Chrystal and her husband Steve in Pudong, the East side of Shanghai which has grown from nothing in 1990 to a city in it’s own right. Chrystal works at Yi-Fu Polytechnic who have had some sort of relationship to AUT for many years. She has visited Auckland several times including a trip to our house where she fell in love with the garden, Daisy and Sissy. Since then she has kept in touch with Ann and sent her a present, so I was there to take a return gift. She and Steve probably represent new China. A young couple in professional jobs but not particularly well off buying a new apartment and filling it with really cool Danish furniture, a 42 inch plasma screen, a top of the range cooker (for him). The apartment wouldn’t look out of place anywhere else in the world. Had a great visit and went out to (yet another) lunch. In the afternoon I went to the Shanghai Museum. Really good, it’s new, well laid out, well curated, with a particularly good ceramics collection and good jade, furniture, and minority artefacts – and a good shop. Then some shopping and another evening in the hotel. The three of us have spent a lot of time together and have got on well generally, but we have also spent a lot of time with other people being insufferably nice and so I guess we all need some time out. My treat is a club sandwich with chips in my room watching HBO.

Some bits and pieces:

the hotel I’m staying in – Le Royal Meridien – is brand new, French, really cool (and expensive). The designer is known as the Cultural Curator. It’s situated on floors 8-11 and 20-43 of the building as well as a bar on the 65th floor. It’s only problem is that it appears to be fairly full of very loud Americans. 10 years ago, there were modern hotels in China but they were not of the same quality as say Signapore, Hong Kong or Malaysia (particularly the service) but that’s no longer the case and all the international chains now have huge operations here. The service is fantastic.

I’m usually quite good with chopsticks, good enough that nobody notices that I’m not perfect. So, as the Lazy Susans pass by with their 20 dishes I can usually look OK. In Tianjin we went to China’s most famous dumpling restaurant which has been there since 1858. The host was the Chair of Boustead College and the son of Tianjin’s most famous (well infamous) Mayor. So it was a very plush afair. Even the chopsticks were upper class. Thet were bigger, fatter and glossier and I simply couldn’t use the them. Every time I tried to pick something up, the chopsticks seemed to collapse and soon people were ducking as food started flying all over. No one could avoid seeing it because they can’t eat until I do. The Chinese, as always not wanting to embarass their guests, kept a straight face but eventually brought me a knife and fork. The humiliation! As more and more dishes came out it got easier as I could pick the dishes I wanted to eat and could avoid the eels, fish heads, pigeons etc and stick to the chunkier stuff. It turned out that dumplings were easy so I stuck to them. Unfortunately, three days later they seem to have stuck to me.

I like Shanghai and the centre has really smartened up and it’s pleasant to walk along, except as a single white male I get constantly harrassed. Men are always coming up saying Rolex, Bags, DVDs and then when you say no, they say, Ladies Club (which don’t do sex), Ladies (who do), or Massage (which is). Even more difficult are the trail of young women, all rather studenty and preppie looking, who come up and say You’re tall; You speak English?; You Swedish? You want to go for coffee and help me with my English? You want to be my friend etc etc. Peilin tells me that some may be genuine, but the others are there to persuade you to go into cafes and restaurants and spend a lot of money for which they get commission. They’re very amiable and leave you alone when it’s clear you’re not interested, but it is quite difficult to just walk along and look at the shops.

All young Chinese, like Chrystal and Steve have an English name. Chrystal’s Chinese name means ‘clear’ so that’s why she chose Chrystal. Steve actually chose Stephen because he liked the sound, but then nobody would call him it. The other day we met a student who had chosen Beryl! I didn’t like to ask.

I will get round to talking about Tianjin eventually! Tomorrow is another of what we call Happy Happy days – meetings and meals, talking and toasting. After that however, it’s Penang anhd then no more banquets, speeches, toasts!.

In Shanghai, with some spare time at last, and the hotel has a very sophisticated online service so at last I can do another blog. Staying at a very posh hotel – Le Royal Meridien – overlooking the centre of Shanghai and the Bund from the 43rd floor. At the moment can see all the neon lights of Nanjing Road including an electrified flashing seven story high Coca Cola bottle – this is modern China. When I came here in the mid-90s the top shop was Number 1 Department Store and they had just opened the first fast food outlet – KFC. Now you walk outside of the hotel and there are people sitting on the street outside Costa Coffee, and Nanjing Road – the main shopping street – is partly pedestrianised with every Western shop you could think of. The millions of bikes and very few cars have been replaced by millions of cars and very few bikes. Old Shanghai is still around but everywhere there are huge new buildings going up of every shape and size. Even the less modern cities such as Tianjin – where I’ve just come from – are seeing developments you would never have imagined ten years ago – for example new waterfront apartment blocks being sold as ‘New York’ and ‘Down Town’ apartments. Communism and capitalism seem to be mixing very well.

Shanghai is the fourth city in seven days. The first was Yantai, one of China’s small cities (1million, as compared with Shanghai’s 20+m). Much cleaner, surrounded by sea and mountains, less busy and quite pleasant. The city is in Shandong Province which is very prosperous and is China’s only internationally recognised wine growing district. When we had lunch (think 25 different dishes) at our partner institution we were given a large amount of their best red cabernet sauvignon and it was excellent. Shandong is far enough North for drinking to be a compulsory part of business development, so lots of food and drink and toasts to the Partnership, The Future, The President, the Pro Vice Chancellor, China, New Zealand etc etc. After lunch they decided to take us to the wine museum where we had a wine tasting with Riesling, Charonnay, another Cabernet and brandy. And then in the evening another banquet! Further toasts and speeches but I made a major error. When the President raised his glass and said ‘Bottoms Up’ I responded ‘Bottoms Up’ forgetting that this means I am supposed to enter a drinking competition and need to empty my glass (and the 15 after it) in one go. I didn’t. A major no-no. I was deemed important enough to be forgiven but lost about 10 points in manliness and status. However, while I’m bad at drinking (by Chinese standards) I’m good at making very long and flowery speeches praising China, the President, the Future etc etc so gradually I redeemed myself. The food is truly fantastic, beautifully cooked and artistically presented: Pumpkins sculpted like dragons; ice fish covered in all sorts of sea food, pigeon with the head artfully sitting on the side of the plate looking at me. All the heads (fish mainly) have to be directed towards me as the guest of honour. I pointed out that I lived in a vegetarian household (at least for the humans) and they gave me looks of sympathetic pity, but nearly half the dishes were actually very tasty vegetable dishes. Most of the last six days have included at least one such banquet (except at the New Zealand Embassy) but as we moved away from Yantai, the drinking calmed down, so obesity and not alcoholism is the issue. We were just two days in Yantai and it gave us a different, less crowded and noisy view of China. Next stop was Beijing, but that’s for the next blog

My translated proposal regarding the future of the paths was put before the local council, at their meeting last week, by Kostas Skouras, the political representative for the KKE party. By the time they got to my item, it was 1.30 in the morning! I sat in the small public gallery section of the Town Hall meeting room, together with a small group of others who had items on the agenda. The mayor responded by agreeing to my proposal and before I knew it, they moved on to the next item. However, I still had no idea of when they were going to give me workers or indeed what had happened to the funds that I had been told by Mrs Mimika Rekka were available for this project. Although Mrs Rekka was present at the meeting, she made no comment whatsoever, even though she had set up the initial meeting at the town hall last March, during which I chose 4 routes to be cleaned. In the meantime, a volunteer and myself have cleaned a long portion of trail in the Potami valley, in our spare time. A regular update and images were sent to Mrs Rekka during that time, again without response.
The walking season is almost over and it is a crying shame that local authority has not taken advantage of my offer to project manage the clearing of the most popular trails. After twenty years of doing it myself, together with the occasional volunteer, the situation has become such that I cannot continue. Meanwhile, my Skopelos Trails book is selling well.

I’m playing truant from the most boring conference in the history of conferences even taking into the account its in Chinese and English. I don’t even get the chance to see Beijing as tomorrow I’m off to Tianjin. We came from Yantai which is by the sea and, according to the Chinese is a very small city of just a million people! However it was much cleaner and tidier than normal. Because we’re doing business people keep feeding us banquets with 20 or so dishes, as well as trying to force large quantities of alcohol down us. All part of a business partnership apparently. I of course have been resisting. In Yantai they were overwhelmingly hospitable because the President wished to repay Ann and me for having him to afternoon tea when he visited Auckland.

I’m going to keep blogging even though I have to do it on a chinese site so I keep guessing which button or icon to press. I just hope that when we move from Beijing, some of the technology starts to work.

Cute pictures!

Rob

In the middle of technology nightmare. No Blackberry, no laptop. A PC in the hotel business centre that is only in mandarin and a hotel telephone line that won’t do international! So this blog is my last chance. Here’s trying!