The Big Easy

Thursday 11th of December brought a rare sight to The Big Easy: a blanket of fresh snow. I awoke and opened the curtains expecting sunshine as I had run in 24°C the previous day! Seems as though I manage to attract the cold and sometimes not such good weather wherever I travel! Fortunately this was short lived and although Friday was cold it started to warm up by Saturday just when it was time to return to Shanghai. The last recorded snowfall in New Orleans was in December 2004.

I have traveled to many cities around the world but found New Orleans to be quite fascinating, perhaps because my hotel was located in the French Quarter where much of the entertainment occurs in the city.

Although there was little evidence of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the French Quarter it is still a topic much talked about by the locals and many people are still trying to recover and rebuild their homes but in general the attitude is positive. The French Quarter is particularly attractive with some beautiful homes, many now decorated for the Christmas Season.
The people are friendly and southern hospitality was welcoming despite the sometimes particularly slow service in the restaurants and the odd hustler trying to extricate a wallet or some money from you!

The French Quarter is crazy and bars are open 24 hours a day, and one is able to walk the streets drinking alcohol in public and go from bar to bar as long as it is in paper cups. At 3 am on Sat morning as I was returning to my hotel to get to the airport for my early flight Bourbon Street was more crowded than the main shopping areas of Shanghai on a busy day!! Not often that one has to fight your way through the masses on what seems to be a normal night out in this particular part of the US! Every form of music, rock to jazz, blues and country blares from every bar and club. The atmosphere is extremely vibrant and energizing but different to that which one often experiences in Asian cities. It is very easy to find yourself out until 6 am in the morning and suddenly realizing that the sun is about ready to rise and breakfast is beckoning.

Also fascinating were the number of “girly/boyi” bars or whatever one wishes to call them. “Hustler”, “Barely Legal”,” Males better looking than Females” etc are on every block on Bourbon St so business has to be good for them. I met up with one of the dancers in a bar after her show – not at her show and she came over to say hello as she was fascinated by my accent and for no other reason!! She was down from California for the weekend just to make a little extra money and she was barely legal but must have been over 18 to be drinking in a downtown bar.

Local cuisine is excellent although as in many restaurants in the US, vegetables and salads are not really the order of the day, and eventually I was craving just to have a regular salad or plate of steamed vegetables without any of the sauces or garnishing that tend to abound and add all the additional calories. My next cooking adventure will be to try my hand at some Creole shrimp, gumbo and jambalaya, all tasty dishes, but will have to be accompanied by some greens.

The economy of New Orleans seems to be doing well if just based on the thirsty business in the quarter and slowly some of the folk are recovering from their devastation and life goes on – this is a city to be recommended for a different travel experience.

Miriam Makeba - One of South Africa's Greatest Singers

Miriam Makeba, also commonly known as “Mama Afrika” and one of my favourite African singers died at the age of 76, after collapsing on stage in Italy in early November.
In her dazzling career, she performed with musical legends from around the world such as Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte and Paul Simon.
Throughout her life, Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the victory over apartheid through the art of song, living in exile for 31 years.

The first African woman to win a Grammy award, Makeba started singing in Sophiatown, a neighborhood of Johannesburg that was a cultural hotspot in the 1950s before its black residents were forcibly removed by the apartheid government. Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording in 1966 together with Belafonte for "An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba”.
One of my favourite songs from that album is called MALAIKA, which means "angel" in Swahili, a song first recorded by Kenyan musician Fadhili William and his band Jambo Boys in 1960.

No eggs, milk, fish or veggies and no kinky sex either – how are we to survive?

...and just to continue the food saga that is ongoing in China at the present moment and probably has been for some time in the past.
Early last week authorities in Wuxi confirmed that fish sold at a local wet market were contaminated with high levels of formaldehyde. This was done in order to preserve the whitebait

Then later in the same week China extended sympathy over a Japanese consumer's sickness caused by eating China-made frozen green beans. According to Japanese media, a woman fell ill after eating the beans produced by a company in Yantai, she experienced numbness in her mouth after eating the beans and health authorities discovered organophosphate pesticides in the product.

So now it looks as though we will need to resort to eating only Pringle chips, but even that has the danger of causing high cholesterol so what to do next? One cannot live on drinking water and breathing air alone, without even the slightest possibility of a spiced up sex life with chocolate body paints (see previous comments)!

No more egg nog, no more omelettes?

Following the recent milk scare in China, Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety announced this last weekend that some eggs produced in northeast China (Dalian) contained unacceptable (but lower range) limits of melamine, as allowed by the HK authorities. They have also said that a 10-kg or three-year-old child would have to eat 24 of the eggs and a 60-kg adult 283 eggs to reach their daily tolerable intake of the chemical. Happy eating!

A food safety official in Dalian city near where the tainted Hong Kong eggs were produced said melamine had been detected in eggs last month. The tainted eggs were destroyed and eggs were checked in September and again in October, and no melamine was found. Since then there has been mention of another few brands of eggs in China that were found to be contaminated with melamine.

The media has reported that an important brand of eggs supplied by China's Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group, and suspected of being tainted with melamine, was pulled from shelves of a major retailer in China earlier this week. It should be emphasized that this was done as a precautionary measure and that the products had not yet been found to be contaminated.

At this stage no one knows how much melamine is absorbed into raw foods like meat and vegetables, although animal tests in the United States concluded in 2007 that consuming "pork, chicken, fish and eggs from animals that had inadvertently been fed animal feed contaminated with melamine ... was very unlikely to pose a human health risk". It is improbable that there would be any issues if melamine is consumed in small amounts either from foods with dairy as a minor ingredient and/or where the food is consumed in small and infrequent amounts.

If consumed in higher quantities over a long period melamine may, in some individuals, cause health problems such as kidney stones or kidney disease. The reason why infants in China were particularly affected is that they were consuming significant amounts of contaminated milk formula on a daily basis. To date there has been no evidence that this current scare has been responsible for any medical issues, and foods with potentially low levels of melamine, such as eggs, biscuits, candies etc., are more likely to be infrequently consumed and in smaller amounts; as such they are not considered high-risk foods for dietary exposure to melamine.

Let common sense prevail when shoppping and eating and put everything into perspective as you are unlikely to survive either on marginally contaminated air and water alone.

Melamine Now in Sex Paint - What Next?

In the last few days I have been dealing with more enquiries on the Chinese melamine issue which has reared its head again, but this puts a whole new perspective on the subject! Now a chocolate-flavoured body sex paint has been recalled from Australian shelves and has caused consternation in the UK as well as the result of melamine contamination!

The paint, Boxer Lovers Body Pen Set, today joined the banned list alongside six other products in Australia.

The body paint's importer has voluntarily withdrawn the product and Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) spokeswoman Lydia Buchtmann said those who had consumed the body paint product were not likely to be affected unless large quantities were consumed.

Would have to be a sexfest orgy to consume enough of this to get close to any toxic levels, but you could have enormous fun for the remainder of your life and still survive the melamine - maybe not as a result of the other associated ‘side-effects’ when using the paint! You have a greater chance of dying of exhaustion from all the hanky-panky.

Just be careful of lead and mercury or other toxic substances when indulging in this kind of play, after all toys are toys!

Cape Spring Flowers

Cape Town and the Western Cape Province have a pleasant Mediterranean climate because of geographical location. Rain in summer and spring is rare although one would never say so at the moment - the Cape is well known for experiencing all 4 seasons in one day!

The spring months of August and September and into October offer wonderful opportunities to see the Cape Floral Kingdom at its best and many of the areas have an abundance of colour as a result of all of the indigenous flowers in bloom.

Declared as one of South Africa’s 7 World Heritage Sites, the Cape Floral Region is one of the hottest spots for global plant diversity. Mostly fynbos, 8 500 plant species thrive in the narrow coastal strip that covers just over 90 000 square kilometres. It is the smallest and richest of the world’s six floral regions.

The Cape Peninsula alone, at 470 sq. km, has more than 2 200 species, of which 90 are endemic. To give you an idea of the magnitude, the entire British Isles has only 1 492 species and it is 308 000 sq. km. A great place to experience the incredible Cape Floral Kingdom's treasures is at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens in Cape Town, where these photos were taken (courtesy of my dad).

Traditional South African Cooking

Last night was a traditional South African dinner, with a 3 kg roast leg of lamb stuffed with garlic and rosemary and cooked for 2 1/2 hours in the Weber, and a traditional stew.

The stew was a "Waterblommetjie bredie " - the name is Afrikaans and literally means 'small water flower stew'. It is made of meat, usually lamb and is stewed together with a flower (known in English as Cape Pondweed, Cape Hawthorn or Cape Asparagus and scientifically as Aponogeton distachyos) that is found in the dams and marshes of the Western Cape. The buds (waterblommetjies) are usually ready to be picked during winter and into early spring.

The stew is cooked slowly over a few hours and is done with lamb, potatoes, waterblommetjies, white wine and spiced with salt, pepper and garlic. The waterblommetijies give the stew a slightly bitter/sour taste, and is a favourite amongst tourists who visit the Western Cape.

The meat dishes were served with couscous and salad.

For dessert another traditional South African dish, Peppermint Crisp (not sure why Nestle does not produce this overseas) Fridge Tart, to end off the meal.

Obviously all accompanied by good South African wines!

My New Painting

I have a new painting to add to my collection! It should go well with the Asian theme of my home as it is of an Indian potter, done in oils and painted by my wife Barbi. Until now she has been painting mainly in watercolours and more comfortable doing landscapes, but is now finding that she enjoys doing figures/portraits in oils.

Unfortunately the picture here is unframed as the painting is currently being framed before I return to Shanghai. Will have to do a bit of re-arranging once I am back to ensure that it is displayed in the right place!

Look forward to seeing some more artwork the next time I get home to Cape Town.

Southern Right Whales in False Bay

False Bay has been busy with tourists and ardent photographers here to see the Southern Right whales. There has been a large increase in the number of whales in the bay year to year and ten years ago before I left South Africa it was fairly exceptional to see so many of them so often.

The term "right" whale refers to the fact that in the nineteenth century these whales were regarded as the "right" whales to harvest, because they were particularly rich in oil, and being slow swimmers they were easy to catch.
The most striking feature of the Southern Right whales are the 'callosities' behind the blowholes, and on the face. These provide homes for several other creatures, including the 'whale lice' which live on the callosities and operate in a symbiotic relationship with the whales, feeding off the dead skin.

The Southern Right lives between latitudes 20° to 55°, occasionally venturing down as far as 63° South. Although it is found throughout the southern oceans, in our part of the world it returns annually to the sheltered bays of the Southern African coast in order to breed and give birth. In False Bay the whales can be seen between June and November and are most prolific close to the shore from about September.

During the summer months the whales move south to the colder waters of the Antarctic where they feed. As baleen whales, right whales swim with their mouths open so that the baleen plates can filter out the water and retain the krill that forms a large part of their diet; they eat up to 1½ tons of these tiny prawn-like creatures every day. The whales are seasonal feeders, eating in winter and living off their blubber in the breeding months in the north.

Southern right whales are regarded as an endangered species as their numbers have been considerably reduced in the last 200 years. There are now about 4500 southern right whales, with about 1500 coming to southern Africa.

Legislation was introduced in South Africa in 1980 and '84 to protect whales. It is now illegal to shoot at whales, or harass them by coming closer than 300 metres in any craft.

Hopefully will be able to get some better pics to post here whilst I am still in the Cape!

Plane Gets Passenger Power

From the front page of South African Sunday Times Sept 28 2008:
How lovely and welcome to life in China!

Coming down to earth with a bang took on a new meaning for 69 Chinese passengers this week - they were asked to disembark and help push their stranded plane, The Shandong Airlines aircraft broke down before it taxied to the passenger terminal at Zhengzhou Airport. Staff tried to push the aircraft but it would not budge. With the added muscle of the passengers, it took almost two hours to push the plane to a taxi way.

What happened to a good old motorised tow?

As usual nothing fails to amaze me!