Keeping up with the Shaws

I live across from a mansion that was occupied by the nephew (I think) of one of the most recognizable names in Hong Kong, Sir Run Run Shaw. I've also been spending a lot of time daydreaming at my desk and, it seems to me that SOMEthing is going on over there this week. There have been trucks and minivans hauling things in and out of there, and currently a woman in a fuchsia top and white visor, together with a man in a purple T-shirt, are walking around the grounds of the Shaw mansion talking and pointing at things. It's been on the market for ages now, and last month was the target of a burglary... has it finally been snapped up? And by whom????

Richard Li

Everyone knows who Richard Li is right? Yeaaaaahhh . Well, this is the cheapo who puts these shiny red labes saying "Compliments of Richard Li" onto every single one of the free copies of Financial Times that are given out at our Law School.

When I told my father about this, he said "you should make a rubber stamp of the text on the label, and stamp all of the toilet paper in the bathrooms exactly like that, so that when people reach to clean the poo of their anus..."

I would love to be a part of this prank. Any takers?

A snippet that transpired in an email to an English friend

"... Starbucks does free refills? Another reason to emigrate. Totally moving to London, just for the free refills. No such thing in Hong Kong. I think it's because people are pretty unscrupulous here when it comes to saving the very last dime instead of saving face. I could totally see people passing on their Starbucks mug to their friend, and that that friend passing it onto the next, and the next... so that they could all drink for free. Although, there is something quite sweetly socialist about the idea, now that I think of it. Starbucks can operate on a smaller profit margin, can't it?"

Chris' interesting links

Wellp. This a guy who always has interesting stuff in the 'status' section of his gchat profile. This is a post dedicated the care he takes in selecting things to put in that sacred space.

W.H Auden's Poem. From this interesting link http://www.feer.com/tales/?p=893  

Hongkong 

The leading characters are wise and witty;
Substantial men of birth and education,
With wide experience of administration,
They know the manners of a modern city.

Only the servants enter unexpected;
Their silence has a fresh dramatic use:
Here in the East the bankers have erected
A worthy temple to the Comic Muse.

Ten thousand miles from home and What’s-Her-Name
The bugle on the Late Victorian hill
Puts out the soldier’s light; off-stage, a war

Thuds like the slamming of a distant door:
We cannot postulate a General Will;
For what we are, we have ourselves to blame.

AAaaaah. Auden is too good.

My mind is in the gutter ALL THE TIME.

Just a few thoughts on what I think my law school is... 

Our email system is called CWEM. Hur hur hur!!! It stands for Campus Wide E Mail, but by god, they need to put somebody in the IT department that knows dirty words. (errr qwim anyone? Or quim?)

Our head of faculty is known as the Koala Bear. He is a Koala bear that needs a bib. Awww can you imagine how cute that is? A koala bear in a bib! Not, however, if you're sitting in the front row of the classroom. I feel as if I oughta go to class wearing a fencing mask, so mighty is his froth. You know what I mean. You've had a prof exactly like this one. Large. Grey. Spits.

I have no friends in school yet. Boooo. Feels exactly like gradeschool all over again. Except, no playground. And no coathooks with out names and photos above. 

Poem for the night

I had a really fun night out with last weekend, and this week I've been editing a poem that I wrote about that night.

Good Old Men

“He looks like my grandpa,” you said

at Ned Kelly’s Last Stand.

Floating in the watery jazz,

I imagined a sunbrowned boy under Philippine sun,

the trumpet player before us speaking something

soothingly, as good old men do, in tagalog.

“I’m 22.” “You’re so young!”

And I suppose that makes you an old man.

I don’t know many old men. My grandfather,

a shoemaker, his back hurts from bending

over the shapes of other people’s feet.

There was also something said

about paper boats and that they were empty, but

with the night so full it’s incidental.

You joke about wanting to fuck me.

The siren before us has just married a man named Brett:

What an American name, how American.

For Brett is a name which celebrates itself,

announcing in a maleness like the light

glancing off the trumpet as it solos –

Brett is a man, and he is here.

Chip-in-shoulder feminist attacks The Standard's layout staff with a knife

On July 2nd's edition of The Standard, Hong Kong's free English language newspaper, I noticed something rather sinister... two articles concerning women, one about the rise in the number of affairs committed by wives and the other about females on average being more picky about their travel packages, were printed in pink coloured / pink outlined boxes. The fashion and gossip section are also titled in pink.

WHAT IS THIS, THE MATERNITY WARD??? PINK for the girls and BLUE for the boys??? If this happened in America, it would be on Jezebel! WOMEN OF HONG KONG, we must REJECT this outrageous gender stereotyping that implies MEN cannot be interested in fashion or gossip!

FREE THE FLUFF FOR MEN!!!! PINK OUTLINES IN THE STANDARD FOR HARD NEWS!!!

How much I hate Hong Kong and think everyone should abandon it's ship

As I was walking away from my driving class the other day, I thought of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. There are times when I cannot stand to look at all the ugly, ugly housing estates and apartment blocks in the lousier parts of town. I know I am of privileged stock, and saying all this can and will make me ridiculous and pompous, but people were not meant to live like this! If I have children, and bad luck befalls them, is this how low I want them to fall? Living in a Hong Kong housing estate isn't thoroughly hell, it's better than a slum, though there is still niggling at the back of my mind a constant sensation that I can't accept this for myself or any of my loved ones / progeny. This is wrong wrong wrong.

I want there to be a Second Coming for Hong Kong. I want there to be a crazy person, a person full of "passionate intensity" that would rip Hong Kong apart and cause a seismic shift in the whole damned city. I would like to feel that his thighs are lumbering towards Matilda International Hospital to be born. I think that she / he would be a bit like Shishigami in the Studio Gibli film "Princess Mononoke." If there could be somebody whose vision could explode over the whole of Hong Kong in a sort of idiotic death-sacrifice (there's this one scene in the film... ah, you should go watch it, it's lovely,) I think I would love Hong Kong again.

Jen, Hong Kong is already pining for your return...

I never saw the Beer Bong when I was in America but now I have.

Toilet Signs

What do you think about while in the bathroom? I've always loved the short story that Paul Jennings wrote called "The Velvet Throne" which is part of the short story collection Unmentionable , something of an amazing kid's book. In the story, all the little messages that people scrawl on a particular public bathroom wall comes true. Yes, sounds a little weird, but so is most of Jenning's fiction, you wouldn't believe it till you read it.

So, this is what I saw in a bathroom today. I was out having a coffee in Sai Kung with my mum. They do say that caffeine is a diuretic.



The person who did the translation obviously thought he was ever so clever, using "easy come, easy go" as a basis for reminding people to flush. *sigh* The wierd language fragments people pick up and reuse without actually understanding it's meaning. I just don't know how the hell to interpret this. Of course it's easy to go when you need to hurry to go to the bathroom, due to the call of nature being particularly shrill and urgent. But WHAT does it have to do with FLUSHING? Those poor gweilos are going to be so, so confused. I think most of them are going to have strains of the Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen running through their head when they're doing their number 2.


This is the other thing that was stuck on the cubicle wall. Juueeest sayin', those people at the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department in Hong Kong are a little creepy. I would not want a toilet that had arms, that had a face that could stare at my butt as I did my beeezzness. I would freak out.

The Post American World

I saw this episode of Charlie Rose a week ago. Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International and just published a book titled The Post-American World, which I just ordered on Amazon.com. The screenshot is really funny but I swear it's a good interview.



Zakaria doesn't write about the fall of American power, but rather, the rise of the rest of the world. I opted for the free "super-saver shipping" and haven't gotten the book yet so I can't comment on how good/fair it is. The interview is really interesting because they touch upon so many topics that are important to us (well, me at least): the 08 elections, international politics, trade, globalization, being "green," America, etc.

Loretta says: Hong Kong is on the cover of this book!

Hong Kong TVB Journalists

I've wanted to be angry about this in this blog for about a month now, and I apologize for the massive delay - it's a news-related item dating back to April 8th, when the Olypic Torch arrived in Paris for one leg of it's international relay marathon.

TVB has created this documentary called (rough translation) "Broadcasting the Olympic Flame" which is a bit of a travel program dedicated to introducing the places that the torch visits as well as broadcasting the relay torch run itself. After watching the above linked episode (PLEASE note the episode "Paris Part 1" at about minute number 3 of the clip) I wanted to throw about ten empty water bottles at the TV (so as to make a loud noise to vent my anger, but not actually destroy the TV, or more likely, the wall surrounding the TV, I'm awful at darts and archery).

WHY WHY WHY are these journalists who REPRESENT HONG KONG speaking ENGLISH in FRANCE to FRENCH POLICE OFFICERS??? My father gets pissed of when I claim that there is a lack of intellectual spirit in Hong Kong, that I dislike how we're rather uncultured and rude (just like I hear some Americans complain about other Americans...there are so many comedic films and cartoons about how silly Americans look and sound) and I'd much rather live in New York or London, but honestly, this is too much. This is simply dangerous to my blood pressure.

The journalist in the documentary is trying to get closer so that the cameraman can film him running alongside the Olympic flame, I presume. There are black suited, black bereted police officers lining the street on either side of the torch bearer to discourage any violent disruptions. The Hong Kong journalist says "Hey, easy! Easy!" in ENGLISH to the FRENCH POLICE OFFICER when they to to push and force him back onto the sidewalk. He then tries to explain himself, saying "We're just the press, we're press!" To the police officer, again in English, who makes it clear that he's not going to put up with any more bullshit.

WHAT THE FUUUUUCCCK!!!!???? IF YOU ARE A JOURNALIST IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY, CAN'T YOU AT LEAST LEARN HOW TO SAY "WE ARE PRESS" IN THE LOCAL LANGUAGE, AS A MARK OF RESPECT??? Bloody hell, everyone knows how proud and touchy the French are about their language and their culture, what were they thinking when TVB sent these two IDIOTS to Paris? I do NOT think it's too hard to learn two or three sentences in another language so you don't look like you're barging into someone else's country and expecting them to pander to you. It's your duty as a tourist to be respectful of the locals, and even more so if you're a journalist.

People Politics

If you have ever spent any time with the Tai Tais (wealthy married women who don't work) of Hong Kong you will know that their favorite whine topic is their maids. We are so lucky in Hong Kong to have affordable (read: cheap, underpaid) legal domestic help, it sort of boggles the mind as to how bloody demanding they are. What boggles the Tai Tai's mind is how demanding their maids are. For a meager 3480HKD a month, it strikes me as a bit ungrateful to forbid it when your help wants to spend Saturday night out at her friend's place, or to stop working at 9pm instead of midnight.

I'm all for personal space and freedom, a little within the job and masses outside of it. The central crux, the tension surrounding control and cruelty toward each other in the maid-employer relationship is that the maid needs a job. The drama of your usual office people politics is magnified tenfold when it's put on a domestic level, when none of the verbal bitchslaps that are dealt ever leave the privacy of a home. We are all tied to our need for financial freedom, but I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn't just get my tubes tied and remove myself to a banana farm forever, so that I could avoid even a tenth of psychological warfare that goes on in any employer-employee relationship, when it turns bad. And everyone, everyone has one bad boss somewhere along the line. I think my bad boss was when I had this family friend employ me for a summer internship. He made me spend hours making an excel spreadsheet of the receipts of meals and taxi rides so that he could claim the expenses. I learned close to nothing that summer, and got paid next to nothing, so it was really all a boring waste of time for me.

Well, have wandered off topic... what I wanted to say was, I baked this pasta casserole the other day, and I felt bad because our new maid was only eating instant noodles for lunch. NOT that ramen hasn't been my sometimes meal of choice during my college years, when I felt like a bum who didn't want to cook anything more nutritious, but she's running up and down the stairs, scrubbing and mopping and washing etc and she needs her vitamins and minerals!!! She's been eating ramen and ONLY ramen, without veggies or meat or anything, for lunch every day for weeks! And, it's not like we're starving her, because we always have leftovers from dinner that are plenty nutritionally balanced, and before our family sounds like misers, let's just make clear that we love our leftovers. I eat them all the time. I bring them to the office for lunch in tupperware, stick it in the microwave for a couple o' minutes, fabulous. Especially stewed anything tastes really awesome the next day. Thing is, she won't have any of it. Our maid will not eat our leftovers for lunch like the rest of us. I just don't get it! If you've ever been to a Chinese restaurant, you'll know that all dishes are communal, nobody touches or slobbers over the food in the middle of the table, it's all aboveboard and doesn't really look like pig slop or anything!

Sorry, ranting... but, er, I felt like such a cad that day, I was making this yummy pasta (even though I too should have been eating the leftovers, but I love pasta, another college habit that I should be in rehab for) and I didn't offer her any. She went and cooked her tiny ramen noodles, and I confess I was a bit annoyed at her for not eating some veggies or something with her noodles. Maybe I was subconsciously trying to punish her for not eating leftovers by not offering her any pasta. Well. God sees everything, I suppose. I'll talk to St. Paul about it when the time comes.

Hollywoodization

Has anyone else seen both versions of the Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs? Pilar and I have. The concept is so simple it's revolutionary - a story about two moles trying to rat out each other. The comedian Eddie Izzard hit the nail on the head in the case of the Hollywood remake of Infernal Affairs. Pilar and I went to see it with a bunch of Americans who hadn't seen the original (gritty, intense, emotional, dark... a lovely movie, highly recommended, if only for the eye candy. OMG Tony Leung Chiu Wai please marry me, I'll do your dirty dishes). Afterwards, Pilar and I could not stop bitching about how the Hong Kong version was soooooo much more awesome. Our other friends got jealous about how much fun we were having and told us we needed to stop, because The Departed was a good movie. Was it bad form of us to bitch, when it was TEH TRUTH?

Any other tainted movies to mention? I would really love to hear from someone who knows a movie that was better after Hollywoodization. No, really, I'm eager to be surpised. I shall eat crow, if I am.

Why I love Hong Kong

I never, ever get yelled at by construction workers in Hong Kong. We have the politest, most respectful construction workers in the world. They're all feminists, I'm sure of it.

Although to balance that viewpoint, I must recall to you all the one time my chest was oggled on the MTR. I complained about it to my brother, who was standing next to me at the time, and he just sighed and said "He probably had a bad day, L, just let it go." - WHEN did 17 year olds become so jaded about the world may I ask? Male honor? Common Chivalry!?!?!?