Today's anecdote: 2 Korean brothers, age 10 and 14 came by for their Mandarin lesson and Madam introduced them to her willowy daughter,and they spoke in Mandarin for awhile. During this brief period, the students' eyes glassed over and they began to drool. Up to today they were great students, from now on, excellent students ...having good inspiration to learn this difficult language as well and as fast as possible.

a philosophical quote on parenthood by John Fitzpatrick, 2016: "We move through stages, as parents, at the same speed our children move through their remarkable eclectic developments. At first we are their managers, then later we become their consultants, then we become distant advisers, then we become a buoyant memory...and it is our acceptance of these stages that makes us good parents". The world, as far as I know it, and have known it, has been a good place and remains so...apart from a few Liberal Governments, and apart from Bill Shorten.

I must congratulate, mockingly, the local Murdoch paper The Cairns Post for defying convention and allowing the alcohol industry to write their articles and editorials showing us all in Cairns the virtues of grog. Of course, Cairns has no problem with alcohol, the clubs have no violence, the health benefits of binge drinking are...really good! Well done, The Cairns Post...not too many newspapers have fully crossed the Rubicon between considered reason and social madness so clearly and undaunted. Cheers!

House of Floating Peace. I was thinking about writing and inspiration. Back in 1999 I owned a house in Smithfield and set up half of the 2 car garage as a writing room. It had an airconditioner, a window, a narrow bed, a desk, some shelving racks, and there I wrote, over 18 months a small book and had it published by the first publisher I offered it to. I was very fortunate to have that time to write a book, full time, and only due to a small inheritance that someone wiser would have invested...and I was very fortunate to land the manuscript at a publisher who took it up. These were both one-off events in my life. The original inspiration for the book came simply from a cable-car ride on top of the rainforests where, looking down, I imagined creatures moving about under the cover of the great trees. Thus the characters of the Casskins evolved. The continuing inspiration came from looking out the writing room window at a concrete wall, about one metre away, facing North. The changing shades of daylight gave me some sense of time passing; but not the regulation that a clock would bring. Here in 2016 we are living in a nice apartment close to town and a portion of the lounge room is occupied by the writing desk, with a view of a thick curtain, facing North. Water sounds from a fountain next to the desk. There are ferns outside on the balcony, and our bicycles. In between 2008 and 2014 I lived away in Thailand, some time in China, and we managed to collect some very old plain wood furniture and screens and all these remarkable little items which are all on display around the place. It is not a house where one can feel lonely, even when alone...there is so much stuff...much like a Thai-Chinese furniture emporium in a way, all crowded in. I like what the Thais do in their small houses...they crowd them out with things. This is a habit we both picked up there. Even the Christmas lights are still up and on at night because they are pretty things.Very Thai indeed. We have a picture of the King of Thailand, abatik of the buddha, and a very large and heavy statue of a Christian Angel on the balcony...just next to the small Thai 'Spirit House' that keeps the troublesome green spirits at bay. On the walls of the balcony are 2 small feng-shuai mirrors which redirect all evil intent back at the neighbours. I used to love Japanese minimalism and unclutteredness ...and we could do that in a house that took up about 5 acres inside...and I still 'imagine' my 'imaginary' writing room this way...spare, functional, cool, bright...but now I feel it would also be very lonely...I re-created my 'imaginary writing room' in the story the Green Gate Ghost Story which I'm still working on. When daughter arrived from China we had to move and remove and store lots of the usual knick-knacks just so that she could fit in...and we did so. At the moment I'm looking for a few items which disappeared in that time. I know they are here somewhere, but I have no idea where. Perhaps I should visit the 'imaginary writing room' to see if any of them turned up there. As it is, our apartment meets all of the criteria for what I could call a House of Floating Peace, or a Snake's Nest...as both my wife and I are snakes in Chinese astrology. Daughter is a horse, so obviously needs more space. She will be studying in Townsville at Uni rather than here in Cairns so, when that happens, perhaps some of the lost treasures, relics and icons of the past times will resurface. No hope in hell of finding them now.

It was the US Surgeon General who suggested and started up regulation of vitamins and food supplements due to the problems caused by them. The outcry from the New Age Health Companies was very nasty and vicious...the Government wants to take control of your essential vitamins and supplements... So the Surgeon General walked away from his scientific position and just let companies do what they like and state what they like...thus the present world wide market. These early years of the 21st Century are best noted as the time when human reason, governance responsibility, and scientific analysis, gave way to market forces and corporate power as being the social 'truth'. For those interested, the US Surgeon General noted that Vitamin D could be sometimes useful for health if one was living in Arctic regions, and Vitamin B was close to the placebo effect regarding support for massive mis-use of alcohol, but the rest of the vitamins and minerals and supplements were best avoided as they were not real human food and they could cause significant health problems. But who wants to know that? We live in a new Dark Ages.

As you may know, The Family has been busily investigating the export of a few substances to China...Manuka Honey, a range of Blackmores and Swisse health supplements, etc basically because of the price of these items in China....i.e....ridiculous... and it's all ridiculous, to me anyway...especially as none of them actually work. But, that's not the point at all. We are talking about Lifestyle Health, not functional Nutritional Science. After all, what would real scientists know about anything? the best way for China to get supplies is to quickly buy up the Blackmores and Swisse companies and brands/labels.... and produce the same worthless high priced nicely packaged rubbish in China itself....then they will export it to us. Add a touch of ginseng and goji berries, and Bob's your uncle. Massive profits...no responsibility.

All up, The Review of The Revenant: Well worth watching once.