Dreaming of Vladimir.

Sometime probably around 2010, a group of notable Russians put on their kokoshniks and formed a thinktank to decide where next to send the “Faberge: Legacy of Imperial Russia” collection, an exhibit containing incomparable jewellery, relics and – the glittering crown – four fabled Imperial Eggs.

Just when it looked like all hope was lost of reaching consensus, SUDDENLY:

Well, what ABOUT Shatin?  Is this a world cultural centre?  At first blush, no, nothing is more certain than that it is not.  Flanking the Shing Mun River, for which the most that can be said is…it’s a river, its most prestigious building is the Regal Hotel.  Its greatest cultural offerings are New Town Plaza and IKEA, famous for that one time a gweilo got locked in the disabled toilet.

At second blush – no, I still don’t get it.

I will never understand why whoever is in charge of these things made the inexplicable decision to send the Faberge collection to Shatin, but I offer them my most heartfelt Nasdarovie.  I am passionately obsessed with royal history, especially in re the jewels of the ill-fated Romanovs, and it’s been my dream to see a Faberge Egg one day.  Never did I imagine I’d get to see four of them in Hong Kong.  Nasdarovie!

For a final touch of complete lack of culture, the exhibit was co-managed by Hong Kong’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department, the dickheads who “run” the beaches here.  Visit a beach here and make a sandcastle – as soon as you leave, a yellow-shirted LCSD person will kick it down and immediately smooth the space with a tennis-court roller.  There are LCSD people sweeping the sand.  Every 15 minutes, a trilingual announcement is played:  “Welcome to this Leisure and Cultural Services facility.  Please don’t swim if you feel tired, have recently eaten, are hungry, if it’s too cold, or if you can’t swim.”

Naturally these were the guys best suited for taking charge of the Faberge exhibit.  They fulfilled their role admirably, stuffing the hall with 60-year-old ladies wearing surgical masks who snoozed up against reliquaries of priceless artifacts until someone dared even considering taking a photo, at which point they leapt up, waggling their fingers reflexively.  Nothing brings out the rage of the berserker in me like when an LCSD lady waggles her finger at me, but just this once, I could see through the red mist.  Because I was looking at these.

    Images straight-up directly nicked from the exhibition website.
Who’s making a finger gesture at who now, motherfuckers!

This was the most poignant one – the unfinished “Constellation” egg, with the signs of the zodiac engraved on.  The stars were to be marked with diamonds, and there are empty holes cut for the purpose.  The focus of the egg is Leo, because Alexei Nikolaevich, the last Tsarevich, was a Leo.

I cried when I saw the eggs and I cried all the way home in the car.  This was a very special moment for me.  Thank you, Vladimir.  You are wonderful president.

 

Teams Book

Football, the greatest game in the world, is back.  If you’re a bred Melburnian, you’re pretty happy about this.  Even if you’re fighting with sticks in the creek of a fishing village in Asia, you’re still rolling in your $2 handknitted kit from Lorne Ladies Auxiliary Op Shop, and you’re feeling awesome.

Zadie so far only likes one game, the grand final, and only the bit where they release all the streamers at the end.  Rufus likes all the games, which works out well because we do too.  What doesn’t work out quite so well is him having OCD and also being 6.  It means he spends literally the whole game asking who every player is, where they were recruited from, what their birthday is, how tall they were when they were 6, their head circumference, how many goals they kicked in the same game in the previous year, etc.

Do you have a kid like this too?  You have to make them a teams book.  That’s a book with all the teams, innit – each list, with player numbers, and then the fixture so they can highlight who won for future reference.

2012′s amateurish version, mainly copy-and-pasted from various newspapers.

2013′s more deluxe edition, with COLOUR LASER-JET PRINTING (up to 14 teams, then the ink ran out; not shown), properly formatted columns, and even a map of the field positions.

Incidentally it seems in 2013 I finally learned to make a photo grid.
Can you even imagine what I can do with the Teams Book 2014?

To make:
1. Create the doc.
2. Print out the pages.
3. Get a folder with plastic sleeves.
4. Put that shit in there.
5. Hand to your kid.
6. Never answer an irritating question all year as you watch every game (of the Blues’ march to premiership glory) in peace, free to analyse the play without having to remember who is number 18 for the Dockers or who is Richmond’s assistant frucking coach.  I’m pretty sure even the Richmond rucks struggle to muster up much interest in that.

If you want me to send you the file for this year, let me know.  Then you only have to print it, chuck it at your kid, flick on the teev, and DA DA-DA DA-DA!

Carma

Living in the Orient, one becomes keenly attuned to mystical Eastern practices.  For example, not only do I not bat an eye when I see individually plastic-wrapped toilet-paper rolls, I baulk when they don’t have “made from 100% virgin pulp” on the side.  My handbag is full of tiny packets of tissues – free gifts when I buy the newspaper.  I wear trackpants and thongs in public all the time.

Oh wait there’s nothing wushu there, that’s just me being an expat prick.

The point is, some things about living here, I don’t understand at all.  But some things I do, and one of them is that if it’s a parable, then it’s true.  This whole joint is constructed on a delicate veneer of thousands of fables and sayings, just waiting for a future generation to stamp on it with their collective inquiring foot, creating the fissure that will put an end to making important decisions based on what stick fell out of the lucky box.  The downside is our arses will have to get used to being wiped with pulp that’s been around the treatment plant once or twice.

The price of progress.

Once, at work, I invented a Chinese parable by accident.  A lawyer referred to “that famous Chinese saying about the roofless chicken”.  Turns out it was actually “ruthless“.  Think about it though: if you have a split second to write the thing that will make you look least like a dickhead, logic tells you to write “roofless”, right?  As in, a chicken without a roof on its cage so it can fly the coop or whatev?  A ruthless chicken doesn’t even make sense.  I’ve never even seen an annoyed chicken, let alone one with the necessary emotional complexity to take that further into ruthlessness.

Singularly important to the Chinese person is their carparking spot.  In our village, there’s a guy who has not one but two cars he is very proud of (their being an early 1990s Mercedes and a crap white Honda notwithstanding).  At some point he decided he wanted our carpark, and just started parking there.  We had a number of stand-up fights in both Cantonese and English, and an embarrassing confrontation where he chose to park me in in “his” carpark, rather than using one of his own spots, and then sat in his car for hours yelling out the window, “I’ve lived here for 25 years!  I’m a village elder!”  Mate.  I don’t care if you’re a ruthless chicken.  Have you seen how shit my car is?  I’ll happily back into yours in the morning to get out.

Eventually he did appropriate our spot and I guess he was pretty pleased with the eight steps he saved himself every day.  Until, one morning last week, his car was discovered like this:

Someone (NOT US!) had reversed right into his car.

What can you say?

Man who steals neighbour’s carpark will eventually get his ride smashed up?

Or, as we say where I’m from…

Sucked in.

Tombowling

Oh good, you’re just in time for some mummyblogging.  Gather round, mummies, and put on your fucken smocks or whatever is called for.

*except using Comic Sans MS as a legit font,
which is obviously an idea of timeless genius.

Craftblogging in particular has taken off a bit in the past few years (doubtless the catalyst being my feted mural made out of bits of old kids’ paintings I wanted to chuck out, or maybe the melted crayons inspired by the Virgin Mary herself).  Look out because I’m going to take things in a new direction – whereby I don’t actually do the craft, I just have the awesome idea, and then hopefully someone else does it up right and points it out in a comment, and this post is forever linked to great examples of a craft I never actually did.  I’ve been holding onto this logic for about eight years until I thought the internet could handle this sort of reverse psychology without breaking.  PCCW breaks our internet enough without any help from my advanced metaphysical binar-ology.

There’s a park near us called the Sai Kung Nullah.  (According to Wikipedia, “A nullah is a concrete-lined canal or an re-inforced creek bed used to contain run-off. Nullah entered the English language from Hindi. The word nullah is used almost exclusively in Hong Kong.”  I wasted hundreds of dollars trying to get my Cantonese teacher to explain to me what nullah means in Chinese.  You know, how all the words have a meaning, like the word for chewing gum means “fragrant mouth plastic”?  When really I could have given HK$10 to the guy at the chapatti stand and got the answer AND dinner.)  The council recently did up the Sai Kung Nullah.  New features include grass, a little playground, and this big model ship.

Because I’m doing that big case involving ships at the moment, I can tell you with authority that this photo is taken athwartship across the midships from the starboard hull.  And if you want to know anything else about ships, feel free to ask.  At this point I know enough about naval specifications to make it a weekly column, though I’d have to make another header with pictures of me measuring aluminium thickness with calipers, performing crude fully-loaded inclination experiments on paper boats in our village creek, and wearing goggles and shit.  *Files away for a rainy day*

The kids and I were recently loitering around the Nullah, trying to avoid the finger-wagglers who pervade this whole country making sure you don’t do anything wrong like touch grass with any part of your body.  My eyes strayed to the plants lining the sides of the ship:

Not the plants so much as the round rocks they were all nestled in.

The next time the nearest finger-waggler was occupied with another recidivist grass trampler, I picked up a handful to inspect.  They were really light and papery, and I was sure they were fake.  Or else the work of a fibre-ridden marsupial with a particularly round arsehole.  But actually it’s called scoria, a volcanic rock composed of glassy fragments.  I found this out after the risky poo photo above which was brave.  A lot of bloggers call themselves professional writers; I certainly don’t, but I AM prepared to go all the way when it comes to grabbing handfuls of putative shitballs for you guys.

I then realised that we could use the scoria balls to play marbles, classic children’s game since the time of flatcaps and pushing a wheel down the street with a stick!  I’ve often wanted to get marbles for the kids but a few things have stopped me.  Here are those reasons, and then the reason scoria balls don’t have the same pitfalls.

1.  They’re dangerous and kids can choke on them.  Looks like they’re too big to block a kid’s windpipe.  Look at me doing real mummyblogging!
2.  If anyone’s gonna do a pratfall on an errant marble, it’s me.  These things would shatter underfoot before my legs shot out in front of me.
3.  They’re in that category of kids’ toys that we all hate – ones that contain multiple pieces and even if you only have a pack of 10, one of them will turn up under the couch or in the fridge or in the washing basket every day for the next six years.  These things are free from the park.  When you’ve finished playing, chuck them straight in the bin.  Just get more next time you’re passing a facility decorated with standard municipal flowerpots.
4.  I don’t even remember how to play marbles.  Hmm.  Yeah this is pretty much still relevant to scoria balls.

No problem, though!  Like pioneers we racked up a game on this handy pre-made square thing in the floor of the “ship” (reasonably confident it’s the limber hole for the bilge pump).

I quickly made up some rules that sounded feasible (I don’t think I actually ever played marbles – I was probably too busy playing elastics or making up dance routines to Girlfriend.)  They involved flicking your marble into the rink, with the aim of either having the most marbles in at the end of the game, OR flicking out your opponents’ marbles.  These seem kind of counter endeavours but that in itself wasn’t our biggest problem – we had three players with five scoria balls each, and by the end we had no idea whose were whose.  I hastily called a three-way tie, and quits to the session.  The finger-wagglers were approaching, and we had some council property to rack.

The next step is going to be to paint the scoria balls.  This is not a step I’m going to actually do, obviously – paint is so messy and the whole process is just a pain in the arse.  Can someone tell me if they do it and it works out?  Also if you know the actual rules of marbles?

FREE HOLIDAY. FOR YOU. (sponsored post)

So you know that thing I espouse about not doing sponsored posts?  Turns out it only applies to insulting/boring stuff like cans of tuna and expat banking services.  I mean if you guys want me to give away a lunch pack of sandwich tuna in future, let me know and I’ll try.  But I’m pretty sure you’ll be more interested in the inaugural giveaway I’m doing in this post.  This is something I would genuinely love to win.  I’ve always said if and when that ever happened, I’d write about it – it has, and so I am.

The thing I’m happy to be writing about here is the Hilton HHonors program.  Hilton HHonors is a loyalty program where members accumulate points that are actually useful.  Unlike other loyalty programs, with Hilton HHonors there are no black-out periods and the points are redeemable on the range of room types in all Hilton properties*.  They’re currently running their Any Weekend, Anywhere Sale, which is all about finding a reason to get way for a weekend break.  If you book a trip through the Any Weekend, Anywhere Sale before 14 February 2013, you’ll receive up to 40% off the usual room costs.  Check out the link for more details and to book your Any Weekend, Anywhere.

For one person, though, you don’t need to do that – because at the end of this post, I’ve got 100,000 Hilton HHonors points** to give away.  Hilton HHonors offered Joel and I the same amount of points so we could take a weekend getaway and report back on.  Um YES PLEASE.  We stayed for two nights in the 5-star Conrad Hilton here in Hong Kong.  It’s situated right in the middle of Central, above Hong Kong Park, the Pacific Place mall (and, yes, my work, but the weekend was as far removed from work as you could imagine, so even when I cracked the curtain in the morning and found myself looking directly into the High Court, pleadings and statements of claim didn’t even briefly cross my mind).

It’s a beautiful hotel.

We enjoyed all the regular hotel facilities like the pool, fitness centre, and buffet breakfast.  When I say we “enjoyed” them, we didn’t actually swim – do you know how cold it is here right now?  I did read for a while on one of the deck chairs, silently cheering on the brave soul doing a few laps in the frosty morning air.  And okay, we didn’t use the fitness centre, because do you know how lazy we are?  But we visited it for research purposes, and I can report it’s large, well-equipped, open 24 hours, and it looks like if you go there, you’ll be super fit and toned.  We thoroughly evaluated just about every element of the breakfast buffet, though, and it was superb.  We were also very impressed with the petits-fours in the executive lounge.  Hilton bakers know how to do a tiny cake up right!

All the little things you’d expect from a top-of-the-range hotel were present, like complimentary newspapers, a turn-down tray of fruit and homemade chocolates, fragrant toiletries, and a big bathroom.  I stay in a lot of hotels for work and this was definitely one of the bigger ones I’ve seen.  The nicest personalised touch was the little Conrad teddy bear left on our bed.  I went down to the concierge and indicated I had an awkward request to make of them.  Full kudos to the staff for understanding when I said, in classic total embarrassment styles, “So I know I’m 32 and I swear it’s not for me, IT’S FOR MY KIDS, but can I get another *cough*teddy*cough*bear?” – and immediately handing over another teddy.  We called them Connie and Rad.  (The bears, not the staff.  Though they were clearly rad, and the possibility that one of them may even have been called Connie can’t be ruled out.)

So, what did we actually do on our weekend as tourists in our own town?  We ate, a lot.  Eating is more than just the provision of sustenance to Hongkongers, it’s a passion, and one of the most typical ways to indulge it is with dim sum.  We had a family lunch at Three Virtues Vegetarian Restaurant in Nathan Road, Jordan.  The lunch was great (for us, though not for the world’s soy supplies).  Afterwards we headed to Mong Kok, a few train stops away, which has not only one of the densest population per square metre in the entire world, but also the markets – Ladies, Flower, Fish, Bird, probably others.  Lots of places where things cost $2, basically.  Intermingled amongst all these markets are Hong Kong’s ubiquitous dai pai dongs and street food stands.  We didn’t sample any of their “delights” this weekend – although one time, I did eat a chicken foot by accident and it was pretty much exactly what you’d imagine it would be like.

After a few hours pounding the Mong Kok pavement (which included dodging, weaving, ducking, avoiding old ladies pulling rubbish carts, trying not to get run over, haggling, and hallucinatory levels of sensory overload) we were absolutely ready for afternoon tea back at the hotel.  Despite my high praise for the Hilton pastry chefs, we limited ourselves to six or seven cakes (each) because our next destination was our topline event – dinner at Kea’s Kitchen.

Kea’s is a private kitchen on board a gorgeous yacht berthed in Aberdeen.  An old man took us from the pier to Kea’s doorstep in a rickety sampan, past the garish Jumbo floating restaurant (which made for a very Hong Kong backdrop to our dinner).  Kea greeted us at the door with a beautiful open smile and character.  She showed us to the open top deck for drinks and homemade taro chips while she prepared the night’s menu for the two parties on board.  Her first menu is traditional Thai food and the second is fusion cuisine.  That’s the one we chose, and while we were struggling by the end of the six courses, the food was truly delicious.  Every course was fresh and unique, the atmosphere was perfect, and it was a pleasure to be hosted by someone who is obviously living their dream.  You guys know I’m all for this, and that we moved overseas in the first place to live our own dreams.  Watching Kea work in the kitchen and talking to her about her food and her life was just a privilege.  She has a combination of such skill, innovation and passion that it would be impossible not to leave her kitchen without feeling uplifted (not to mention completely satiated).  Bonus points for her youngest child, who is frankly the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen who isn’t my own!

Far from being just the highlight of the weekend, our night at Kea’s Kitchen was one of the high points of our time in Hong Kong so far.  I’ll be writing about this place again in a future post, and we’ll definitely be going back soon.  In the meantime, Hongkongers, if you have an occasion to celebrate and are looking for somewhere special, you have to go to Kea’s – one very special hidden gem.

 

One thing I wish we could have done if we’d had time was Disneyland.  We were reluctant to go there when we first moved to Hong Kong, but once we finally relented, we realised it actually is the happiest place on earth and now we just go all the time and have memberships and wear caps with Mickey on etc.  I’m as surprised as you are.  We didn’t have time to go this weekend, but I’ve written about one of our previous experiences there.  Particularly for Aussies who have always wanted to go to Disneyland, the Hong Kong one is a great option at about half the flying time compared to the US.

It was a wonderful thing, to be a tourist in our own city, but I should point out that if you happened to choose a getaway in Hong Kong, there’s also a whole other side of life here off the beaten track.  Where we live, it’s village life, white-sand beaches, hiking, the floral abundance of the tropical jungle, the animal kingdom, and dogs wearing jumpers.  It’s a completely different life.  We chose to do “city” things this weekend because it’s not what we usually do.  There is more to Hong Kong that meets the eye.  Just like there’s more to this house than meets the eye – including the 15-foot python that was pulled out of it recently.  That’s the house next door to ours, by the way.  What I’m saying is, don’t stay in our spare room.  Stay at the Hilton.  Pretty sure they don’t have snakes there.  It’s probably a condition of obtaining a hospitality licence of something.

Of course, while I would love to show you around Hong Kong, you don’t have to come here for your Any Weekend, Anywhere – apparently there are nearly 4,000 Hilton properties in 90 countries, and you are free to choose any one of them.

So, here we go then.  How do you win your own snake-free, divine-cake-filled, spontaneous getaway?  All you need to do is answer five questions about previous Jadeluxe posts.  I really want the winner to be a regular reader, because you guys are so awesome, rather than a random ring-in.   This also (I think) avoids any suggestion of rigging towards family or friends because to be honest they’re the least likely people to read my posts – which contain all the answers to the questions.  The first correct answer received*** in the comments section will win the 100,000 Hilton HHonors points.  To continue down this unimpeachably fair road, I’m not putting the questions in this post, but in separate post on Thursday, 24 January at 7 pm Hong Kong time (that’s 10 pm Melbourne time, and I’ve done a conversion for you rest-of-the-world peeps here).

That leaves you more than 24 hours to cram on my previous posts.  Sorry about that.  I will never be sorry, though, for hoping you’re all imagining the ticking that goes with this Jack Bauer “24” play-off:

FINE PRINT:
*Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, DoubleTree by Hilton, Embassy Suites Hotels, Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Hotels, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Home2 Suites by Hilton and Hilton Grand Vacations.
**One standard night in a Hilton property “costs” the following points:
Hotel Category 1 – 7,500; Hotel Category 2 – 12,500; Hotel Category 3 – 25,000; Hotel Category 4 – 30,000; Hotel Category 5 – 35,000; Hotel Category 6 – 40,000; Hotel Category 7 – 50,000.
To learn more about Hilton HHonors, how to earn and redeem points and what you can spend your 100,000 points on (if you’re the winner!), visit HiltonHHonors.
***May not necessarily be in the order that comments show up on the site, due to moderation requirements –if you’re a first-time commenter, your comment has to be moderated by me first, which delays display.  For the purposes of this contest though, the winner will be the first comment received on my dashboard, regardless of moderated status.  I will screenshot this and post it when I announce the winner.

EDIT:  THE WINNER WAS RHI!  YAY RHI!

Dirty birds

You know that feeling when it’s the first blog post of the year and you really want to do it up right with a sparkling fuse of words to blaze off a golden bomb of posts all year long, but then UNFORTUNATELY you’re compelled to talk about bird porn?

Yeah that.

Look at this family boardgame we bought recently.

Innocent, surely!  It’s bingo, beloved of pensioners all over the world, and also it’s about BIRDS, those loveable feathered ornaments of nature.  They soar majestically overhead, they twitter angelically from the treetops, they hop whimsically under shrubs, they are so delightful and soft we ultimately make pillows out of them*.  (*That list excludes vultures, turkeys, condors and other ugly ones, obviously, but when I picked this game up off the shelf I thought from the artwork that it only included attractive, noble varieties of the species.)

Spreading the board before us on the table before the virgin game, we delighted in the bright portraits of the friendly winged creatures.

But the problem is, half the fuckers have the randiest names you’ve ever heard of!  Forget 50 Shades of Grey, this thing is 64 Shades of the Lascivious Ornithography.  First card up was everyone’s favourite:

Fine, who doesn’t have a giggle at a Blue Tit?  Joel and I exchanged knowing chuckles as I passed the bag of chips down the table to our 6-year-old son.  With shining eyes he picked out the next one, yelling out “Andean cock-of-the-rock!  I think I’ve seen one of them before!”

Well, two rudely named birds in a row; surely we’d used up our quota.  Apparently not.  Here is a further selection from the filthy diversion:

 

After a while even the more chaste varieties seemed to take on base implications:

                                       

 A final insult to unsullied family entertainment was this lovely fellow, the Hoopoe, found in Africa.

He’s named correctly on his chip but on every other card in the box, they’ve given him a typo – HOOPOO.  Of course they have, OF COURSE!

When the game was done and the kids were safely tucked up in their beds, away from the evils of nature’s kingdom, I had a look around the net to see what’s the deal with avian nomenclature.  It turns out our game has only a small sample of the (appalling!) wider pool, which includes Red-shafted Flicker, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Clark’s Nutcracker, Wandering Tattler, Rough-faced Shag, Dickcissel, Erect-crested Penguin, Horned Puffin, Boom Chachalaca, Creamy-rumped Miner, Tinkling Cisticola, Wren Tit, Tit Mouse, Bush Tit, Bearded Tit, Penduline Tit, and Great Tit.

How did this happen?  To a feather, the birds listed there are adorable soft little puffs of rainbow down.  What sort of Unmitigated Knob-end was standing there going, “Ah, look at these magnificent, pre-eminent examples of creation.  I know, let’s name them all after titties!”?

What sort of despicable perverts have bird-watching as a hobby?  Sitting in a deserted hut with a pair of binoculars going “Ooh aah, a Splendid Fairywren” sounds like a peaceful Attenboroughean pastime but the truth is, it’s all about legs 11. You creepy, creepy freaks.

 

Year in career: 2012

It’s the last day of the work year, and for someone who…

sorry, WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

..for someone who isn’t allowed to take photos in many of my workplaces, I’ve done okay in accumulating enough to compile this photographic review of 2012 in the life of an international court reporter, AND crash our downloads while I upload them.

WHOOOO!!!!!!!!

Messiest courtroom of the year: UNICEF arbitration.  Have a look at this joint.  I know they have the weight of a coalition of nations’ hopes for peace and advancement on their collective shoulders, but come on.  Tidy desk, tidy world!

Stamps in the passport:
Philippines.  Jeepney!

Korea.  Liveblogging all of the pickles.  And this was actually in Gangnam!

Japan.  Good morning, Osaka!

Also, eating all of the pickles.

Singapore.  Paintswatch building* (*Sir Paintswatch, an early administrator who came over on the ship with Governor Raffles).

Best things that happened when I got a LightSpeed:
Cross-legged steno thugging!

Handbag steno thugging!

The thing is flat and looks good!

But unfortunately, the worst thing – it had too many untrustworthy technical problems, and now the closest I come to using it at work is appropriating its tripod for a small handy desk.  Therefore, most expensive (US$3,200) StableTable in the world in 2012:

But shit it’s handy.

Best Post-it seen in the public gallery:

Biggest regret: not buying a can of “THE PUNGENCY” because I didn’t know how to work yens.

Emotion experienced daily in peak hour at North Point MTR station: a unique mixture of claustrophobic panic and expat rage.

Court building failsigns:

(Danger – Emergency Door.  Entrance With Promise.)

(ENERGY SAVING: Always keep window closed.)
(The window is open.  That’s both funny AND energy wasting).

(Strictly Prohibited – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc.)

Most star- and nerve-studded event: live-captioning the annual Asian Film Awards to the big screens.

Pairs of glasses purchased: 2, in the styles of…
(a) Buddy Holly

and (b) Sarah Palin.

The thing is, I CAN almost see Russia from here.

Great shots taken from the International Arbitration Centre:

The High Court.  It’s the lack of natural light that’s really motivating.  Or is it the all-encompassing pine.  Like being smothered by a pillow made out of a 1980s holiday cabin.

Kids raised all the while: 6

(JOKES)

Number of lunchbreaks: about eight, including this one in Statue Square.

Most to-the-point sign seen in outside-court protests (see point C – right on!):

Chair from hell:

“Sat” in this thing for a four-week arbitration mid-year.  It had a max loading of about 40kg so I kind of hovered above it, squat-toilet styles, for the entire case.  Super unrecommended by occupational therapists.

Amazing shots taken from depositions:

Percentage of afternoons I’ve had to resort to Diet Coke: at least 90.

Best school holiday activity:

(also, biggest inkjet fail).

There are two possibilities here.  Either he will become the youngest ever steno, and I will be feted as a revolutionary educationalist; or he will become completely confused about phonics, forget how to read and write, and my husband will never talk to me again. Swings and roundabouts. Or should I say SWEUPBG/Z/SKP/ROUPBD/U/PWOUTS.

The little one wasn’t interested at all.  In fact she was scared.  Is it because this machine is four times as old as her?

Or maybe she’s just got her heart set on becoming the cutest arbitrator in the world.

Amount of mornings at Starbucks or Pacific Coffee: all.

What it’s all about.  Two weeks of flat-out research and stroking equals this rather disappointing pair of binders.

Best/handsomest (and free!) tech guy.  Also good for nightly debriefing and cooking of wheat pasta and growing basil to put on the pasta.  Also, my love.

Trying, and failing, to incorporate more briefs.

Doesn’t really matter though.  Accuracy AND a ridiculously high (“inefficient”) stroke count – the best of 50% of the worlds!

Most civilised being waiting for the minibus to work: this cow (far left).

Most pronounced facility disappointment: witness (“lunch”) room in the District Court.

Best facility surprise!  Lunch room at an ongoing inquiry.  This thing is fully occupied every day by Kim, me and our seven imaginary friends.

Just outside the door is a couch we’re probably going to push in early in the new year.  Out of shot we also have some shelves.  Every day we’re going to bring in one thing, like a kettle, a microwave, a bar fridge, sets of bedding, a TV.  The Department of Justice is gonna open the door at the end of the hearing and be like “Er why is this break-out room a fully self-contained apartment?”  This is what happens when you don’t usually have an office or anywhere to eat your lunch.  You get a taste of what it would be like, and you’re browsing the IKEA catalogue for reasonably priced floor lamps.

Best law firm advertising.

Best time of the travelling reporter’s day: eating room service in the bath while reading a book, obviously.  Second-best: Skyping with the two loveliest bozos in the world.

My last job of the year has turned out to be the biggest:  Commission of Inquiry into the Collision of Vessels near Lamma Island on 1 October 2012.  As well as being the most emotionally fraught, it also involves the largest number of witnesses, a 1,200-word job dictionary after just seven days of hearings, getting relentlessly photog-ed every morning by the newspapers, and the steepest incline to get to a workplace.

Which is basically the opposite of what you want when you’re about to get papped by the entire Chinese media.

This is the job that makes you ring up and check on your husband and kids three times a day, and keep tissues under your keyboard.  I feel nothing but honoured to be covering this inquiry.  Our transcripts are up every night at 7pm on the Commission’s website for interested Hongkongers.  I’ll be there until the end of March and I fully expect my PB to drastically improve by at least 5%.  I’m fit like that.  (Pretty much exactly like that.)

2013, what you got?