Today's HK Sexually Ambiguous Persons Count

2

Click. Click.

Mark it down, Cherie!

What Chinese People Do Best.

No, not accounting.

Leave your taxes to the schmos at H&R Block.

I'm talking about eating. Chinese people may not appear to have voracious appetites, but they actually pride themselves as having discerning palates but yet aren't very choosy in what they eat. Prince Philip once quipped: "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." Chances are he's probably 90% right. I've decided to add entries relating to the food I will be eating in and around the Fragrant Harbour. Most of my friends love food, so how fitting is it to taunt them with food they can't have? Likewise, if I fall violently ill with a fatal case of botulism (boo, food poisoning; yay, Botox) as a result of enjoying said food, by God, I'd like to share it with you too.

First entries coming soon!

Today in the SCMP

Say you're a western act, and you have absolutely no credibility. Or, you may have started out with some credibility but then squandered it all by being increasingly craptastic with every successive album. Then in this case, you'd be known as the Black Eyed Peas. Sure, they have catchy tunes. But I feel that their hit songs are all about tits and ass, ahem, sorry "lady lumps" and being all ghettolicious. Maybe I'm not with the "it" crowd and missing their seemingly blatant attempts at promoting justice and equality for all mankind. And talk about overexposure, I must have seen BEP like 40 times in the last year on TV back home. They were seriously everywhere: Grey Cup half-time show, Best Buy grand openings, weddings, barmitzvahs, and the like. I'm surprised people still pay to go see them live.

Well, as I was looking through the City section of the SCMP (South China Morning Post), I saw Fergie's drum-tight face staring at me. God, it was like looking at Kirstie Alley (with bad taste in jewellery) caught between the headlights. If those lips of hers get any bigger, they'll surpass the size of the Oscar Meyer-mobile. Anyway, they're coming to Hong Kong on July 16. And how much are they charging? $780, $680, and $580. So over C$100. Right...I chide those who pay to see them.

Also, Robbie Williams is supposedly coming too. He's playing the HKCEC on November 10. Prices? $1,680, $880, and $580. Oh dear. As much as I'd like to smell Robbie Williams' crotch from my front row centre seat as he dry humps his mike stand wearing presumably nothing but black Y fronts, I think I'll save up my money to see Kylie instead. Here's hoping she'll pick up her HK date again.

So tomorrow is the Dragon Boat Festival at Stanley, yet it is pouring not just cats and dogs but also assorted barnyard animals and their excrements. I really hope the weather clears up by then, otherwise it's going to be a wet wet race day.

Why leave Hong Kong?

I once was lost but now am found.

Behold, the reason why I needn't leave Hong Kong any time soon.

OK, so I was walking through Park'n'Shop yesterday and I found two good reasons not to leave Hong Kong. For the last year I was craving Manhattan style Clam Chowder. They don't sell Manhattan style anywhere in Canada. Damn you, fans of New England style. May you all put on pounds of undesirable fat from the litres of cream you ingest! Anyway, I remember asking some lady from Safeway if they carried any Manhattan Clam Chowder, but they said they stopped carrying it years ago. I was so aching to have it that I was Googling up the recipe. Wel, luckily Hongers import this stuff. And what do you know, it's made by Campbell's. Mmm mmm good!

I subsequently had two cans of this for breakfast.

Another jewel I discovered whilst combing the canned soup aisle was the Sinofied Campbell's soup. Who would have thunk... Campbell's has a Chinese Soup line, including my personal favourite - Hot and Sour Soup. There must be like two bowls of this in a can, and all for the price of HK$7.50, so that's like a dollar something. I promptly bought, I shit you not, a dozen.

Sure, it's not the same as the fake Chinese food joints back home. But it still wasn't bad.

If you're sweaty and you know it clap your hands...

Clap clap.

Papa has landed in Hong Kong and the moment I got off the plane I could feel my poor lungs collapsing from the dense humid air. Even as I walked through the air-conditioned terminal at the airport, I was already expelling a copious amount of sweat. But not only was I sweaty, I was feeling anxiety. Anxiety of being somewhere totally foreign but yet not so. OK, so seeing Chinese signage everywhere is hardly a culture shock. It's pretty much like a stroll through Aberdeen Centre in Richmond on any given day. I think I was feeling trapped and claustrophobic the moment the plane started its descent. I looked out my window and saw endless sites with tightly packed modern age Babylon towers with long intermittent roads and viaducts winding around them. The old and existing towers created a sea of adobe white, while new construction sites were covered in homogenous pine green scaffolding. Apart from the low forested mountains there was really nothing else that reminded me of home. My growing anxiety and profuse sweating made me think of SNL alumnus Molly Shannon's character Mary Katherine Gallagher. Oh how I love her! Superstahhhr!

So for those of you who are thinking of flying to Hong Kong to visit me any time soon, may I suggest that you not make the dire mistake I made when I "chose" to fly with Air Canada. While they may have a slightly cheaper price than their chief competitor, namely Cathay Pacific, the 'pro' list stops there. Allow me to use the following paragraph to express my overall displeasure from flying with Canada's national airline, fresh out from bankruptcy protection. (Oh by the way, congrats, Air Canada. How on earth did you manage to do that?) Starting with the minor things, eh... First, let's talk about the blankets. Do your cleaners use Bounce when they take these things out for a washing? For the first two hours I endured non-stop electric shock therapy from my extremely staticky blanket, that was not so much a blanket as a small dish rag. I couldn't handle it any further when I got the shock of my life when I went to rebuckle my seat belt during some crazy-ass turbulence. I took my zip up sweater from my bag and wore it underneath my hoodie so I didn;t need the damn blanket anymore. Real comfortable. Second, your in-flight "entertainment," shown on one tiny television, can't possibly be enjoyed by the hundreds of peasants in "Hospitality Class" (more on the 'Hospitality" later) when the obscenely bright TV screen is shaking constantly. If we weren't blinded by the screen, we would have had to take a pack of Gravol to stop us from throwing up the lovely meals you served us. This brings us to the "Hospitality Class" bit. So the lovely lady and gent were pushing their meal carts down the aisle. I took off my earphones to hear the what wide selection they had for us today. I heard them ask "Chicken or Beef" to about 20 passengers in front of me. Well, the trough finally got to my aisle, when suddenly the overly made-up woman clad in Celine Dion Air Canada green thrusted a tray in my face and roughly placed it on my fold out table. I looked down at the tin-foil covered dish and looked back up and gave her a blank stare. Not necessarily of outrage, but I was puzzled. I didn;t ask for anything yet. But I had to ask her anyway. "What's this?" "Beef," she replied sharply. "Oh well, sorry i don't eat beef," ensuring I stressed the word beef the same way she did. "Well, that's all we have left." said she in a hospitable manner. "Well, I can't have beef."

Truth is, I do eat beef. Hell, I am an omnivore, but in this case I wasn't pleased with my lack of choice. When 20 people ahead of me had the choice between two dishes, I expect to have the same liberty to choose at my disposal. So anyway, she just reached right in front of me and grabbed the Tupperware of beef off my tray. "I'll see what I can do," she said dismissively as she pulled the cart away further and further from my row.

Surely, it was at this moment that I should have leapt from my seat and grovelled at her feet! She'll see what she can do! WOW!

Five minutes into the meal service, I decided to eat my fruit cup instead, when all of a sudden I saw the tanned hand and forearm of this other AC flight attendant thrust a plastic container topped with an Air Canada plastic film. "Here's the chicken." He promptly walked away, surely rushing off to provide another happy customer with extraordinary in-flight service.

So should I be pissed that the woman pretty much lied about the chicken thing cause she was a lazy bitch?

Well, all is resolved I guess on international flights, thanks to their gracious offering of complementary liquors and spirits. I was pretty much drunk for most of the flight. A quiet drunk. And when I took out my latest Joan Didion book, I was a quiet and pensive drunk. All was forgotten, when I passed out after my seventh drink, the third potent Caesar, sans Worcestershire sauce.

Finally, Air Canada, you are truly making your airline a strong competitor in the market, when you hire only pre-/post-menopausal women and grey-haired and heavily fob-accented Chinese men who don't give two rats asses about their job. As they were reading out supposedly important information over the muted speakers, I swear they sounded like they were on the verge of having a stroke. Call me anal, but when I listened to the four different announcers on the flight speaking in different languages (English, French, Cantonese, Mandarin), I heard four totally different set of facts. So is it 29, 30, 28, or 27 degrees in Hong Kong? How long is the flight? 13 hours or 12.5 hours or a god damn eternity thanks to the determination, competence, and above all, the hopsitable service of your cabin crew?

Fuck you Air Canada. Fuck you to Hell.

Countdown to...

Convocation. 22 Days.

Well it seems I passed the two courses I've been spazing over in the last few weeks. Definitely surprised by what I found as I logged on to check my marks. Let's just say I have finally been awarded for my mediocre efforts at academics. First, I did surprisingly well on my Industrial Organisation course.

During the exam for this course, I was leafing through the flimsy exam booklet in disbelief. I was having a conversation with the exam questions... Says I "Hey, I know you from somewhere. Do I know you?" Says the question, "No...but I know I smell something and it's your brain rotting away. Gotta go! Have fun answering me, jackass!" ensued by a loud slam of the door. I knew about 80% of the material, did well on the practice exams, yet went into the exam sweating like a prostitute in church. I left maybe 60% of the exam unanswered, or at times when I did answer, did so with simple sentences followed by bold question marks I drew out of exasperation. Then with 20 minutes left, I started thinking how much I needed on my paper to get myself a delicious D...then when I calculated that if I failed the final (say 40%), I would need about 99% on the final paper. Then I started to ponder upon the various things I can do to salvage my mark... an extra paper? a summer of tending to his garden? babysit his kid? sexual favours? anything for a pass. My prof appears to be quite the normal guy, but who knows, I'd be willing to fulfill any twisted sexual perversions he might have had... I was that desperate. I was a whore for crucial marks.

Who would have thunk...C+ as a final mark. I was floored. What the f--? SOLD. Best C+. Ever.

Then, I did surprisingly well on the big paper on malaria and economic growth.

I find it puzzling how I can manage to get such a good grade considering the paper was a clumsily compiled package consisting of pages and pages of ubiquitous non sequiturs (no joke). It lacked creativity to the point where it was teetering on borderline plagirism. Well, after hours tapping away on a keyboard using words like 'income' and 'disease' for every damn line for close to thirty pages, innovative word usage and academic integrity are things that just don't register. I thought I was pretty screwed when I typed the 'Conclusions' heading and realised I: (a) forgot what question my paper was specifically addressing; and having forgotten what the topic was, I promtly checked page 1's 'Introduction' and thus (b) forgot whether I actually had data to support my statement. Luckily I did have a few numbers up my ass I could conveniently pull out. After close to two days of sleep deprivation, I was nonetheless surprised to discover I still had the faculty to form simple sentences (i.e. Noun+verb+direct object).

So the concluding sentences I wrote for 'the big one' also became the last words I will ever write in my academic career...I think. So for the record, ladies and gentlemen, here are my conclusions.

Regionally speaking, malaria prevalence will cause a 0.8 per cent growth decrease per annum and Sub-Saharan African countries face a higher rate of negative growth at 1.2 per cent per annum. These results were all statistically significant using a null hypothesis test (hypothesis where malaria had no effect on income vs. malaria had some effect).

Screw spell checking. Screw grammar. Screw proof-reading. Saved it. Printed it. Got up from my chair and let out a raucous "FUCK YOU, UBC" as I fingered my poor dusty laptop monitor. Sure, it was a vulgar way to mark the end of school, but I felt relieved.

Done at last.


Hong Kong. 24 Days.

I'll be off to Hong Kong in 24 days to begin a smog-filled summer. I promise to bring back some lovely momentos. Say, SARS isn't around anymore, is it? Well, it's totally passe. I'll bring back the latest crazed disease, but not the bird flu 'cause on it's way out.

There is something that I know I'll love in Hong Kong: the subway system (MTR). Clean and efficient and damn refreshing. Which is why I was all giddy when I stumbled upon this song on the RTHK Radio 3's website.

MTR Song

The song had Diana and I in stiches and cooing over how adorable it was for gweilos to pronounce Chinese names. We subsequently googled a MTR route map to sing along...I unashamedly had the song on loop.

Geekiness to the max...and fun for FOBs and bananas alike who have been to Stinky Harbour.