Like A Teapot

I intended to buy a bamboo mat, the kind Asians in tropical and subtropical areas use for their beds, but could not take the trouble to go all the way to China Town, which I believe to be the only place where I may find it. I have tried, as an alternative, to get a bamboo carpet in a western chain store; but it was sold out. Though disappointed, I was not surprised; when I spotted it last month, it was on sale and looked every bit a delightful piece of craft.

As a temporary emergency measure, I got a straw beach mat of a good size. It should serve the same purpose of separating my body from a warm mattress. I have cleaned it with water and hung it to dry. I am looking forward to the moment of lying down on it. The heat is killing me, but not for another night.

(Note to all the tight-asses out there: the photo is for illustration purpose only; it is not my solid bed.)

Tonight it suddenly struck me that two human factors contribute to the current unbearable heat wave.

One is the ongoing large-scale international firework competition held on coastal Vancouver. Another is the breakouts of huge mountain fires in the areas to the east of Vancouver. Living in between locations of these explosive, hot and murky air creating events means I am trapped in a living hell for a while.

The large mountain fires have been determined to be man-made. The firework competition is certainly man-made. Both will continue for a while and their effects will last even longer, aggravating whatever environmental factors.

Having not heard from my mother for a while, I decided to give her a call tonight. I had suspected that she had gone to visit her father this past weekend and I was right. Apart from seeing her father, she also attended a dinner event celebrating the birth of one of her sisters' first grandchild.

She also informed me that she was in the middle of watching the final episode of the American television series Prison Break. Now that was interesting. First I did not expect the show put on Chinese television. Second, I never thought she would ever be interested in such material. I asked if she was watching the English version or a dubbed Chinese version, she said it was the latter. She also mentioned that the main actor of the show, whom she thought was quite good, had visited China and gone on a popular talk show earlier, which I did remember reading about here.

Though I knew about the tv series, I have never watched it myself and could not immediately recall its English title. So I typed in the Chinese title to google it. And guess what, "Reality Prison Break Show in Belgium" emerged as one of the top search results. I clicked on it and found it a breaking news item. An English BBC version is here.

This is amazing material. Not the least because a similar incident took place in Belgium a few years ago and things of Belgium seem to have made quite a bit of headlines lately. Yesterday I was going to comment on this remarkable Belgian on the right. He was a painter of the 19th century. He may not be a great artist, but he truly had guts. And I admire him for that despite what The Economist says.