Curses, China syndrome again

Israel's recent very successful targeted attacks on Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies have been praised or condemned depending on political perspectives, but one factor seems to have universal acceptance by the Right and the Woke Left.

They have shown how susceptible we are to malevolent hackers accessing a wide range of electrical devices which have become an essential part of our modern lives. We have already seen a spate of explosions and fires with many appliances, including household storage batteries, electric bikes, scooters and electric vehicles, some of which have actually crippled or sunk transport ships.

Presumably, these have been accidental, but what might happen if an enemy of Australia and the West could stage a mass attack by manipulating them in much the same way Israel has shown it can be done?

A vast number of these items originate from one of our major trading partners, China, which we have seen committing largely unchallenged acts of aggression in open waters and air space, including the release of aluminium foil by a fighter jet in the path of an Australian Air Force plane, and sonic booms which damaged the ears of Australian Navy divers.

In the latest incident, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was strutting the international stage, receiving back pats and "handsome boy" platitudes from Chinese officials and President Xi Jinping, who must have been sniggering behind their backs as he lapped it up and left any low-key diplomatic criticism until he was back safe on home soil.

Some defence analysts have pointed out that in a new era of warfare, a nation like ours could be crippled and dominated by an aggressor without any troops actually setting foot on our soil. It's no longer the realms of science fiction or fantasy, particularly if aggressors joined forces (think China, Russia, North Korea and maybe Iran). Scary stuff, which hopefully will never happen. But it could.

Meanwhile, I've some first-hand experiences with Chinese products, where it seemed I was transformed into a personal mobile electronic sabotage device. Let's borrow the mind's tardis again for a trip back to an era when AI was still a pipe dream, Spotify hadn't replaced CDs and Sat Navs were in their infancy.

Fantasy, mind over matter, paranormal, coincidence … you be the judge, but I swear every word (borrowed from my memoir Don't Call Me Nev) is true:

...It's not the fear of escalating the China trade war or upsetting their sensitive diplomats that makes me tread cautiously. No, it's more a ghost of the past that once haunted me. I called it The Chinaman's Curse - a poltergeist that seemed hell-bent on sabotaging material things in my life.

Tongue-in-cheek maybe, and scoff if you will, but it all started years ago with something as simple as a shopping trip. It wasn't until I got back home and tried on the new T shirts with the Bundy Rum Bear and Pink Floyd logos in my regular 'L' size and found neither fitted. So back to the shop to exchange for 'XL.' It was not that I'd grown, the sizes had obviously shrunk. The tag revealed all - Made in China.

As a freelance journalist and newspaper columnist, I was inspired to fire a few salvos at our growing dependence on China, at the cost of local manufacturing and jobs:

"Are we becoming a Chinese satellite state by stealth? How many Australian jobs have been lost or put at risk because of cheap imports flooding our markets and our homes?

China is an important trading partner for our resources industries, but maybe we are taking things too far by allowing their electrical, clothing and food items an open door to compete against Australian-made items.

The local products have to comply with more stringent controls and higher wages. They are not often subject to the safety recalls we have seen for various Chinese goods including toys, textiles and dairy products…"

Bad move, as it turned out. Call it coincidence, but over the next few weeks, fittings and appliances which had worked perfectly, suddenly started to either fail completely or tease me with their own version of "Now you see me, now you don't."

The TV set only turned on when it wanted to, the electric hot water system stayed out in the cold for a week, the near-new DVD player and the home computer refused to work on demand. And yes, all those things carried the ubiquitous "Made in China" tags. I had to write my next newspaper column titled "The Chinaman's Curse" by hand!

But it didn't end there - the curse was still with me and the poltergeist obviously had a sense of humour.

Take the day my wife Cathy chose to invite her welfare agency work colleagues and their families around for a Christmas barbecue. Any other day over the past three months or three years would have been fine (literally), but she chose the one day when Noah would have realised he hadn't been slaving in vain over God's secret plan to save the planet by drowning most of it.

Fortunately we remained high and dry near the beach despite the eight-inch (200+mm) deluge and gale force winds which didn't deter the guests, whose ages ranged from about four to 74, with a couple of well-behaved teenagers as well. In fact, everything was going swimmingly until I attempted to play some music to liven the party - insert the disc, wait a few seconds and then ... the sounds of silence.

I'm not talking about the Simon and Garfunkel classic, just the sound that didn't come from the hi-fi speakers. So I take out the disc, wipe it on my shirt and try again. Nothing. So I try poking the player in the laser "eye" with a cotton bud, while a female guest asks, "Is that the latest gadget to have joined the China curse, John?"

Laughter from some of the other guests (obviously there are some people with nothing better to do than read my weekly column).

I tell her the damn thing worked fine earlier, and it must be the humidity.

"This modern stuff is crap," I rant. "You don't get things fixed anymore, it's cheaper to toss them out and buy a new one."

I'm sitting back enjoying another beer when out of the blue the stereo comes to life and Stevie Ray Vaughan starts belting out the guitar blues as only he can. The lyrics to "Texas Flood" drown out the rain on the roof.

"It's flooding down in Texas, all the telephone lines are down ..."Stevie laments.

Couldn't be more apt, but if any of the guests thought I'd orchestrated the whole thing, no, it was done by a force outside my control.

A few weeks later I had an appointment with a skin specialist on the Sunshine Coast and the benefit of a new plug-in sat nav device to make sure I found the right place.

So we travel through the round-about world capital of Noosa, then with our destination entered on the touch screen the pleasant female voice tells me, "Turn right, 100 metres…"

We make it around a few corners with her help but when I miss one by paying more attention to the traffic than to her, things start to get more complicated.

"Do a U turn at 50 metres," she commands.

Sorry, but there is no way I can do a U turn, there's a concrete strip and heavy traffic. Just when the heart rate is starting to settle down, she once more commands, "Do a U turn".

No traffic or other restrictions now, so I swing the car around, which brings me right back to the spot with the traffic island and that annoyingly sweet, cruel female voice again tells me, "Do a U turn".

I choose to ignore the nagging "Do a U turn" from sat-nav girl, while Cathy reaches out and switches her off, adding, "Why don't you just let me drive?"

"I want to see what she tells me next, " switching her back on, just in time for her to tell me, "Turn right at 50 metres."

I take the turn off the busy road and it takes me up a hill to a beautiful lookout overlooking the Noosa River and blue Pacific. Is she trying to get further instructions from the satellite, or just trying to calm our jangled nerves?

Doesn't help, and I re-enter our destination at Minyama, near Maroochydore, only to be told in that bloody calm, smug voice, "Minyama is not accessible by road."

Then I see the small encryption below the screen. Made in China. We are still laughing as we finally arrive there without needing a boat. How could she not know about the four-lane motorway and big, high bridge spanning the Maroochy River?

The skin man checks me over and then tries to enter my details in his computer, which suddenly crashes at the first keystroke below my name.

Why am I not surprised at the sight of this specialist who probably earns more in an hour than I do in a week, crawling about under his desk unplugging cables and eventually muttering, "That's just a new computer, but fortunately I kept the old one as a back-up".

Why am I not surprised when the back-up fires up momentarily, then dies.

I feel sorry, as I know he's in for a bad day.

Honestly, could I make this stuff up? No way, truth can be stranger than fiction. But somewhere up there, Bruce Lee and his son Brandon, who know all about Chinese curses, must be laughing …Eventually we moved to the Sunshine Coast and maybe the poltergeist remained in the house, or perhaps he decided we had suffered enough.

Am I tempting fate again?