Immigrant Song

There is something to people’s personal immigration stories I find myself easily able to identify with. Not that this should surprise anyone, being I am an immigrant myself. Nevertheless, the feeling that one belongs neither where one came from nor where one currently is is not a comfortable feeling to live with. Hence reading the personal story of a woman who migrated from China to the UK and went through a lot of the experiences I did while feeling a lot of the things I had felt certainly brings such recollections back to one’s consciousness.
Xiaolu Guo is not alone in feeling the need to tell of her experience. My close friend Ike Aramba has been toying with the idea of trying out podcasting with his insights on the Australian migration story. Apparently, he is seeking to use podcasting as a promotion tool for his business, and wonders aloud whether a hobby/fun first go at it would be a good way to test the water with.
I don’t know how serious Ike is with this initiative of his. It sounds to me as if podcasting can be quite an effort to produce properly, and I know Ike well enough to appreciate how little spare time he has. He can be big on ambitious plans but small on actual execution. But I also know I would like to hear his tale and, almost certainly, identify with it too.

P.S. This blogger always seeks out opportunities to plug a Led Zeppelin song.

Looking Back

Looking back at the history of humanity since the invention of agriculture, we tend to feel sorry for the suffering of all those peasants and vassals that laboured day and night just so they could bring food to the table (if they had any) or have something they can put on to protect them from the elements. Yet this was the way of life for the bulk of humans during the past 10,000 years.
We look back a century or two ago, at the days of the industrial revolution, and wonder how people managed to work under horrid conditions at those steam powered factories. With little in the way of rights or breaks, they suffered through coal and smog to make a living.

In a century or two, the people of the future will look back at us and wonder how - during such an era of affluence as ours - we all agreed to waste the better parts of our lives at our 9 to 5 (and then overtime) work. All this meaningless suffering.

Tislam

It is school holidays in Australia. This kid can remember school holidays when he was a kid, too. For this post, I shall reminisce on one particular childhood summer holiday.
During that year, the hottest rock band in Israel was Tislam. Vinyl was at its peak popularity, but for me the only affordable way of listening to what used to be my favourite band was to listen to the Israeli army radio. There, in his weekday program airing between 11:00 and 13:00, an anchor guy called Eli Israeli* would almost always play a Tislam song.
On the days he did it felt like winning the lottery. On days he didn’t it felt like I’ve just wasted two hours of my life. Two hours of precious, distilled, school holidays life. But that was my best bet at a slice of Tislam.



As I am typing this, I am listening to Tislam on my headphones, streaming through Spotify. Some of their songs still stand the test of time, others have aged very poorly, and with others I am made well aware of the fact I would have never paid them the slightest attention if it wasn’t for the nostalgia factor.
I will say this, though. All of those people that complain about online streaming while longing for their precious vinyl can go and stuff themselves up their you-know-what. You can keep your needles and scratches, if that’s what makes you feel good. Me, I am ecstatic about the fact that all the music I could ever want to listen to is but a simple search away.


* To Mr Israeli's credit I will add that, several years later, he acquainted me with a band called Guns N' Roses