Tiger licking my arm body & face paint - things to do during a typhoon when your'e bored in HK - www.cats-creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Thought you might like to see what I do when I'm bored at home! If you want really gross, a woman I talk to a lot on the Pro Face-Painters chatsite specialises in painting actors to train army medics at full-on casualty simulations. The people she paints are called 'Amputees in Action' & their motto is 'we won't cost you an arm and a leg'!!! So she does up their stumps to look fresh & has made nurses faint, cool!
Pete had last weekend off, so I actually went OUT on the island (plus it was a bit cooler) and we walked south about 30 mins, through a sweet little 'village' (no flats & beautiful gardens full of gladioli etc in naturalisic settings) and several hills/ valleys.
The bamboo forest is nothing like the amazing ones in the Crouching Tiger/ Flying Dagger films, here they are dusty, dark and full of giant mozzies! Lots of banana, ginger (?) and some sort of yam type root (casava?) in the damper valley bits. Also quite a few burials, those little gatherings of big urns in a semi-circular walled space; and some derelict houses I want to loook at when the mozzies have gone - its just so unsual to see single storey buildings & they seemed to have remnants of decorative moulded plaster around the doors. We stopped at Tung O beach which was gorgoous, no rubbish (though pete says you couldn't see the sand for it after the last typhoon), far cleaner, deeper, bigger and nicer than our beach! Warm to swim in too though a bit scary as it shelves off rapidly, the water is too murky to see far, and it has no shark nets. I put pics in my Flikr album - join and contact me so I can list you as family/ friend if you want to see them or the African ones (only but up a few of the - 500!!!- from Kenya). Pete decided we would go a different way back, promising it was about 20 minutes longer. 2 HOURS of exertion later I was in tears as we were still above the same Tung O bay!!!! It was a zig-zag path up the side of assorted ridges, down again, up the next - and I hadn't had lunch/ any food/ sweets with me as Pete had said we were just nipping out for 30 mins for a swim! So basically I had a hideous hypo for most of the time & kept trying to be sick - turns out when he climbed it before he was drunk (the same day he went to the top of the tallest mountain, and got stuck on a rock in the dark overnight) so had no memory of most of the route. I'm glad I didn't pass out as the ants were massive. And I doubt Pete could carry me. Still I expect if I do it again with food in me and NOT on a blazing hot flat calm humid day, the views will be great. I've lost any climbing muscles I got from teaching on steep hills in Dorset long ago - I'm definitely not up to cousin Lochies climbing Kilimanjaro standard!
I went to collect my work visa from the mighty Immigration Tower on Monday - as expected - daft! Queued, had to hand in letter they sent; wait in rows of seats. Waited extra 30 mins as I didn't recognise a single syllable of my name which they had been calling; queue to pay for it, sit and wait to receive it. Arguement as I hadn't put my middle name in on something random & it was only in my passport & not on my other ID, and as far as they are concerned thats my whole given name - HOW long is it if I write that and double barrell it too??? Again missed my name even though i was listening harder! Collected it.....now I have to do a trip to Macau (closest & easiest way to leave the country briefly) to cancel my tourist visa & start the dependancy visa. Then I can queue to make an appointment to get my fingerprints etc done for the HK smart ID card we have to have; then the same rigmarole collecting it I expect!
FINALLY found a shop selling postcards (in Central) so actually now have some to write. I ended up spending a (relative) fortune on the handmade local crafted cards they hid at the back though - everyone wants the tacky Hallmark type cards instead, whereas what I got were individually hand painted, embroidered (machined those tho) and AMAZING cut paper pictures that were then hand tinted.
Afterwards I had ages to wait until I could meet Pete after work, so I went to the cinema in the posh mall where we had the posh MacDonalds. Posh staff - the minute you stop to look at one of their big maps, people dressed as bank managers mob you to ask if they can help! (Crap directions from the cinema lady so thank goodness they were there, I hadn't even worked out which wing/ floor I was on!). Posh seats! Big huge sinky leathery things, nice. The talking throughout the film wasn't as bad as I'd been told, but for mid-afternoon on a Wednesday it was packed! No spare seats. Really unimpressed as when I left & was making my way to the bus station through the shiney marble palaces pretending to be malls & offices, I said no thanks (in Cantonese!) to one of those leaflet chuggers and then went flying in a puddle on the marble floor. At which point he warned me it was slippy. Thanks. There are LOADS of those leaflet touts, with wheely granny-shopping-trolly-bags full of literature, or people in suits with pop-up banners & tables trying to get you to join their bank/ phone company/ insurance by offering posh looking watches etc if you sign up! The other thing is I now spot around there is the recycling people, who I think may be homeless, making money by sorting/ collecting out of all the bins: as they actually have a flat sack trolley like in DIY merchants, and go round all the streets/ shops back doors collecting their speciality. It's usually the cardboard ones I spot, as they end up looking like mobile versions of that wierd garbage living puppet form 'The Labryinth - you just get towering piles of flattened boxes careening up the pavement towards you seemingly of their own accord.
New silly shop names spotted - Win Key opticians; Fat But (no idea, was closed), Fresh Pets (think they meant their ideas/ gear & were not encouraging eating fluffy pekinnese types); Spankeys (posh suits). Oh yes and a 'Goo Fish' bakery - related? to its bread flavours? - i hope not!
I have had a bit of luck - went to an interview last Tues (in Starbucks) to meet the organiser of Hong Kongs only rock festival, Rokit. Headlined by Goldy & the guy from the STone Roses this year, alongside some wierd (I mean really odd) Chinese star and about 30 local bands. They have one backer, no government/ sponsorship help (odd!) and a minimum of 5000 tickets sold each year. Sadly she can't hire me for the day outright as they have no budget, but I don't have to pay for a pitch & she's providing a stall for the day, as well as handing out my card to all her clients. I can charge per face, thing is some stuff is SO cheap out here that if I stick to my old £2-£3 per face I will probably get NO takers! That's if there are any anyway! Ah well, is all PR. Also had a few enquiries about me painting at kids parties, both from the ultra rich Peak area of HK where all the dentists & diplomats live: furious to find that yet again 1 of them (on the expat classified ads website) wants someone far cheaper but still as good as me (won't happen!) and now has some idiots telling her to use acrylics & do it herself! Emailed her again warning her, as thats a HUGE mistake, big court cases with kids who had that done & the sun actually made the acrylic paint cause 3rd degree burns in the shape of the hearts etc painted on their cheeks, poor souls. Extra annoyed as she is paying triple what I asked her already for a magician, but once again face painting is seen as 'mummys hobby', grrr. We are talking about getting a union going in the UK for exactly that reason, we are at the bottom of the entertainers scale because we don't have a "Magic Circle' to insist on basic skills & charges!
My second meeting was with a funky pair of Latin American ladies who run Maya Consultations, organising product launches, big posh parties, corporate dinners etc. They want me to start by painting 4 models they have hired to launch 4 new flavours of Patron Tequila at a big bash. I've never heard of it but apparantly its the bees knees, outsells all others 4 times over in the USA. Anyway, they have hired a young local designer to make dresses for them, then I do their faces/ arms, not entirely sure what in/ as - all 4 'flavours' are bright colours, funky cut crystal bottles are engraved with a beeautiful styalised bee so I'm working around that.
Still chickening out of the dried food stalls - ok, the flattened opened up squid I now see, a few of the seeds/ beans i think I know - but huge drifts of unidentifiable other stuff. Umm, mushrooms? Dried plants? Shrivelled caterpillars? Afore-mentioned veterinary operation by-products? I have NO idea. The fresh/ dried meats stalls are the same though I can usually tell what most is (using a process of deduction/ addition from a bit I recognise to build up/ dissect the whole animals in my mind). They sew up the chickens/ ducks in an odd sort of shoe-laced-tightly- pattern before they are cooked, then hang them in rows. Most cooked meat is bright red or saffron yellow according to whatever they have done to it. The slabs where they chop off what you want/ slice what you want are right on the pavement, bit scary watching their huge cleavers whacking down right in front of watching toddlers. Talking of which - veggies close your eyes - I opened up whatever it was Pete bought home for tea last night to find what I'm pretty sure was cooked sliced intestine. Cut in rings, smooth muscle on the inside, sort of wrinkly outer layer. Tasted Ok (sorry veggies but I was hungry & we had no other food/ ferries). How he can muck up ordering at that place, where all you do is point, I don't know! I actually prefer the veggie 'meat', its lovely , big range of texture/ flavour from 'oysters' to 'pork', but as I said, I was fooled & confused at first when we went to them! Didn't correctly identify lunch at the bakers today and got a surprise - cheese roll - (I thought) turned out to be a sweet roll sprinkled with yellow coconut & filled with salty fake cream. Hmm.
Petes buzzing as he found someone to buy a windsurf board from and has been leaving at 5 am for the early ferry, to take the bus PAST his work stop to get a few hours windsurfing at Stanley. Originally they refused to let him surf there, as despite being the ONLY RYA (gods of all sailors I think) qualified windsurf senior instructor in HK as far as we know, they wouldn't recognise his certificates! For some reason they have changed their minds so he's now allowed to rent sails from them & go out to wreck himself in the typhoon winds. Some gusts have been mad, and red warnings forced him to cancel nearly all his sailing courses at work, but him & the other nutters are out windsurfing in it! He's now trying to brainwash all the club members/ staff he meets into wanting to be windsurfers so he can get the RHKYC he works for to buy decent kit & let him teach it. He's also 'trying out' a faster board belonging to some guy who just broke his arm on it, so thats where we're travelling on his day off! if he likes it theres one for sale in Bristol & mums arriving from there in a month..........oh dear.
Pete doing a Rik Mayall Young Ones impression, Tung O Bay, Lamma Island, Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Still having 'discussions' occasionally about the flat - I'd like to look at the newly built ones being finished accross the street, with lovely QUIET working ACs and a proper kitchen & bathroom...but Pete can't see why! He has nice hot proper showers & meals at work so never uses ours and only goes into the fridge for water! Plus its roof terrace is NOT viewed on all sides by neighbours, and has shelter/ shade - STILL not even seen ours which is what Pete got this place for really. Sounds like I won't get off the island, and apart from the ferry/ spider steps it is OK I suppose, and handier for HK/ his work than anywhere else we could afford without a 2 hour journey. I'll keep trying though! I had my first real 'hot' 'shower" (I did scald myself a few weeks back having a shower midday, as the water pipes all have to run over the rocky ground so even the cold water boils) by actually turning on our little boiler, so it must be getting cooler! The humidity is down to 70% which is a huge releif too.
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