Then I think of elastic-waisted tights, nipple shields, years of sleepless nights, having to drag half the house along on every outing, the spirit-crushing repetitive boredom of ABC2, the hours spent wasted trying to fold the fucking giant pram so it fits in the car – and then waiting on the side of the road with a crying baby because you can’t ever work out how to do it.

Babies are adorable.  I like them as much as the next person, with their squishy little bums, lack of kneecaps, and fat peachy cheeks.  But the memories of epic inconvenience rush in.

Tonight, I’m putting up two old flashback posts that set back the cause of King family reproduction even more than the polka-dotted pink pyjamas/grey windcheater combination I’m wearing while posting them.

*****

39 weeks, with Rufus

See here Jadeluxe pregnantus in the final weeks of gestation, pictured in rarely seen upright position.  Note that at this stage, members of the genus closely resemble a sideways mountain with limbs and a head.  See also the early development of unsightly stretch marks near the left hip, which cause much discomfort and aggravation for the subject.  Her outer layers of protective clothing barely cover her swollen form and would provide little protection against outdoor elements.  Which is why she always stays inside.

A Jadeluxe pregnantus in this condition would likely have stopped work some weeks ago and have ceased making any valuable contribution to society.  She now spends her days in a state of almost total hibernation, resting horizontally and ignoring tasks members of the species are usually required to complete.  She is thus an easy and rewarding subject to observe, with the outer boundaries of her habitat during this time consisting of the couch, the fridge, the bed and the toilet.  She traverses the small area within these bounds in a slow and cumbersome gait more commonly seen in juvenile members of the mallard duck family.

Patient fanciers will note that Jadeluxe pregnantus generally rises sometime between the hours of 11am and 1pm and moves from her bed to the couch, where she watches the following schedule of programming:  Blue Heelers, Rafferty’s Rules, the 4.30 News, Antiques Roadshow, Deal or No Deal, the 6pm News, Neighbours, Home and Away, and Australian Idol if it’s Monday night.

Astute observers will know that Rafferty’s Rules is actually a shit show and she usually only watches it until she hears someone say “Oh, Fulvio!” and views what the public prosecutor is wearing to court that day.  She then turns off the television and dozes until 4.30.

Particularly rewarding for the observer are the eating rituals of this subject.  Jadeluxe pregnantus has a well-developed rooting instinct and the bulk of her time (when not on the couch) is spent foraging in the kitchen for sustenance.  She has a vast capacity for food and will eat half her body weight most days.  Her diet follows no established pattern and seems constrained only by availability (i.e. how much time her already over-burdened mate has had to forage for her during the day).  A day’s menu may include (but be not limited to) Special K with strawberries, Rice Bubbles with Milo, Corn Flakes with tinned fruit, Vita Brits with honey, almonds and grated apple, toast with Vegemite/peanut butter/jam, muesli bars, tinned spaghetti, soup, salad, chickpeas, muesli and yogurt, ice, tuna, pasta, instant noodles, staggering quantities of cheese, frozen peas, uncooked broccoli, frozen meals, biscuits of any kind, juice boxes, cordial, Coke, iced tea, and what appears to be the staple foods – pears, and Saladas with cheese and Vegemite.

The only other activity the subject engages in during the day is disjointed conversation with the two fine examples of feline domesticus who roam in the same territory.  Jadeluxe pregnantus allows their presence and they allow hers, though there is some agitation on the part of the smaller inhabitants if their efforts to converse don’t result in a share of the food supply.  They don’t appear to be disabled or hindered in their hunting ability in any way, so the resultant unnecessary constant feeding of them is likely a vivid example of the subject’s developing maternal instinct at this time.  Or her status as a complete pushover.

Sometime around 8pm she senses instinctively that her mate’s return from a long day at work is imminent (and also, all the good stuff on the teev finishes), so she at last grooms and dresses.  This is such a tiring ritual it is invalidated immediately by her subsequent falling straight to sleep on the bed.

She rouses sometime around 10.30pm and spends the next two hours frequenting the toilet.  She may leave her bed and make this journey up to 30 times.  This appears to be a most frustrating time.  The subject can be heard making expressions of discomfort each time she gets up from or returns to the horizontal sleeping position – a particularly graceless activity – and even crying from the fatigue brought on by her condition.  During this time she may be observed slumping helplessly against the wall outside the toilet door; this seems to be an energy-conserving measure.  Throughout this extended bathroom ritual, her mate suffers from lack of sleep, sleep he desperately needs in order to be able to manage a full day of work and complete all the tasks required to keep the household functioning.  He also suffers from lack of energy during the day, because he has expended so many kilojoules throughout the night fighting the gravitational forces pulling him into the cavity made in the mattress by his mate’s sudden excessive weight.

This is the price of reproduction in the animal kingdom.

And so another weary day ends.  Jadeluxe pregnantus will sleep now until the morning (or perhaps the early afternoon) when her stomach wakes her and the cycle begins again.

*****

39 weeks, with Zadie

(Actually I don’t have a photo of myself at 39 weeks with Zadie.  This is me at 20 weeks.  And now you know why I don’t have one at 39 weeks.)

Maternity leave continues to be a ripper.  I “sleep in” every day until 10.30am, though each morning is punctuated by 85 stealth toilet breaks between the hours of 5am and 10am.  The contemplative stress of weighing up the risk of waking Rufus versus my ability to fall back asleep with a full bladder, further significantly complicated by Joel’s warm arm around me, sends wee production into overdrive and removes the choice anyway.  And creates an urgency that makes it impossible to sneak past Rufus’s room to the bathroom in any case.  Had I just gone when the notion first struck me, I would have had time to put on soft cotton socks and tiptoe delicately past his door, disturbing nothing in my silent and dignified progress.  But if I wait until it’s almost too late – and I always do – each trip becomes instead an awkward nude gallop as I hurdle gracelessly over the floorboards that squeak the loudest, thundering the open plains of the hallway like some new distended creature from a re-issue of Where The Wild Things Are.

(All the floorboards now squeak, of course, when I cross them, even the structurally sound ones.  So the hurdling is merely a comedic device for any cat who may be watching; or else a desperate, sad nod to my daily diminishing self-esteem as it flickers dimly towards extinction.)

I still check my work email repetitively.

In the mornings, Rufus and I enjoy leisurely visiting peeps, complete long-neglected household administrivia, or kick it with lots of books on the couch.  He naps each afternoon from 3.30pm to 6pm.  I spend the first 30 golden minutes reading in bed with some kind of snack.  This started as a delightful treat one day when I realised Joel was at work and wouldn’t find out – and then I realised he’s at work EVERY week day, and would NEVER know ANY day!  So I started to get a bit lax, and extravagant, progressing from neat and tidy little snacks like yogurt to reckless fripperies like handfuls of cheesy rice crackers with little easily toppled bowls of homemade dip.  Soon Joel was getting crumbs in his crack at night, and the plan was foiled.  I tried to blame Rufus, but Joel rightly realised an 8-month pregnant wife is far more likely to be binge-eating in bed than a 2-year-old of limited cunning, especially regards eating (disorders).  So now I’m more careful and I use a plate.  It’s the only time of the day I enjoy food, even though laying in bed with my oesophagus at a 10-degree angle, and my stomach compressed into the space of a large gumnut, makes it a downright dangerous experience.

I spend the rest of the day in a state of constant hunger and simultaneous dislike of food.  This definitely didn’t happen last time.  But this time around, I long for a pill to make me feel full.  I hate all food except (the idea of) sushi, the actual consumption of which is prevented me by the Coterie of Listeria Alarmism.  Nonetheless, I’ve packed on weight like never before, so I’m clearly eating enough of all the wrong things.

I can no longer swing the shower screen closed once I’m in there; and the bathroom door has swelled confusedly as global warming fucks with the seasons (or perhaps in sympathy with me), so it no longer closes properly.  I therefore ablute virtually in the open, exposed to laughter from any passing Rufus.  Is there no dignity?!  I thought wetting myself in labour last time was a low point, but having your son laugh uproariously at your nude form, innocent though he is, is well crushing.  “Mama’s BUM! hahaha” – and, inevitably, as he’s helping me dress (passing me the clothes I can no longer pick up off the floor), “Too TOIT!” (he is developing a fine ocker accent, but more of that in another post).

And to be fair to the little dude, if I got a glimpse of me showering, I’d laugh too.  If it didn’t cause unbearable heartburn.

I’m troubled nightly by tremendous Braxton-Hicks contractions.  The doctor told me to expect this, and that they would likely be caused by heftin my 20kg pre-existing child around.  They’re much worse than last time.  Then, I thought each trifling episode heralded true labour.  After 30 hours of birthing Rufus, I now realise how hilariously and embarrassingly I underestimated “true labour”. Braxton-Hicks was to true labour what going to Christmas Mass most years is to being a diligent Catholic: just a hopeful delusion.  So while I haven’t automatically thought each episode of Braxton-Hicks this time around is true labour, some have been so bad they’ve fooled me.  That has been most alarming, because I know what’s coming, and I’ve been found pathetically clinging to a doorframe so I can’t be prised off and taken to the hospital – I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS THERE!  I know labour is the harbinger of our new baby, etc, but I really just don’t think I can face it again.

Am obviously in full craze.  Hopefully this means the birth is imminent!  I’m tipping 12 December or 19 December – the first optimistically, the second because I keep having dreams featuring 19 and I want to attribute them to something.  Could just be the ultimate prediction for the amount of inches my arse is going to be by the end of this malarkey, multiplied by 312.

*****

My dearest friend is pregnant right now.  I wish her a restful and slender remaining 25 weeks, with a tidy 2-hour labour at the end. 

And I think, for now, I’ll be staying here in the blazing light of baby liberty.  It shines BRIGHT.

Also, someone in Australia send Saladas.  It’s been too long since I’ve squeezed 50 Vegemite worms through their little holes!  BUT NOT LONG ENOUGH SINCE I SQUEEZED TWO 10-POUND BABIES THROUGH…oh you know…

That’s ironic, because I come from Melbourne, which prides itself on (a) being the cultural capital of Australia and (b) purveying the finest coffee in the country (the world?) from abundant, comfortable and stylish cafes.  And let me tell you, even as a non-coffee drinker, I say to Sydney that THIS IS TRUTH.  Ooh aah, you’ve got a big-arse bridge.  But do you have a cafe on every corner?  (Probably.  I know they’re not as good as Melbourne’s though.)

To put it in perspective, Starbucks once tried to open two stores in Melbourne which were shut down within two weeks by skivvy-wearing purists.  There’s are numerous cafes sprinkled through Melbourne’s iconic laneways that don’t even have addresses (viz. this joint, but don’t bother clicking, it’s just a front page with a name and a link to their tumblr.  This particular operation only offers three choices:  black, white, or filter.)  Brunswick Street institution Mario’s only just started offering soy milk after 25 years.  This is a cafe that turned away Jerry Seinfeld (unsure if it was because of the jeans/runners, or a predilection for the non-dairy creamer).  Asked about finally offering soy, its proprietor said “some traditionalists were shattered the cafe had joined the modern era”.  You can see now why Starbucks had no place in Melbourne*.

*I believe they’re since opened a few stores there.  Puritan fail.

When we arrived here in Hong Kong, Zadie was an 11-month-old babe in arms, still breastfeeding, and had never slept through the night.  I started work immediately (a minor technical requirement for my work visa).  The first few months are a fog of days of engorged confusion, and nights adjusting to the humidity and tiny living space, while Zadie continued to not sleep.

I thought I’d been tired in Australia!

So, I turned to coffee.  Mainly because if you drink it with skim milk, although you’ll get laughed out of Mario’s, it has less calories than Coke.  It wasn’t a difficult decision because there are over 100 Starbucks stores in Hong Kong.  To put it in perspective, only 7 million people live here.  There’s only 584,000 cars on the road.  That’s some good market saturation.

The coffee isn’t good at Starbucks.  Take it from me, someone who only started drinking coffee two years ago – I clearly know what I’m talking about.  It’s kind of bitter.  Before you say I don’t in fact know what I’m talking about and all coffee is bitter, I fall in with the general consensus that Pacific Coffee, the other big chain here, is a far superior cup.  It’s just that there’s only about three Pacific Coffees in every block, and when you’re used to the obese proliferation of the big chains like Watsons and 7/11, that’s just not convenient enough.

So.  Starbucks isn’t that nice, but I and I venture to say a huge proportion of my Western cohorts visit one every single day.

MaryJane, our helper, asked me why Westerners love Starbucks so much (one day after one of my rants about how Starbucks is so expensive and doesn’t even taste good, right before going in there for a delicious creamy cheap cappuccino).  Apart from the convenience, there’s one simple reason: ARMCHAIRS.  Hongkongers don’t do cafes.  They don’t know how to make sandwiches for one, and they don’t like to belabour the dining experience in general.  What “cafes” they do open tend to be crammed with tiny, flimsy outdoor settings, and menu-d with things like spaghetti with pork chop, and yuanyang (a unique mixture of coffee and HK-style milk tea to be avoided in all circumstances, regardless of parched-ness).

That’s why we like Starbucks.  Big armchairs, coffee and tea in separate cups, and food items served in discrete and logical combinations.  We like it enough to pay HK$32 for a crap drink that buys us 30 minutes in a big chair with the South China Morning Post.

The Sai Kung Starbucks is a huge affair located right in the middle of town pretty much between a 7/11 and a Maccas (it’s a really authentically local part of town…)

Because it’s Sai Kung, half the customers are dogs.  You can see in this photo, taken yesterday, the outside seating section contains no less than five dogs for the eight human patrons.  The retriever on the left is sitting on a quilted rug.  The group in the middle are feeding  muffins to a kelpie and a lab.  And that sad lady on the right is nursing some sort of spoodle like a baby, while his co-spoodle sits sadly neglected on an opposite chair.  On the other chair is the rip-off Gucci “dog carrier” that she’ll use to transport the ridiculous beasts back to their balcony after they’ve enjoyed their day out.  Because they wouldn’t want to get their shoes dirty.

Dogs aren’t allowed inside (they are in most restaurants in Hong Kong, but Starbucks keeps it real civilised).  Instead you’ll find the place filled with nervous expat grandparents trying to avoid any local experience, 714 students on laptops, and, on Sunday mornings, the entire population of Western kids under 5 running amok as their parents pretend they’re having a relaxing weekend.  Here are my own two engaging in some no-holds-barred wrestling (in a BIG ARMCHAIR though!):

Doesn’t it sound amazing?  And yet, this is respite from the madding crowd.  An absolute necessity when the place containing those 7 million people is only 426 square miles “big”.

Next Sunday:  Mushroom Bakery or Galden Chariat Cake Shap…

Dude I didn’t even finish my arts degree and I just wrote that sentence.  And meant it.

Well anyway, even if that particular line of thought doesn’t pique your interest, might I suggest that knowing the study of monarchical history is my most passionate interest will?  No?  Well, fuckit, it’s my blog and if I don’t declare it here after all this time then I’m just not being honest.  In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know I have a treasured collection of biographies, 1950s reference books, souvenir coronation programs and other husband-perplexing reading material, and op-shop knick-knackery from royal visits.

I, my friends, am a dyed-in-the-wool royalist.

I like chronology, so when I first became interested in the English monarchy I spent time memorising the order of monarchs and then acquiring a very basic understanding of the early kingdoms and their rulers.  I delved into the Normans or at least into William the Rufus.  Please note it is a complete coincidence that our son is called Rufus William King, not an inappropriate and cruel manifestation of my widely ridiculed obsession with kings and queens (in fact he was named after Rufus T. Firefly from the Marx Brothers’ movie ‘Duck Soup’, if anyone.  “Hail Freedonia!  No-one’s allowed to smoke!  Or tell a dirty joke!  And whistling is forbidden!  We’re not allowed to tell a dirty joke!”) but we have since, to my surprise, met people who do comment on his overtly and inverted historical name.

In my quest for knowledge I then glossed conveniently onwards until the House of York, pausing at Edward IV because I’m pretty sure I’ve got a mad crush on him.  If you can have a crush on a dude who’s been dead for 529 years.  The feeling would not have been mutual, anyway.  I’ve seen portraits of his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and she has her hairline plucked halfway back her skull.  He liked the forehead.  Sadly I have a distinctly low hairline.  As you can see, at one point it nearly joins up with my sunglasses.

You win this round, Woodville.  Egghead.

The Tudors transfixed me for a long time (the House, not the TV series though all the episodes featuring Henry Cavill as the Duke of Suffolk naturally were quite bewitching).  Many a shelf is devoted to books of their letters, events, and notable personages.  My pet snake in Australia was called Dr David Starkey after the noted and currently faddish Tudor historian.

For some reason I am almost completely uninterested in the House of Stuart.  The Commonwealth during the interregnum likewise fills me with complete apathy.  And if I’m perfectly honest, so do the Hanoverians, up to Victoria.  So it seems I actually couldn’t give a penn’orth about any British monarch and I really spend my days reading cookbooks.

No, it’s not true.  My prime focus these past few years is with the post-Victorian era, the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas and Windsors – those fish-eyed, porphyritic Jutes!  Is that treason?

For many reasons, Victoria fascinates me and I adore her.  The word that pops into my head when I see this picture is “winsome”.  Or maybe buxom.  I can’t remember.

Though by her Diamond Jubilee, she was a hideous crone.  Everyone goes on about how fat she was.  She did have 9 kids and live in an era where 12-course banquets were considered an informal meal.  And she was about 5 foot tall.  When you think of it in those terms, forget the Hanoverian – she’s positively Bundchen-ian.

Her letters to her eldest daughter, the Kaiserin Friedrich, contain some of the most hilarious writing I’ve read.  Shit about childbirth that had me crying with laughter.  And babies looking like frogs.  Her admonitions of her daughter until said daughter was in her 60s are astounding.  Her references to her husband, maniacal and obsessive and so touching and…I understand.  Her full-on judgmentalism yet mad foreign knowledge, impressive.

The next queen (though a consort) is also a favourite of mine – Queen Alexandra. Of course there’s nothing overly redeeming about her, except that she gracefully bore the most caddish husband of recent centuries.  By all accounts (and actually there’s hardly an account of her to be had – in fact I’ve only got one biography) she was quite a dunderhead, but made up for it with her charm, common touch and stupendous beauty.  She still looked 30 in her 60s. i don’t think any woman in photographic history has ever aged as well, and that’s the truth.

Here she is on her 128th birthday.

Then there’s her daughter-in-law, the much disliked – by me – Queen Mary.  I scoff at her imperiousness.  She was after all the product of a morganatic marriage.  She was the one who told the Queen Mother she couldn’t call her second daughter Anne because there was no precedent.  So she called her Margaret. The only other recent royal Margaret I can think of is Margaret “Daisy” Connaught, which hardly makes it a strong historical royal name.  Mary appears even in her sympathetic biographies as a boring unfeeling dolt.  And no-one can deny her hats were all fucked. This is seriously the only decent one she ever wore.

The pompous dullard.

Here is a much more appealing Mary, almost completely unrelated to the British royal family and thus revealing this to be the post of a limp royal watcher rather than a serious monarchical scholar.  (On that note, here is my absolute daily must-read blog:  The Royal Order of Sartorial Splendor.) How I love his Mary and her wondrous restitution of this already magnificent parure.  Jewellery collection notwithstanding, we share an uncanny number of similarities which I’ve detailed before in one of my favourite posts ever.

I posted this today because it’s the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession, which is – frankly – a notable milestone in my sad life.  I wish I could be Thames-side on 3 June watching the flotilla.

In the event, I’ll probably just loiter around Sai Kung looking sadly at the old EIIR mailbox and lamenting the retreat of empire.

The Queen in her official Diamond Jubilee portrait, looking majestic.  Vivat regina, etc.

So that’s that.  No need to unfriend me, you colonial upstarts!  I’m still the same person I was before these startling revelations!

This shop wasn’t originally my plan for the inaugural Sai Kung Sunday post, but I had to go in there tonight and I was reminded of its outstanding yet unorthodox pharmacy techniques.  It is our local chemist, the Wing Ling Dispensary.

It’s a trove of medicines, both traditional and Chinese, first-aid supplies, baby products, hair and beauty lotions and potions, things for the toilet and the toilette.  The shop is about as big as the goal square in footy, but don’t let that fool you into thinking their stock range is limited.  Boxes are packed into the joint in that merchandising approach unique to Hong Kong; that is, shove everything in Tetris-style, regarding only optimal space:product density ratio, and aesthetics not at all.

The proprietors are, although they don’t know it, in a battle with the guy from the servo on Clearwater Bay Road as to who has the most mothertongue-like English.  I mean, these guys are fantastic.  You can go in there mumbling into your scarf, speaking entirely in idioms, or having lost your voice altogether, and they will understand you.

One time I had cause to be in there with a prescription for 100 highly potent steroid tablets (for legitimate medical purposes, not because I harbour a secret dream of entering the World Beard and Moustache Championships.)  Wing Ling had just taken a delivery of steroids and at that point, the shop being filled with idiomatic, speechless gweilos, along with the regular clutch of coughing locals, my friendly proprietor couldn’t see a window of time to count out the required dosage.  Knowing I was a regular customer, and having looked at my Hong Kong ID card, he offered me an enormous wholesale barrel of 500 pills, for a knock-down price of around $AU13.  I didn’t view this as irresponsible but as some think-outside-the-box good service, and there should be more of it.  Despite the devastating side-effects of having access to so many steroids.  Sure I can bench-press our car, but I look like this while doing so:

A recent selfie.

Tonight when I was at Wing Ling, the old guy getting served in front of me was smoking a cigar while he picked up his box of pills.  No-one said anything and why would they?

My company recently asked if I’d like to move to Singapore, since the balance of work is shifting in that direction.  I said no way.  There’s nothing crazy in Singapore.  They have nice colonial horticulture but you can’t even chew gum without getting thrown in the slammer, right?  I want to live in a country where unexpected craziness pops up every day, where old dudes can freely smoke in the chemist without fear of incarceration.  Now that’s a society.

Wing Ling:  Dispensary of Distinction.

Next Sunday:  Starbucks(??), or the place where you can buy roasted chicken testicles and beef lung for lunch…

Someone, who shall also obviously remain anonymous, sent me this commentary of the professor’s comments.  If you’re aware of who the author is, please don’t disclose their name in comments or on-links – but you have to agree, this was too good not to share.

***

Bear in mind that the utterer of the following statements is a PROFESSOR at [Unnamed] University in Beijing.

He opened in time-honoured academic style, succinctly summing up his central thesis:

“Now, they [Hong Kong people] are dogs.  They aren’t human.”

On the face of it this seemed a little harsh, but he quickly took the rough edge off by making the following well reasoned qualification:

“‘I know many Hongkongers are good people.  However many others are still dogs.”

Much more reasonable.  [Unnamed] University knows how to hire a professor.

Having demonstrated his ability to take the broad view and see both sides, he then began to marshal his evidence and expound his reasoning.  Just a quick warning, non-academics may struggle with some of the highly articulate use of a somewhat didactic style of discourse.

He begins with a rhetorical question:

“You see that guy in the video?  Does he look human?”

The uneducated person may think that as a rhetorical question this doesn’t work, because clearly the guy does look human.  He is bipedal, uses language, and is expressing common human feelings.  That is the beauty of this question.  The professor is subtly planting a deeper question in our shallow little minds, “What makes a person human?”  Actually the more you listen to the learned professor, the more this question jumps into your head.

Having established doubt about the humanity of one Hongkonger with his artful questioning, the professor now seeks to move from the particular to the general with seamless logic and powerful evidence.  Try to follow the subtlety of the following:

“I have been to Hong Kong a lot of times.  I have seen that most Hongkongers lack morals.  Most of them are thieves.”

Undoubtedly as a professor we know that this use of the word ‘most’ is quantified by empirical data because otherwise it would sound like any old half-educated bigot who says the first thing that pops into their head.  We know that can’t be true because, not only is he a professor, but he is a direct 73rd generation descendent of Confucius.  I did the maths and gave up after eight great-grandparents, a mere four generations.  I know that after 21 generations doubling gets you to over a million, so by my reckoning, at the time of Confucius there were at least 171 million billion people on earth and they were all ancestors of the professor.  Hang on, that means they must all be my ancestors too.  That can’t be right.  If we are all descendents of Confucius then the professor is not special on this account. Absurd.

Anyway, now that he is down to the clear link between Hongkongers and dogs, he drives the point home, with deft repetition:

“Hongkongers, most of them don’t have morals.”

Like dogs, but without the loyalty, courage, affection and tail wagging.  If you are like me, by now you can see no way of arguing with this line of thinking.  He is inside a logic matrix that we can only glimpse and shake our heads at.

Now he sees that he requires hard evidence, an irrefutable example of the morality-free Hongkonger’s heart, if it can be called a heart, although dogs have hearts.  Like a master conjurer, he delivers:

“Isn’t it wrong to just insult villagers?”

Here is a master at work.  Your mind reels trying to get to the bottom of this.  How does he know the Mainlanders on the MTR were villagers?  He doesn’t tell us and we must simply take the great man at his word and sigh in deference to a greater knowing.  It’s like a koan, he is using insult to bemoan insult.  On the face of it he seems to be completely lacking in self-awareness, he himself verging on what some hypersensitive Hongkongers may call insulting language himself.  That would make him wrong.  But would this be wrong if he said it in a forest and no one heard it?  Did I hear it?  Does it have any relevance?  Is it even true?  Of course it is wrong to insult a villager.  Unless that villager is from Hong Kong.  Obviously.

But like the most famous of his several billion ancestors, the great man is no mere pointer out of problems.  He offers solutions, actions to remedy the problem of the dogginess of Hongkongers:

“No beating means no good.  They cannot survive without beating.”

Classic Socrates.  “It is good to beat dogs.  Hong Kong people are dogs.  Therefore it is good to beat Hong Kong people.”

The only way that could be wrong is if the first two propositions were wrong and it was not good to beat dogs and/or Hong Kong people were not dogs.

He then finishes as succinctly as he began:

“One word – piece of shit.”

I don’t know about you but I couldn’t agree more.

[Unnamed] University, it’s time to get out the pooper-scooper to scrape up what is left of your reputation.

A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of [their] developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.

TCKs tend to have more in common with one another, regardless of nationality, than they do with non-TCKs from their passport country. TCKs are often multilingual and highly accepting of other cultures. Although moving between countries may become an easy thing for some TCKs, after a childhood spent in other cultures, adjusting to their passport country often takes years.

All these things are so far very true of our kids.  Rufus has become “accepting of other cultures” to the point where he doesn’t even identify nationality.  When he mentions a new friend at school and we ask him if they’re English, Chinese, Australian, American, Indian, out of curiosity, he says “We’re all English.”

The last point in the description, about having difficulty adjusting to their passport country, concerns me with Zadie.  She was a babe in arms when we moved here, and when we visit Australia, it’s clear she is quite discombobulated and has no memory of places and most people (especially if we haven’t stayed in touch via Skype).  She took her first steps and spoke her first words here.  She is, really, a Hongkonger – and I wonder, if we stay here for years and years, whether she’ll even consider herself Australian.

There is a unique TCK accent here too, known sometimes as the ESF (English Schools Foundation) accent – an amalgam of British, American, Australian and Chinglish, with inclining vowels and rolled Rs.  Both our kids are developing it in earnest.

In the two-ish years we’ve lived here now, we’ve already experienced a distinct downside for the kids of being TKCs: the relative frequency with which their friends move away, according to their parents’ careers.  A lot of expats in Hong Kong work in either finance or engineering, and there’s a well-trodden expat circuit in this region (and those industries) with families spending 2- or 3-year stints in Shanghai or Beijing, then Hong Kong, then Singapore, and then perhaps Dubai, before heading “home”.  We are one of the few expat families I know who came here because we wanted to live in Hong Kong and intend to make a life here for as long as we love it.  This gives us more freedom than most (in the sense of being able to create a home, knowing that we won’t be uprooted in six months or a year); but also leaves us open to having a transient circle of expat friends.  Of course we are making some local friends and trying to assimilate; but, yes, it is obviously important to interact with people who share the same mothertongue and some of the same cultural ideals.

Here’s one more salient point from the TCK description:

“Almost all” TCK families are deployed to foreign countries as a result of the father’s profession, and very few families live in another country primarily due to the mother’s occupation.

Well, we came here for a lot of reasons, family and individual aspirations key among them, but we were able to get our visa because of my job.  This is pretty unusual in the expat population.  An opening gambit in expat conversations is “What does your husband do?” and it’s very rare to meet another woman who isn’t the “trailing spouse” (a term I find a little derogatory, but that’s for another post).  But I did meet such a woman, one day down in the carpark waiting for the school bus with her daughter.   She was an American called Michelle, and after six or so years in London, she and her family had followed her banking career to Hong Kong.  They’d moved into our village, and they were our first close friends here.

Beyond our shared “not trailing spouse” status, our kids went to the same preschool, our husbands liked the same obscure music, we were alike politically and in generally not going in for expat status markers that can abound here.  We attempted, and mostly failed, to coordinate playdates around our really long work days.  We understood what it feels like to have to travel often for work, away from your family…the guilt of being the one who gets to leave the house, and the one who makes the kids cry.  And we were both great cooks.  Oh that’s right, she was a great cook; I remain a shit one.  We went swimming together after the kids fell asleep at night.  She helped me sew the kids’ bedroom curtains.

In Eric and Michelle (or, as Zadie calls him, Ericken, as in “Eric’n'Michelle”), and their girls Ruby and baby Maria, we really found true friends.

We each called our eldest children Ru.

They introduced us to Halloween.

Chalking outside our house while Michelle was in labour with Maria, only three weeks ago!

And today they left the village after a year and a half, heading back for Ohio.

Michelle and I had a great day at the Disneyland Hotel with the four kids, while Eric and Joel packed up the last of the stuff in their house.  After poking Maria for a bit…

..the older kids found the only bit of real green grass in Hong Kong and ran around like maniacs and assaulted each other with Buzz Lightyear swords.

Making friends and letting them go is something the kids have had to get used to already, with a few families we know leaving Hong Kong at the end of their parents’ contracts.  But it’s the first time Joel and I have experienced it.

I’m sad.

And lonely.

We have other friends here, but it’s hard to lose your first.  (Before meeting Eric and Michelle, Joel and I had already pretty much decided we didn’t really need good friends here.  The kids did – but we had each other, we had acquaintances, and we had our friends at home, electronically at least, and we had dad and Penny.  Thanks, Eric and Michelle, for re-teaching us the lesson most people learn about age 2: that everyone really does need somebody to lean on.  And get stuffed, for leaving!)

I have four reasons to want to visit America now (the other three being Paden, The Douglas Sisters, and attending an NCRA conference).  Hopefully it’ll happen in the next few years.

Saying goodbye in Disney Hotel room 5132.  No tears mofos.

Bon chance, you guys.  Take Ohio, climb trees and fall on grass that’s not prickly, rediscover proper bread and seitan, but always remember the ultimate Hong Kong lesson: NEVER THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.  That shit doesn’t get you anywhere.

Love xx

In our house the year of the dragon has been ushered in with offerings of a less propitious kind – snotty tissues, hacking coughs, so many hours of Disney Junior on TV, and doonas strewn (without any regard for the principles of feng shui) on the couch over sick kids.  Yes, they’ve both been sick as dogs and the only time we’ve ventured from the house was to take them on long drives, basically to relieve my boredom and escape yet another episode of Higglytown Motherf’ing Heroes.  Three days in a row we went for a leisurely cruise from Sai Kung up to Kowloon and back home through Sha Tin, me in the front doling out bananas and sharp denials of their repetitious song requests, them in the back moaning and napping (Joel was at home working).

One day, in a deserted industrial backlot in darkest Fo Tan, we came across the sweetest little shrine.

I made the invalids get out of the car to demonstrate the shrine’s tiny dimensions.  Excuse the big one’s pallid and dizzy appearance.  And the little one’s pyjamas.

And just around the corner, another statue in the grass, of a little but incredibly fierce warrior.  The kids refused to get out of the car.

On day 4, yesterday, the snot started drying up and the hacking coughs became less productive, so we ventured outside.  It was Australia Day, and where usually at home we would be enjoying a barbecue in blistering temperatures of about 40 degrees Celsius, here it was a bitter 6 degrees.  And this is the meat selection in the open freezer at the local super:

Who wants a rank chop?

Obviously a barbecue was off the menu so we settled in for a frozen-pizza picnic in our “frontyard”.  See in the background both the auspicious kumquat tree, and Rufus’s adorable Chinese chalk graf on our fence.

Later we made a trip to town to stand under a cherry blossom.  That’s gotta be lucky.  Everything else is!

We watched some lion dancing (on day 4, hundreds of “lions” dance around Sai Kung to usher in a prosperous year for all the local businesses.  I posted a much better post about it last year.)  This year I did take a photo of the ground outside Shun Kee House Ware Emporium after the lion had finished his dance, had a massive party popper burst over his head, and moved on.

The sparkly aftermath.

And here’s a couple of lion heads, obviously superfluous to requirements, reposing sadly on a trolley outside a convenience store.

Here’s a more active lion that we followed around the Old Town for a bit.  Happy Australia Day Chinese New Year!

The home of the centuries-old multinational corporation Jardine Mathison, it has a unique design of porthole windows.

These give it its colloquial sobriquet of ‘The House of a Thousand Arseholes’ – a dual reference to the portholes, and the Jardine Mathison taipans who work within.  CLEVER, RIGHT.  As someone who’s waged a long campaign to bring “hatful of arseholes” back into the popular lexicon, it’s only natural I applaud the budding neologist who first thought of ‘The House of a Thousand Arseholes’.  Good one bro.

A few weeks back I was reporting an investigation in Jardine House.  The job involved a hell early start that necessitated being in the very House of Arseholes before sunrise (though not many arseholes were present at that hour – this is Hong Kong after all, even the most diligent arsehole doesn’t usually start work until 10am.  It was pretty much just me, the tech arsehole and the security arsehole).

Pay-off: unreal porthole view of city sunrise!

And later, superb lunchtime view over the harbour.

I was still working well past sundown and into the night, and would love to share the photo I took of the skyscrapers lighting up around the harbour, but they all have my reflection in them.  And even I’m not stupid enough to put a photo of myself in a post where I personally insult 1,000 of the region’s most prominent arseholes.

(1) Here comes the dragon!
(2) Five days off work, and only two weeks after the Christmas break.  BOON.
(3) It’s nearly the day when people give the kids lai see, the contents of which we get to spend on beer – don’t we?
(4) Memories of our first CNY here, when I totally misunderstood the traditions and rituals associated with this week and believed the collapse of the financial sector was imminent.  I guess I was either really ignorant, or really prescient and 99%-ing it up way before anyone thought to Occupy anywhere.  Decide for yourselves.

February 2, 2010 – Cusp of the Year of the Tiger

Today, as I approached my local HSBC branch to transact some important business, I was startled to see at least 100 people queued out the door and back down the street. (And also that guy in the red-to-white shirt using the ATM so elegantly, but that’s by the by).

As I neared the queue, I sharpened my senses to signs of panic that would indicate HSBC’s collapse. Why else would such a crowd have gathered? I realised quickly that they were a quiet and cooperative crowd – in fact an HSBC employee was walking down the line and chatting amiably to each queue-ee – but then again this is Hong Kong and the populace is generally very civilised, so I tensed afresh. If this was a rush on the branch, I wanted to have as good a chance as the next person at securing the tiny amount of HK$ currently in my freshly activated account.

The house we’re staying in at the moment, being a long-term holiday rental place, has a collection of shitty books like you used to find in the laundromat of caravan parks as a kid. One of them is about the British Secret Services and unluckily for my fellow branch-picketers, I JUST READ THAT THING COVER TO COVER. Not only can I communicate succinctly in radio callsigns, I also know how to execute a J-turn at high speed, conceal a Sturmgewehr 44 machinegun in an ankle holster, AND I also just downloaded an app to my phone that does morse code. Apprising the rest of the admittedly very peaceable rioters discreetly from behind a bush, I noted they were, almost without exception, geriatrics shuffling feebly along with the assistance of walking sticks. I knew I could outrun them without too much bother, even in my current gross unfitness and wearing wholly unsuitable thongs of shoddy Chinese manufacture. I probably wouldn’t even need to execute any of my newly acquired military tactics!

I crouched to the ground, pausing to lament that I didn’t know any Cantonese battlecry so any incisive insult about the financial sector I might shout would go unappreciated. No matter. My swift and sure progress to the front of the queue would stun the shuffling and murmuring crowd quicker than any anarchic chant I could deploy. I learned from my Secret Service book the importance of complete mental preparation so I quickly meditated on what was ahead.

What are your legs? Springs. Steel springs. What are they going to do? Hurl me right into the bank. How fast can you run? As fast as a fat gweilo. How fast ARE you going to run? As fast as it takes me to get in there, and not a bit faster.

Then let’s see you do it.

And I was off. That lady at the far left in the beanie didn’t stand a chance. The three ladies in front of her were pushed back, clutching their handbags, by the force of my electric sidewind. I grabbed that guy’s walking stick in case I needed it later to force the shutters of the counters and repossess my cash by force, if it came to that.

On entering the bank, wired, waving the walking stick above my head to rally the crowd of disgruntled creditors, I was dismayed to find them even more cooperative than the peeps on the footpath outside. They were formed into five orderly queues which advanced in near silence to the tellers, who were using note-counting machines to dole out bundles of notes of all denominations.

As mentioned, Hongkongers are a civilised people, but this was hard for me to believe. There’s a rush on the bank, and the tellers are just handing out stacks of cash in elastic bands?

I LOVE THIS PLACE!

(Turns out today is the special day when you get to change old banknotes for newly minted ones for insertion into the red envelopes given out on Chinese New Year, which is fast approaching. But I think I got away with my understandable misinterpretation of what was going down. And I’m pretty sure the old guy outside was alright too, I poked him with the walking stick as I returned it and he appeared to exhibit some shallow breathing.)

On the weekend I met up with one of them, Karen, who was here visiting family.  She was born in HK but moved to Canada after the 1997 “Handover” (the transfer of sovereignty from the UK to the PRC).  Thus, we were able to help each other out in the random areas of both stenography and Cantonese, each bringing our own expertise to a very fruitful if entirely niche discussion!  I should point out that it sounds like Karen’s stenographic journey has so far been far quicker and more elegant than my own lumbering progress in Cantonese.

In the coffee house, bamboozling fellow patrons with a combination of tech talk, my unintelligible Cantonese, and my overtired daughter who lay prone underneath the table for most of the conversation.

Here we are at the park in the Sai Kung Old Town, where our working discussions were somewhat impeded by having to jump up and play “velcro tennis” with my kids every four minutes.  My husband took this photo and he said that Karen and I look like a lovely couple.

Shortly before we exchanged roses and began poring over rental lists…

ANYWAY.  I love talking steno with anyone, but especially other stenos.  It’s just better for everyone.  I can’t understand why but apparently non-stenos simply don’t extract the same delight from an ardent discourse about suffixes and homonyms.  Stenos do, Karen did, and we had a great natter about various things including CART, captioning and of course CR.  She is approaching the end of her studies and will soon be looking at employment.  I feel I’m in a kind of unique position of having solid experience in all three main disciplines, in many different countries now, and can offer some insight when it comes to the pros and cons of each area.  Places I haven’t worked include America and Canada, which I don’t think renders my advice nugatory but perhaps makes some of it more mystifying to Americans and Canadians!  Sorry about that.

We talked a lot about realtime.  In Australia and Asia, where I’ve done all my work, realtime is the norm.  I’d say over 90% of the work I do is realtime.  It’s clearly preferable both in terms of remuneration, excitement, and motivation.  I keep reading on forums about how, particularly in America, stenographers are being replaced by digital recording systems.  This flummoxes me a little bit because I initially thought all jurisdictions in the world that employ stenographers would naturally use realtime services.  And obviously digital recording can’t replace realtime; and I know how much the bench and the bar (and especially the solicitors and clients) appreciate and use the realtime feed, and how much money and time it saves them.  Now I find out (anecdotally) that a majority of work in US courts ISN’T realtime.  I am surprised.  I kind of think…if you’ve gone to all the effort of learning steno, why wouldn’t you want to offer realtime?

I see on some forums writers encouraging other writers to “realtime for themselves” every day to improve their writing.  “Realtiming for yourself” isn’t realtiming; it’s just writing.  Am I right?  I know on the odd occasion here when I don’t do realtime, I definitely take it down a notch.  I know I’m the one who’s going to be editing it later, so I’m not nearly as stringent as I would otherwise be (for example, when a new term comes up in a realtime matter, I will fingerspell that thing until the luncheon adjournment, even if that means spelling “Ambrosia Pignatelli” 74 times.  If I’m *cough* “realtiming for myself” I’ll just write AM*/PI*G or something and fix it up later.  Enough to get me through a readback but definitely not a good realtime tactic.)

On the subject of editing, that’s the other invaluable thing about realtiming – someone else is sitting right there with you editing as you go along.  Writing all day, spending an hour after work verifying quotes, doing some final touch-ups, and then sending your transcript out before you leave for home…it’s the only way to work.  I ABHOR doing depositions precisely because you have them hanging over your head until they’re delivered.  I want transcripts out the door on the day and the best way to do that, and avoid editing, is to do realtime.  And if I lived in a country where people don’t do realtime as a matter of course, and I always had 300 pages of editing on the plate, I think I’d move to another country.  That shit isn’t good for your peace of mind.

There was a thread about editing on Depoman one time and it totally applied to me.  I just don’t have it in me.  I fall asleep, I get distracted…I have to force myself to just do “10 more pages”, disconnect the internet, offer myself rewards for every milestone (not, as someone suggested, a whiskey at every adjournment; see above re falling asleep, and that’s without any alcoholic assistance).

Editing is my back-up career if and when I succumb to carpal-tunnel syndrome, I guess.  And I am dreading it.

(Above section to be read in the reflection of my full and utter respect for the scopists I’ve worked with.  And also my sincere assurances to Christine Woolley that in the years I scoped for you, before I was a writer myself, I prided myself on absolute professionalism and being-awake-ness; and without the opportunity, in fact, I never would have become a writer.)

But there was something a little bit more concise that I really wanted to post about here for those couple of Canadian students who might be reading (and students from other countries, for despite what you may think based on the empirical evidence frequently presented here, I’m not racist or exclusionary AT ALL!).  And that something is student machines.  Can someone explain this to me?  I keep reading about it on forums and it doesn’t make sense.  Karen tells me there’s this thing whereby students have to purchase a “professional” machine before they can start working.  I’ve always thought, using logic that satisfies both fiscal and functional requirements, that any machine that can be hooked up to a computer can be used on the job.

This issue has recently been in the news because of this unfortunate* incident (“unfortunate” used in the sense of “hell nightmare scenario of any stenographer’s life”).  On most of the steno forums I’m on, the court reporter in question has been crucified, mainly for having “bad equipment” which equals “unprofessional” and even “unqualified”.  How utterly pompous and also irrelevant.  My first thought is that I can’t believe any first-world court complex doesn’t have its own secondary audio systems recording all around the whole joint.  My second thought is that I’ve seen some really amazing stenos with very basic and old equipment; and some not-so-flash ones with an arsenal of expensive gadgets.  My third thought is that all these writers on forums bagging her equipment might consider this.

I write, by choice, on a 17-year-old Stentura 8000LX.  I do realtime nearly every day in such lofty institutions as the Hong Kong High Court and the International Arbitration Centre.  Here it is doing the business at a little event called the Asian Film Awards:

Note massive cinema-sized screens on both sides of the stage for projection of live captions.  The good old 8000LX does not quake in the face of such a CART audience!  Also, it has ports that allow it to connect to such technology!  IMAGINE!

I had my second child while I was captioning (not actually live on air, that WOULD be unprofessional) and was lucky enough to work from home in the year or so that followed.  Here is what my study looked like.  Don’t mind the lettering, it was for a key that went with this photo in a post on another blog I used to have.  The point of interest is that I did all my captioning on an awesome…400SRT!  (See, er, letter “B”).  Currently available on eBay for about US$200!

See also this post for other pics of me captioning the Tour de France from my loungeroom using that very machine.  Also saw service on such minor “events” as the Olympics and the London terror attacks of July 2005.

I owned an Elan Mira for a brief time and hated it.  The touch was too soft, and I found the whole size/shape/weight unwieldy.  If I’m honest, I also think the design of these newer machines is kind of cheap-looking.  The screens look low-tech and novelty-ish, and…whose idea was it to call the latest one a Diamante?  Yeah, THAT’S professional.  This isn’t just a Stenograph-bash, incidentally.  I also find those ergonomic splitting-apart machines (can’t think of the name offhand) really ugly and wouldn’t want to look at it all day in court.  Think of the clients.  That thing’s gonna put the best advocate off their cross-examination, no?  In summary, if a machine lets me bash it, has basic functionality, and isn’t aesthetically intrusive, that is a winner.  No matter how unfashionable it is to say so.

By the same token, of course, if the machine that you write on best is an expensive one, then use it.  I’m saying use a machine because you are good at writing on it, not because it’s the latest or is named after a fake crystal or a concept of elegance.  What?

One of the main arguments for newer machines is that they do things like “record audio” and “allow text search”.  Isn’t that what we use computers for?  Do you ever do a job WITHOUT a computer?  Certainly not a realtime one.  I don’t even have my dictionary loaded on my steno machine, simply because I’d rather be reading the realtime feed (off a computer) to monitor what the clients are seeing.  There are those alleged contingencies about having to do a job in a hospital or in a remote location using just your steno machine.  In 12 years I’ve never been to such a job.  At that infrequency (0% of jobs), that particular justification dies in its arse.  Speaking of arses, in any case, even on a remote or unusually situated job, you’re going to be sitting down, right?  And if you’re going to be sitting down, you can bring a computer.  And if you’re me, you would be bringing a computer anyway because you don’t want to rely on just one machine to record everything, including audio – what if something happens to it?  One day soon, revolutionary steno thinker Mirabai will invent invisible wearable steno machines and virtually free software for us all; in the meantime, we use laptops, innit.

Incidentally my most invaluable piece of equipment is my tilting tripod attachment, seen in the below photo right underneath my machine:

From  “What’s in your handbag“, a post I wrote last year about my “outdated” equipment…

As I said in that post, I can write on any steno machine with that thing – and none without it!  Considering it cost less than $100, it was an unknowingly cunning investment.

So, students, I hope it isn’t true that you are actually obligated to purchase a “professional” machine before you can start working.  The only thing I really hate about this industry is how expensive everything is, and how some schools (and agencies, by the sound of it) appear to be in collusion with the big proprietary names.  Please show this post to anyone telling you you can’t be a real steno without a $5,000 machine named after a cheap plastic “jewel”.  To people on the forums talking rubbish about bad equipment equalling a sure lack of qualifications and ability, be quiet.

And if there’s still any doubters, what about this:

My own mentor, a truly incredible writer called Helen Case, wrote – in court, live-captioning and everything in between, in countries all over the world – on a SmartWriter.  For about 30 years.  And I’ve never had the privilege of meeting a more accomplished or in-demand professional.

Karen, it was lovely to meet you.  Through this ludicrously self-indulgent blogging malarky I’ve now met people at opposite ends of the steno world, in the tiny but amazing city of Hong Kong – a student at the beginning of what I have no doubt will be a fascinating career, and the redoubtable Depoman.  Anyone else passing through, look me up!  You too could have your name inextricably linked to an awkward post making cloaked accusations of commercial impropriety against the biggest name in the game!  DO IT!  To that end, all views contained herein are obviously my own.  I do, however, believe them to be truth.