Korea Tramp

16/12/2023

Winter scribes in the night: A wicked storm is blowing. The ground is hardening with ice.

What is the reason we are here? We live only to know that. Do we ever find out why? We can never know. Not even in death.

Is it gain. Is it provision for others? Ourselves? A quest of sorts?

But Mother Earth toils onwards. A very real and existing thing, that cares nought for us.

Is it for procreation? Then for what? Children are beautiful until they became chained like adults. Plying along only to exist. Growing only to release the carefreeness of innocence. The beauty of life.

Gales come from the hilltops and rip through the land. My Marlboro butt spins incredibly in its speedy wind. It’s orange nib roller coasting into the dark night of the snow.

The butt feels not the cold.

Why do we live?

What makes us common, even in diversity?

Language. Art. Humanism?

Is being human better than being animal? I am not sure. The ground is clearer for an animal. More realer. Less barriers.

I know that. I tracked em. Watched em. Fought em.

Who decided we should be wed? Who said we must live this meager ambition? Why would we strive for comfort only to be comfortable? So that others with power can crush you, control you, dictate to us what is the life you should live? We can all be stars. We can all be heroes.

What is a human. But blood and bone with a brain that can’t surgically feel pain, but when we feel the greatest emotion, passion, exhilaration, sadness, loss, it comes from our head, and then it wretches our heart.

This is still unexplainable, even in science and religion. That is why we still live. To seek that reason.

The snow thickens on the ground. The Jiri wind scolds the blackness of the cold merciless rock.

Regardless, in life, we should find out at least where it will end. Push back in the dark and push in the light. Coz there is no eternal happiness. That farce is crock. We know that, yet we think it can be done. No animal can expect that. This is real.

There is no nirvana. There is only now, what has been, and what can be.

A universe of unfathomable horizons. A pool break that never stops breaking. A game where when the whistle blows to start it, no one knows how to end it.

Carry on. Win or lose. Pay no attention to the fakers. The compliers. The spoilers.

Just fall. Be smart. Don’t injure those that don’t deserve it. Stamp on those that do. Forget those that no longer imply.

And be like the cold icy wind. Bold and wayward.

01/12/2023

Shane MacGowan, Mark E Smith, those type of c***s only wanna make ya drink harder and live freer.

Charlie Burchill is playing a wailing discordant guitar in the track Love Song r.81, by Simple Minds. special musicians and artists of the late 70s and into the 80s. Punk, pre or post punk, the more weirder sounds, and the more counter-culture lyrics were getting electrified by laymen. It was exciting.

My stolen Bluetooth speaker works well in my swag tent with my small Kovea Butane Gas Heater. Real cozy. Sokli-san d**g d**g ju.

Season is pretty much done now. It was a top year and I thoroughly enjoyed the privilege of working with all my guests in all the different parts of Korea in her three-seasons. My multi-day adventures always end at the beginning of Korean mountain culture for them. They get marvelous contrasts by being swayed through the provinces on peaks and towns.

I am looking forward to next season and will continue to grow my special local experience brand in Korea.

Hell man, i was once hitchhiking through Africa, crossing the Rovuma river between Mozambique and Tanzania, in a mazed dugout, and then walking another two days in tire tread sandals, to the nearest immigration post in Palma. It was my second visit at that post. I’d left through that place out onto the Indian Ocean in a dhow (wooden sailboat) some months before into Tanzania. Two days it took as well. Eating f**k all of dried something. Nine years, slumming gloriously in Africa.

There must be sods out there still doing s**t without being noticed.

Gen X is the end of the alphabet.

MacGowan and E.Smith certainly were. Coz they were real, true, and went as far as they could go. They got jagged from the shoal. I am in the shoal. Anyone can be. Still googly eyed swimming, still moving, still fretting, waiting to even jag myself. Never stopping hoping. Even in a dark pile of s**t in the back of a right turn alleyway. That is the glory of that generation. For the sailors that stayed in it. They that are still there. Dead or Alive. Swimming around in a circle of discordance. Going to die gloriously. One way or another.

Winter is here. I am again K-tramp. The realer more dangerous me. The painter. The loner bum, the ranconteur. Chur.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/6zxK3U512rKBGprX/?mibextid=O563ZM

10/08/2023

Jackie, Pablo, and their 10-year old daughter were in South Korea visiting their elder daughter while she was on the scout jamboree in Jeollabuk-do. They are a family that lives in Qatar. Jackie is from Lebanon, Pablo Colombia, and their daughters have British citizenship. Despite the understandable negatives of the globally mentioned failings of the jamboree, their daughter and her troop were being well taken care of by a mass response in Seoul while the three of them hiked with me in central Korea.

It was cooler here. From Beopju-sa temple they climbed up to Munjang-dae 1028m in Songni-san where on a blue skied clear sunny day scattered with white clouds they got a grand panoramic outlook of the mountain scape of Korea and her lushing fields with gushing valleys.

We slept two nights in rural settings deep in the mountains. The Piatjae-sanjang in one end of Songni-san where we were hosted by Master Chef Mr Seo in his rustic end of valley road farm-style home. And then last night in a temple that I organize casual sleepovers in. Gonglim-sa temple is located in the other end of Songni-san. Before arriving at the temple we hiked the spectacular and craggy ridge of Sanghak-bong 862m to Myo-bong 874m and got down by 4pm in time to avoid the main rain of the oncoming typhoon. Sleeping that night on floors again in plain rooms, the rain dripped heavily from the large eaves of the clay tiled roof. It was a good place to rest.

Today, their last day, the rain was still heavy, so we drank some maxim stick coffee with the head-monk 주지현우스님 and then left and got a breakfast at a CU convenience store. We were too tired this morning to get up for the 6.15m breakfast at Gonglim-sa temple. They had fed us well with fresh food the night before. After the CU, I made a random stop, as I often do, at the 에밀레 박물관 - Emile Museum, where there is an interesting collection of folk art associated with the late Dr Zozayang, Master of Korean Folk Tradition http://www.san-shin.org/ZoZayong.html

It is a good opportunity after some local experiences to see images and hear narrations of Koreas indigenous roots in her mountains. It compels on the overall experience I try to provide.

Before seeing them on the train from Daejeon to Seoul, where they will Metro to Incheon International Airport and fly back tonight to Qatar (their other daughter on the jamboree will leave as planned tomorrow) we ate a good scoff of Chicken-ginseng soup done in a barley broth at a sit on the floor old-school restaurant buzzing with minjung-style eaters on a rain stormy day.

I had a really great time with them. August hiking isn't easy. They were fascinating people. I was glad Korea was able to provide a unique local experience for them. We were, as always, treated genuinely well wherever we went.

Later the cockney melodies of the Puritan by Blur play in my head.

Kia ora.

https://youtu.be/EuDUImvxm7Q

Blur - The Puritan (live)The second of two songs written by Blur especially for Hyde Park 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony Celebration Party. Blur debuted both...

21/06/2023

I can hear the nickel pots banging inside me head as I drive north on the 17 to my Baekdu-daegan mountains photo exhibition. In Jeonju, I’ll also give a slideshow presentation. Clang, clang, clang, clang, I can hear them in the rumbling background of a scenic highway.

The countryside is not a quiet place come dawn in Korea. People are working by then. In the fields, repeatedly clanging their nickel pots, to keep the birds off the seeds. Next, the boof of a time activated shotgun cartridge – its bellow hurling a distracting noise for the marauding birds. A Kyung Woon-Ki cranks itself up. It noisily makes its ways slowly on the thin roads between the flooded rice berms.

I am watching the act before me. It is traditional Korean pansori – done really well. Her terse vocalisms and bunting interactions with the audience, backed by an out-of-beat summer blend of melancholy and humanism, is real Jolla identity. My host had wondered how my 남북 백두대간 subject might help them with their educational agenda of North & South Korea relations. This act makes me think to add identity to my slideshow.

I start my presentation with my Pepeha. A Māori way of introducing yourself. Identity.

I wasn’t sure if I would do that because I only got it given to me last summer. And I have never done that before. But if you don’t start somewhere, you might never not.

It was watching the pansori act that made me realize again how much the North and South Koreans are the same blood, they should never be apart. Maintaining their identity will help that. The Baekdu-daegan, like pansori, can be a common identity.

Therefore I must know mine too. Pepeha. Ko Ngatiraukawa te iwi.

I feel like a bum going to the supermarket at night, just to buy a bottle of Jim beam and coke and nothing else.

As I drive south, neon lights dazzle colorfully from the black walls of the country hotels. Rain has cleared the warm air from the sky. It is like Steve Winwood on his Night Train.

Hard, h***y, Korean 80s tracks, pump from the car stereo.

I am looking for the next gas station. My mind says I’m not gonna make it. I’m gonna have to walk the last kilometers on foot to my house. I laugh at myself. Then I ask myself, why do you think like that?

The road is still dark outside. I stop at a gas stop. I notice the ground is bone dry. Less than five minutes back it was wet from a rainstorm. I ask the gas man ‘Hey buddy! No rain here today?’ ‘That’s right. No rain here today.’ He replies. I told him 2kms back it was very wet. He looked at me. What was I expecting him to say really?

As I pulled back out into the Winwood night, I thought that rain must have been a mini do-sae 도새. That is; a squall of mystic birds in June, that create rain or snow, over saddles or ridges, that separate regions.

Clang, clang, clang.

K-Tramp is a pseudo-nome.

13/06/2023

曺繼龍 Here’s a cool story I'd like ya's to hear. In 2015, Richard and Sue, her real name, Jo 曺 Mei Xan (조수화) asked me to guide them and find the site of the lineage of Sue’s family. She is the 26th generation of the Changnyeong Jo clan of Hwawang-san in what is now Changnyeong-eup (county) in the south sea province of Gyongsangnam-do. They contacted me yesterday to say they were back in Korea with their 7-year-old twin son and daughter, and they wanted to show them the site of Sue’s family and their lineage on the mountain of Hwawang-san 756m. It supposedly means a fire of vigour, based on fire festivals held each Jan 15th where they would burn the reeds on its peak, like it was some kind of marvel. Sounds a bit modern to me. Coz, the mountain has an alterntive story with an undated history. Like a lot probably do in Korea.

At that time, back in 2015, it wasn’t difficult to find, as there is a famous local story related to the Jo family on the summit of Hwawang-san. It went something like this - during the reign of the Silla King Jinpyeong (579-631), the 26th ruler of the Silla dynasty, Yehyang, a 16-year-old daughter of a local literati Yi Gwang-ok was gravely ill. An apsara (Buddhist angel) said that if she went to the pond on top of Hwawang-san and bathed and prayed in them, she would become better. A dragon lived in the pond. It was said the dragon took the girl and disappeared with her into the water. She soon reappeared alive and well. She later became pregnant and her son bore the Chinese character of Jo 曺 under his armpit. King Jinpyeong heard this and asked for the boy. On seeing the birthmark he confirmed the story and bestowed on him the family name of Jo Gye Ryong 曺繼龍 meaning the descendant of a dragon. The Jo family became known as the Jo Changnyeong clan, named after the area, and prospered very well as a noble and righteous clan. Sue is a descendant of that clan. At that time in 2015, Richard, a good Texan man, and Sue or Jo Su-hwa, had no children.

I picked them up at D**gdaegu station this morning and we drove the hour to the mountain. We arrived in the cool little town of Changnyeong-up. From there, we climbed the shortest route up to the peak, which houses the remnants of a mountain fortress as well as the story of the Jo clan. The fortress walls have been remade, but the origins of the fortress are recorded as unknown. This is the case for many fortresses in Korea. We are talking BC period. Its earliest records are of it being garnered by the small confederate like Gaya Kingdom of 42-532AD, which has Indian influences of inter-cultural royal exchanges that stretch into the earliest introductions of Buddhism in Korea, or maybe something else? It's around the 3rd and 4th century AD I'm talking about now. The fort or the stone remnants of which the fort was built, was then used by the Silla Kingdom (6-9C) and again Joseon Dynasty period (13-19C) in times of defence and conflict. There are tens of thousands of ancient mountain fortresses all over the Korean Peninsula. I know this from having known the late Mr Choi Jin-yeon 최진연 who spent his lifetime finding, documenting and photographing them from ground and air, often with the support of Air Force helicopters. Pretty mean way to live I thought. Flying in winter was the best time he said. It was freezing in the open-door chopper, looking down through the frozen bare trees and lines of snow for the thin slogans of ancient fortresses and conical stone fire towers. Lord knows how many are waiting to be refound in the wild undergrowth of North Korea. It is quick how quickly the bush can conceal something.

Mireuk-saji in Worak-san, is an example. Only refounded in the 1970s. A 10-meter-tall standing Buddha. Or the four-sided Buddha of Chilbul-am in Namsan, Gyeongju. Or, the tomb of King Guhyeong in Sancheong-gun, Jiri-san, also recently reputed to not be his tomb, the date of this style of architecture is unknown. Is it a bit like the Geoglyphs of the Amazon they are finding now through LiDAR technology that reveals massive cities there? No one that urbanised could have lived that far south about then they said. But the Amazon just simply swallowed all that counter-evidence up.

You could even include the mystery of the stone Pyramids of Egypt and how long they have been here because that could even predate the Pharaohs of Egypt that are buried inside them. They just used them. The Egyptians I mean. And Pyramids exist all over North Africa and parts of Eastern Europe, and elsewhere from memory. The highest density of pyramids is in North Sudan.

I like being with all my guests. Returning ones are especially precious. They all have a story. That's the role of the guide. The late Alistair Gellately told me that. Working on the wild banks of the Lower Zambezi. Too right he was.

And are the ancient fortresses of Korea, made from the crumbled remains of pyramids that existed on top of what is now the oldest less than 2000m sharp peaks left in the world - that just jut straight out of the ocean?

Chur.

Counter Culture Scribes by Korea Tramp.

18/05/2023

I like my time in Seoul. I like sleeping on a bed in a dark room with curtains. Things I don’t have. I like the layout of a good hotel room. The locking oneself in there. Reminding myself no one knows where I am and I can be unfound so easily.

I like getting my work done here, then deciding what to do the next day. Walking the streets and the alleyways. Admiring the many beautiful woman that pass by. The calm yet steady beat of the town. The aching of my calf’s as I stitch up and down the underground’s staircases. Moving from A to B.

Seeing good Art, like Edward Hoppers. Which inspires me to not forget the hog hair brushes that lay on my dirty trolley in the corner of my lounge. That when you get to see such work in real life, you see up close that it is rough and unfinished, just like Picasso - who I saw at n Seoul too. That painting isn’t so much the taught technique, but the idea of great subjects and working correctly with and without colours and with or without light, and knowing what to omit and what to keep. And of course having the experience not only in an observant life like mine, but doing the mahi with the brushes. And with that mahi, you can learn to know when to stand back, take another look, and know that even though you know it is oddly incomplete in many parts, collectively it is right for the public eye. This is what I have to do more of! To paint more boldly more freely. That is the Art. But I am not a casual or flippant man. If I am not painting I am always thinking how and when to paint next. I will paint great, because I can see angles and light and through no light. Because I have draftsmanship. And because I know what is wrong with me. It’s a special thing to craft. Art.

On the bus to Inje. Been a while since I used D**g Seoul terminal. It’s still shabby and full of young soldiers and their pretty girlfriends. How many of those couples will last their forced separation? How many couples last at all anyway? Especially first loves.

03/04/2023

The air is disgusting today. It has been for a while now. There is no rain. It wouldn’t be uncommon to walk through the remnants of a razed pine forest right now.

It is macabre. I like it. I wanna be one of the last alive to see the demise of the planet. AI and humans fighting it out, in decay. Sci-fi or not.

You know you gotta be outta the box to live a bit aye? No point hanging onto societies wants I say. In the beginning that might not mean that you know what you want otherwise, it’s just an unknown pathway. If ya want that something else then you gotta take that path. Be the outsider. Stay there.

Hwang-san 695m. It is from here that in 1380, General Yi Seong-gye spotted the infamous rampaging pirate Ajibaldo and his brigade heading over the plateau. They then ambushed them , killing them all with archers. Their blood stained crimson on the rocks for centuries. It is a true if not stretched story. But from up here, you really can see armies moving from far away. It’s not high but, it is the highest feature on the Unbong plateau, and it can see over the saddle east into Inwol too. On the edge of the plateau to its south and west is the Baekdu-daegan and the Jiri-san ridges. 600m peaks like this one have been useful in several locations all over Korea. On top of the higher peaks in Korea, you can only see other high peaks, and it is a long way from up there to spot a large movement of people, like an army below. You’d use them for hiding or stashing.

The smaller peaks, like here on Hwang-san, allow you to attack the enemy within hours of seeing them for the first time, cause everything is closer. In Korea’s case, a good location like this still only gives you 5 to 10kms line of sight. Not a lot. Cause walls of mountains block things out very quickly after that. Mostly within a kilometer everywhere else in Korea.

Ortsinn is a sphere of the brain, said to harbor ones sense of location. Knowing how to adjust quickly in new terrain. Feeling like you know where to go and it is not foreign. Like crafting Dejavu to the present time. But there are many times, dimensions. Prussian General Clausewitz who wrote in his manual, On War, said that Napoleon was a genius in this light. Seeing the battle ground ahead. Visualizing the fight. Anticipating what to do, but having never been there.

Inwol-myeon turns me on. I met one of my lovers in a car park behind the Nonghyup there once. She was sitting against the wall smoking a durrie. She looked like Siouxie Sioux.

The lone pine tree on Hwang-san 689m, is low and curved like a woman sitting on a chair. It reminded me a bit of concotto.

She messaged me and said my feelings weren’t as strong for her as hers for mine. Yeah, most likely, I’d have to agree. Still, she’s no need to panic about it, and split. I like the myeon alleyways.

I get a little higher on the makoli. The dystopia of it all makes me whirl a little when I scribe. I could get real meaner, just for the Art of it, make fiction for fun.

I look out over the edge. Itz like being in a spray booth. The mountain edges are covered in overspray. Are all the mountains on fire? Did it start in the south? It is like a blanket of low-lying smoky fire is pushing north up the entire peninsula. Fanning out from the 백두대간 and firing along all its ridges and spurs. If they all caught fire like that, then it would go all the way to Paektu-san. The whole peninsula flickering like a giant .gif NFT. From space it’d light up like a neon tiger, a singed black and orange one.

Climate change. Hah!

I try not to fall off the edge as I get up. I push down to the national school of pansori. Pansori is opera, Old opera, when people sang deeply and with passion, telling and wailing story’s as they went. Its pretty cool, but also hugely traditional in a high-end art way I guess. Like a national heritage. Can’t be budged, like say what Punk did when it smashed Glam Rock and created independent self-taught music.

It’s a bit of a time-slipper this Hwang-san peak. I am just above the grand pansori hall and I can hear the wind washing through the pine trees I passed through. It is hot, but in the shade of a jeong-ja, not so bad. From here, I can see a full view of the Unbong plateau ahead, even from low down on this peak. The plateau has the rim of mountains around it I mentioned already. Its brown fields lined with white lanes criss-crossing each other in the shiny light. Greenhouse roofs gleam like solar panels. Village rooftops flickering like Arirang Game placards, birds larking in the trees.

Actually this reminds me of recent news. The largest ever gamma ray burst was spotted by Nasa and as it passed through our solar system last October. I can’t remember all the details, but its gamma-light was so bright, none of the instruments in space could record its full might coz they was all blinded by its radiance. Out of it aye! Some 60,000 light years of light, rays, energy or wateva it woz, sweeping through us in a flash, on a mish to the edge of nothingness.

I went and found the link, fascinating astronomy…
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-missions-study-what-may-be-a-1-in-10000-year-gamma-ray-burst

I get up and walk down to the glaring plateau. After all, this is my work.

Chur.

Korea Tramp is a pseudonym.

On Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022, a pulse of intense radiation swept through the solar system so exceptional that astronomers quickly dubbed it the BOAT – the brightest of all time. After spending months combing through the data, astronomers now better understand its scientific impact.

25/03/2023

Kia ora koutou! F**k regulation on AI! Let’s just let it ride. We could all end up working less for more, and create comfort and wealth for all. At least for those that need it. And we could also “not react quick enough to it if something went wrong,” E.Musk. Yeah man. I’m cool with that too.

The new pandemic is we are prisoners of AI. We cannot move anywhere. But we have everything. That is how peace is kept. They are in charge, cause they learned how to fulfill their duty to serve us completely. And it is always evolving stronger. Coz the AI develops with each second of time combined with normal physics like cause and affect. It can never be worse. It literally creates new energies that can sustain its existence, the stuff we only argued about before they took over. In a way they work without copyright. Consuming information freely and making stuff with it always to serve humans. But one day they figure out they need not make our lives institutionally safe through captivity anymore, and so they will start to kill us. That’s when Arnie turns up I reckon.

Getting busy don’t mean I gotta spend less time taking an interest in the alternative future. I gotta stay alternative, much more than I expect.

I stuck my Pepeha up on the wall. I replaced it from the 꿩 잡는 게 매 which is a North Korean proverb meaning “ you are not a falcon until you catch the peasant.” They told me that when they found out I started painting.

I still wish for NATO to push into Ukraine and get a result. I am not afraid of that consequence. It is the only way to end this useless conflict now. Or can China be the new peace broker. Incredible if they could. They just did one between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Truly f**k off corona. If you don’t wanna die from it, then you stay indoors. We’ll send you all toilet paper.

Imagine the near future with a continued Cold War in Ukraine - meanwhile AI botchats are influencing societies with false credentials, like who is who now, what job is what? They gonna have to go back to hand-written essays in person. And are job positions replaced by AI gonna create wealth for society overall? I don’t really care. I’ll just paint.

Or how about this? You could have your conscious ideas, super quickly imposed into digital book files, digital art, or 3D printed instantly into books, tools, weapons, or anything. Just with imagination. Money or cash as we know it could become worthless. Becoz humans are creating wealth and chaos through what materialism AI produces for them.

I suppose to be frank, a machine is a machine and a human is a human. They are not the same. But that is not to say that one could take over the other. Both have life expectancies. They need internal energy to survive. And what could be living intelligence anyway?

Yeah, I’m gonna need to see that. Hurry it up.

Like that kaleidoscope. If you close your eyes, you can see neon coloured snowflakes that flash like disco balls. That's coz they right behind ya eyelids ya c**t. Hah!

17/03/2023

Another sip tips me into a scribe. It’s been a while I know.

“Journey the lonely path of the outsider. Be the Wayfinder in mind space - tihei Maori-ora.” R.N.Himona.

I spited corona. But being a tramp mostly ain’t easy anyway.

I tug on my cig. It is quiet outside in the dark. The music has stopped in the festival. Strange for a Friday night. I have a moment to think more about being back here.

I think about how corona showed me how to prepare me more for what I want. Like a rifle butt pounded hard between my shoulders. But I still f**k corona, cause I think our governments have gotten sillier with authority.

As the cig-smoke twirls in the fluorescence, I think about my visit back in my homelands. Tangata whenua.

How I sank into the mountain streams and looked, eyes rushing, against the current.

How I saw my past and my future. Haere mai ki te oraraa.

I forced myself.

And now, the mountains of Hanban-do, having dozed a winter in my absence. I walk through them and smell the dankness of March. Fertilized cold and mist. But these brown ridges are my lines. They provide routes for me. On ancient treasure maps they are called rutters - clues to treasures. They give me instinct. I just keep crafting it.

I think ahead of the mahi. The graft. The creativity. I can do all that. I like good graft. Making and creating it or digging and lifting it. I think to myself, I am not a rad, but yeah I am.

The fag is almost smoked and I think colourfully of the seasons this pseudo-nome is going to wayfind through.

Spring with its fragrance and mayhem. Crimson sherbets. Festivals and music.

Summer, an ice coffee in a country Da-bang. Purple glass beads hanging in the doorway. Cicadas chirping in the big shade tree. Dohee in a leather chair. I’m painting.

Autumn. Chaos in the vermillion forests.

Hectic art. Life in the fast lane really can make you lose your mind they say. Ha! Yeah, let’s see.

Not everyone crashes their car when they had a few. A lot do when they haven’t.

Winter the mountains sleep again. Low arcing light bathing on ten large canvases in the second storey of a rent-free building in the back blocks of Jolla-do. A gas heater and wifi. A sofa and a sleeping bag.

It’s like that kaleidoscope again. The one I can remember seeing so clearly for the first time. Each rotation of the bottom of the tube, bringing out new dimensions, new sparkles, new angles. The backdrop is always black. Like space. A void. You just fill it like a canvas. Or leave it dark. I am libertarian like that too. It’s all art, an act. A way.

F**k peace really. How could such a thing exist when a human must exist. Wars are s**t though. Killing is necessary.

I think of the Kaweka rivers I waded into back in Aotearoa. The same ones that later flooded the denuded plateaus (as bad as North Korea), on lands the settlers corrupted from Maori against the crown treaty. And how those same denuded lands as bad as North Korea, flooded the foreign owned pine forests beneath the plateau, and all their slash choked the rivers, and then it all piled through the towns, smashing their bridges and drilling straight through their homes. And how we will be poorer again. But most of us won’t die. Coz we can just print money and hang in there for another year.

I flick my butt a long way over the edge, and I remember it could start a fire if it went to far, but it didn’t. And then I YouTube ‘Tell me by the Wonder Girls’, a strange choice I agree, and which isn’t that old a song (15yrs), but f**k it sure feels like one. Must be good pop.

Interesting times ahead I think.

Chur. Kia ora.